I don't think I've every read a book where I've passionately agreed and disagreed with the author so much. In The Irresistible Revolution, author Shane Claiborne expresses deep feelings towards community and the role it does, does not, and should play in the church. His stories are absolutely fascinating. From sleeping in an abandoned church, to being arrested for feeding the homeless in Love Park, to driving past exploding bombs in Iraq, Claiborne has given himself to the idea of community.
One of my favorite parts is when he talks about creating a pool of money for everyone to use instead of health insurance. Everyone's needs were met. Each person put what they could afford into the pot, and whoever needed it took freely. I love this idea! Let me be careful, though. I love this idea for the church. And this I think is where Claiborne and I part ways on our opinions. Everything he speaks of when it comes to community is useful for the church to implement. However, I don't think it is the government's job. The government's responsibility to keep the nation safe and running. I think it's role in the individual's life should be extremely limited. That's where the church should come in, though. The church should seek the individuals who are in need and not "reach out" to them, but love them and take care of them.
I also have difficulty with Claiborne's stance on the war. I think he oversimplifies things. He speaks against just-wars, but how? The Old Testament is full of wars. Wars that we wouldn't even find just, other than the fact that God ordered them. Thousands of years later, though, I absolutely believe in just-wars. The Revolutionary War created this great nation. And I will never claim that America is perfect; however, I do feel it is the greatest nation on earth. I know that safety often begets complacency, but there is still so much good in this country. Christians in this country have been behind beautiful things: civil rights, disaster relief, AIDS awareness, etc. I know this is a tangent, but my point is that The Revolutionary War was a just-war. As was the Civil War and both World Wars. In my mind, those four wars aren't even up for debate.
What really gets me, though, is that Claiborne often uses a passage found in both Isaiah and Micah: The people "will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." He uses this to promote a world without war. This notion is beautiful, but impossible. It is a fallen world, and to say there will be no war is to say that there is no evil. Going back to that passage, though, what upsets me is that it is taken out of context. A few verses before, it begins by saying, "In the last days." So, this world where the people beat their weapons into farming tools is at the end of times. I am not an expert on end-times theology, but this verse is clear as to when this world peace will take place. Furthermore, earlier in the exact same verse, it reads, God "will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples." It's not the people who create the peace, it's going to be God.
I do want to be clear that I do not like war. I simply understand the fact that it is necessary. There is evil in the world. If you're a Christian and deny that, you deny a fallen world. If you deny a fallen world, you deny the need for a savior. You deny a need for a savior, you deny that Jesus Christ was God in human form, that he came to the earth, that he died on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, that defeated death and rose on the third day, and that he ascended back to heaven until he returns a second time as a lion instead of the lamb. If there is no evil in the world, Jesus died for nothing. That simply leads me to the point that we cannot allow evil, in any form, to run amock as long as we have the ability, passion, or (not and) desire to oppose it.
This was not the only time I felt that Claiborne made himself unqualified to write such a book. He began talking about when the Republican National Convention came to Philadelphia. He mentioned that it happened in 1998 during an election year with George W. Bush coming to the city. Well, you see, the thing is that '98 was not a presidential election year. Nineteen ninety-six and 2000 were election years.
With all this said, I loved this book. It challenged me. It challenged my conservative politics. It also gave me perspectives from which I have never looked. I highly recommend this book to anyone who professes their faith in Jesus Christ, to anyone who considers himself a republican, to anyone who considers himself a democrat, to anyone who believes that he or she cannot make a different, and to anyone who believes that he or she can make a difference.
To wrap this up, here are a few quotes that stuck out:
"But what had lasting significance were no the miracles themselves but Jesus' love. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but they eventually caught some other disease. He fed the thousands and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love. It wasn't that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers. And the incredible thing about that love is that it now lives inside of us." (pg. 85)
"'When we truly discover love, capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.'" (Will O'Brian pg. 164)
"People who experiment in sharing may begin out of burden or guilt, but they are sustained by the matchless joy it brings." (pg. 165)
"One thing fasting does is sacrifice privilege." (pg. 168)
"Certainly the thirty-five thousand children starving to death today need not fast to connect to God. Rather we need to fast in order to connect to them and to God." (pg. 169)
"We cannot say we love God and pass by our hungry neighbor. no one has seen God, but as we love one another, God lives in us." (pg. 173)
"God's economy is one of abundance." (pg. 177)
"A love for our own relatives and a love for the people of our own country are not bad things, but our love does not stop at the border." (pg. 202)
"'All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, jsut to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe.'" (A former professor of Claiborne's, pg. 225)
"Perhaps the most dangerous place for a Christian to be is in safety and comfort." (pg. 227)
"I remember thinking that if the world does not hate us, perhaps we should question whether we really are part of another kingdom." (pg. 236)
"So if the world hates us, we take courage that it hated Jesus first. If you're wondering whether you'll be safe, just look at what they did to Jesus and those who followed him." (pg. 241)
"The church is a place where we can stand up and say were are wretched, and everyone will nod and agree and remind us that we are also beautiful." (pg. 245)
"The paradox is that the church is healthiest during eras of persecution, and it gets sick during period of comfort and ease and power." (pg. 250)
"'God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and God's been speaking through them ever since.'" (Rich Mullins, pg. 256)
"The world of efficiency and anonymity dehumanizes us." (pg. 301)
"I did a ton of research on tithes and offerings in Scripture, and discovered they are unmistakably intended to be used for redistribution resources to the poor and not to go toward buildings and staff for church." (pg. 326)
"The early prophets would say that a church that spends millions of dollars on buildings while her children are starving is guilty of murder." (pg. 329)
"We must neither get used to the darkness of human suffering or fall asleep in teh comfort of light." (pg. 349)
"The darkness of our world will try to smother the light, so we have to surround ourselves with people who make us shine brighter." (pg. 350)
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