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
Coming Home
The only way we can experience the life God has for us is to give up trying to acquire it on our own. We must surrender ourselves completely to God. This is not merely a matter of believing that our attempts to acquire worth and significance (some of the ways that we do this were…
When the Gospel is Reduced to a Sinner’s Prayer
Jeff Clark posted an article recently entitled The Gospel of Sin Management and the Loss of Discipleship. We do violence to the gospel when we forget that we are called beyond a mere “sinner’s prayer” to a life of discipleship that imitates the life of Jesus. This might sound harsh, but it’s actually an integral…
Responding in Love
The world is full of conflict where evil begets more evil. Violence produces more violence. Arguments produce more arguments. It’s a tit-for-tat world. What is God’s strategy for stopping this conflict? How does God respond to evil, and how does God call us to respond? This strategy might even come in handy during heated conversations…
Participating in God’s Love
Greg took a slight detour from his reflections on free will in this video in order to talk about Jesus’ prayer in John 17. He discusses the idea that God desires the kind of unity among his children that the triune God enjoys. “He wants our love to participate in the triune God.” In order to…
A Kingdom Not of This World
Bruxy Cavey spoke at Woodland Hills Church back in May as a part of the Tapestry series, and this is a little snippet of his sermon. It’s a wonderful description of the Anabaptist approach to politics. Take a look!
Christians and Creation Care
Image by Ali Inay While the mustard seed of the Kingdom has been planted, it obviously hasn’t yet taken over the entire garden (Matt 13:31-42). We continue to live in an oppressed, corrupted world. We live in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” Not only this, but we who are the appointed landlords…