We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Jesus Said a Lot of Weird Stuff. What If He Actually Meant it?
Our friend Shane Claiborne has a way with words (and deeds). In this article from a few years ago (sent to us by a reader: thanks Jason!) he asks the question, What if Jesus meant all that stuff? How would the rest of the world see us if we actually did what Jesus did?
From the article:
In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay “out there” but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, “Nothing good could come.” It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society’s rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.
It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors… a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.
Image by The Simple Way
Category: General
Tags: Evangelism, Kingdom Living
Related Reading
Don’t Be a Functional Atheist at Christmas
All of us raised in Western culture have been strongly conditioned by what is called a secular worldview. The word secular comes from the Latin saeculum, meaning “the present world.” A secular worldview, therefore, is one that focuses on the present physical world and ignores or rejects the spiritual realm. To the extent that one…
How We Are Defined
Burstein! via Compfight Zack Hunt wrote a piece called Abortion, Gay Marriage, Immigration, Gun Control, and the Church over at A Deeper Story. He points out that we have a big problem on our hands when it comes to the ways we have come to be defined by these issues. Christians are primarily defined in…
Radical is in the Eye of the Beholder
Josias Hansen is a Brazilian-born, Charismatic Mennonite student at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Together with Third Way Church, Josias enjoys experimenting with what it looks like to take Jesus seriously as a jolly community of kingdom disciples. Was Jesus a radical? Did he do and teach radical things? What if I were to tell…
Christian Utopia
Fergal of Claddagh, OP via Compfight A little meditation on Christian Utopia and the Body Politic as we stand poised on the eve of the election in America. We affirm that Jesus will indeed “establish His kingdom on earth” but it won’t come through the exercise of power. Rather, God’s kingdom will come as his…
Roger Olson on Evangelicalism
fusion-of-horizons via Compfight Here’s a great interview with Roger Olson on the state of evangelicalism today. Enjoy!
Sermon Clip: Love: It’s All About the Cross
In this sermon clip, Greg Boyd talks about how Colossians 3:14 and the definition of love. God designed creation so that we would live in community with God and express God’s love towards each other and creation. However, sin disconnected us from God. In this sermon, Greg shows how we were created in the image…