This was written back in July and it is still stuff I’m contemplating daily:
So I have just finished reading Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. After hearing Shane speak at Taylor, I didn’t feel influenced at all –nothing he said really affected me and I initially wasn’t sure I agreed with everything he said. But now that I have finished his book, I just have to say, wow, I feel like a different person. When I picked up the book I had no idea my thinking would change so dramatically. So this is how it all started….I was wandering through a bookstore looking to buy some reading material for my trip to Ecuador when I spotted Irresistible Revolution and thought why not give it a read. Out of my refusal to be ignorant of what Shane has to say (even though I was initially stubborn to even really listen to him), I picked up his book. Wow! Am I ever glad I bought this book. If you have not heard of this book before, please do yourself a favor and read it. I do have to admit thought that is was hard for me to read past the first chapter or two mostly because of the initial bias I had. I was initially skeptical of the theology and doctrine behind Shane’s way of thinking. Although Shane won’t admit that he really is part of the emergent church movement, the fact is that he is in terms of living out faith in modern times. (I am still not exactly sure what this movement is all about because it is such a big, new movement and I just started researching it this past year. If you aren’t familiar with this movement and you are a true follower of Jesus Christ then you need to research this too because it should concern you since many churches are headed down this road and they are going to have incredible influence on the faith of the next generation as well as ours). It is because of this very controversial issue that has caused much heated debate that initially turned me off to reading Shane’s Irresistible Revolution. The book really got me thinking about how to live as a follow of Jesus in a post-modern world (this is where the emergent church comes in).
Every since putting the book down, I have literally been going crazy with this new heavy conviction I have about how I should live my life as a follower of Jesus (I am going to be like Shane and refuse to say “Christian” when I really mean “follower of Jesus.”)
Shane Claiborne is someone "living as an ordinary radical." He is part of a faith community known as The Simple Way in Philadelphia, and lives in the impoverished area known as Kensington in Philadelphia. This community is part of a movement that could be considered a form of new monasticism. He is someone who has taken seriously the call of the Gospel to live a radically different life.
The Irresistible Revolution reads like a travelogue of a life, or, like a memoir of sorts. It weaves stories and experiences from Shane's life with challenging questions and theological insight. It is easy to read, but challenging to chew.
Shane's book is about his experiences and application and sometimes this makes it a little difficult to interpret...it actually takes some thinking on the readers’ part to make application for our own life. Shane is single without kids, living in a community house in a poor neighborhood, part of the cell church type of system, and relatively free of some of the responsibilities of that life (not that he is free of responsibility). The challenge becomes making application and figuring out how to live the Kingdom-Life for the person who is married with children, living in the suburbs or rural areas, part of an organized church, and tied down with some additional life responsibilities because of those realities. Luckily Shane isn't completely insensitive to the plight of others to make application...he says, "You don’t have to have my life, but you have to react to Jesus.”
We mustn’t read Shane’s ‘testimony’ as a complete ‘theology’….others might not feel the same as me, but I didn’t feel like Shane was encouraging and inspiring me to live more like Shane, but to live more like Jesus. Society is broken all around us. There is no shortage of opportunities for creative, incarnational evangelism everywhere you look.
Shane is passionate about the need to live this gospel as much as talk about it...and I’m sure we’d all agree that there is a need for the church to re-engage with society in this way...and no doubt that WILL mean engaging with the broken and hurting society around us, loving our neighbor, etc...for Shane, it was the most broken and the most hurting in Philadelphia, but it’s not a ‘one size fits all’. We are all different ‘parts of the body’.
Now I have heard people turn their ‘testimony’ into a complete ‘theology’ (dangerous) but I don’t think Shane is guilty of that. He does though offer a series of provocative stories which “rage against the dying of the light” and act as ‘signposts’ to another Kingdom, to another way of life, stories which recognize the brokenness of the world, and meet it there, but don’t let it have the last word.
One major criticism you may hear people make is how the book minimizes the importance of theology.
"I learnt more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than a systematic theology ever taught me" (p51) Now, I know Shane is a firm post-modern and that post-moderns like stories more than facts etc. But, that kind of statement calls into question the whole value of theology. What did the tears of homeless mothers *actually* teach him? That sharing is good? That we should care for each other? Great - but not much about God. What can those things *possibly* teach us about God? We are made in his likeness, not He in ours. We don't learn about God by looking at fallen sinners (no matter how vulnerable or holy); we learn about God from the Word. On the other hand, someone can argue that you can learn theology from a homeless person because they were made in the image of God (however, “marred” as Augustine would put it).
I'm not sure what his "gospel" is. Throughout the whole book, I could find barely a mention of sin, salvation, or the cross. What there was a lot of is loving our neighbors. Which of course, is good. But surely it's not the whole picture? He seems to see Jesus as an inspirational figure, who showed us how to live and love well. But that's not the gospel of Paul, or of evangelicalism. One story will serve to illustrate the point: It was the time when a bunch of his friends slept on Wall Street, New York, as an act of solidarity with the poor. (p118-119) Then at a certain time, they unfurled banners which read, "Stop terrorism", "Share", "Love", and a quote from Ghandi about greed. They drew pictures on the pavements and blew bubbles, and hugged and laughed. And SC describes it as "bringing God and Mammon together". Forgive me, but, if you look carefully, where is God in that? Where is the Biblical gospel in there? Sure, it's a worthwhile enterprise to stand in solidarity with the poor, and to stand up against corporate greed. But don't make out that this was some sort of outreach with the gospel. Now I don’t think Shane is trying to provide a complete systematic theology. But I’m sure he’d not be so arrogant to say that he’s trying to. What we really need is to be motivated by the truth of the Jesus-filled, Biblical gospel, and to reach out to people with the saving message of the cross.
If i lived this radical life my worry would be that people would be impressed by me more then my King. I love how humble SC is, he is obviously an amazing guy, his worst thought I think would be that people would think him 'cool'. The latter part of the book may prove otherwise in terms of where direct communication of the gospel comes in. “I just don't want preaching to get a bad name!” Also “any quality of life we create now is still a pale shadow of what is to come, we need to make sure people are in on that.”
For me it is not meant to be a complete solution, theology or guide to how we are to 'do church' in a postmodern culture (in fact, as I recall, Shane is explicit and disarmingly humble about this in the latter section of his book) it is however a collection of inspirational stories and an overall narrative in which says something like, “I, like a lot of people got dissatisfied/bored with the ‘church’ I belonged to…but instead of turning my back on ‘religion’ (like many of my ‘de-churched’ friends) I re-discovered the person of Jesus and his message by engaging with the poor and the broken and the hurting (like Jesus did) and I found that it wasn’t after-all the message of the gospel that was weak or faulty, just that it had been ‘lost in translation’…or perhaps more alarmingly, where it had been translated okay, it still wasn’t making a tangible difference to the lives of those who proclaimed it!”
And Shane and some friends got together to experiment in a new way of living, which they called ‘The Way’ – but that doesn’t mean he thinks it’s ‘The ONLY Way’’
It would be easy, but wrong, to write Shane off as a liberal or an activist who is simply pasting the message of Jesus over his own message. Somehow he has forged a middle ground between liberal activist and right wing conservative. He manages to hold elements of both in tension with great humility and recognition of his own inner struggles. Shane says, “While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness (after all, it is a fruit of the Spirit), I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.”
I was challenged and convicted by many things said in the book, and believe it is well worth your time to read. Perfect? No. There were a few things that gave me pause. But all-in-all this was a good read. I don't necessarily agree with all of his conclusions (I don't necessarily agree with all of my own conclusions), but I can't disagree with his commitment to live out an expression of the faith that echoes the Old Testament Prophets (established orders didn't like them much either...critiquing their theology and commitment to the nation).
After reading this book, I just wanted to run off and find my own Calcutta (Shane mentioned how he was first greatly influenced by working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India). I have been going insane over how uncomfortable I feel because of how comfortable my life is. Shane expresses the kind of authentic Christianity that most of us are trying to avoid because the cost is too great. He proposes a lifestyle that prophetically proclaims what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the twenty-first century.
Why do so many of us “Christians” far remove ourselves from the poorest of poor, the lowest of low, the downtrodden, the outcast? Sure, maybe it is because they aren’t our next door neighbors. But apart from geographical location, we are so often blinded by our own wealth and comfort. It says in Scripture that it is not about the sacrifice we make but about our attitude and heart. Sure there are a lot of people out there who are willing to make enormous sacrifices. For example, those who join the Peace Corps take a financial sacrifice for a time and also go to live in some pretty poor countries. Or soldiers too, for example. But sacrifice without a right heart is futile. I really think those who have a change in heart desire to sacrifice their whole lives to serving the Lord. There are so many ways to serve, but I honestly can’t think of a better way to live out the Kingdom of God on earth then by living, working, and hanging out with the same people Jesus surrounded himself with. I am not saying everyone needs to find their own Calcutta like Mother Teresa or not everyone needs to live in the poorest area of Philly like Shane Claiborne with The Simple Way. There are other indirect ways to serve these people. Also, we are all different parts of the church body working together but performing different job functions. But since reading Shane’s book, I can’t stop thinking about how if we really love Jesus and really want to follow Him wholeheartedly and share in every feeling He had for the hungry, thirsty, shirtless, and homeless…who wouldn’t want to live like Shane? I really believe if Jesus was living here in the U.S. in this day and age, His lifestyle would probably look a lot like Shane’s. The problem I am dealing with is our culture. Our post-modern culture doesn’t exactly fit Shane’s lifestyle (which, of course, that’s why Shane is considered so radical). Some will even argue that Shane has disengaged himself from our culture which is not good either. But the point I am trying to make is this…Shane is a prime example of what it means to be completely sold out to the Lord and I think we can learn a lot from him on how to live our lives as imitators of Christ.
I think God calls certain people to live lives similar to Shane’s, but perhaps this is not how everyone should live or can live? I just can’t help but think…who wouldn’t want to live this way? (hence the title of the book…it is “irresistible”) I think I am actually very jealous of Shane’s life or maybe it’s more of a jealousy after his faith…it takes incredible sacrifice and commitment to do what Shane is doing. I was watching a documentary today on AIDS victims and orphans in Africa and I couldn’t help but think about how desperately I want to go to Africa to help those kinds of people but I also couldn’t stop thinking about how there are so many of us Christians living comfortable lives and yet there are so few of us even willing to think about the millions dying of AIDS...we avoid these thoughts because we know they are uncomfortable and if we thought about it then we would feel guilty about not acting on it. (I actually wrote a few more pages on the complacency of Christian churches today and on the whole emergent movement but that may have to become another note because this note is becoming ridiculously long.)
I think the point is don't live Shane's life...live his commitment to living out Jesus' life. Or, maybe just start asking the hard questions of how you can more fully live out Jesus' life for yourself. I know I am, and it is never easy. But, please read this book and let it make you feel as uncomfortable as it did me. We need this kind of discomfort more than we know.
