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Jesus Is Challenging That When Addressing "who Is Your Neighbor" And He Has A Lot Of Hard Things To Say About Family, "unless You Hate Your Own Family You Are Not Going To Be A Disciple." He Is Challenging The Limits Of Our Compassion And Our Love As If Someone's Kid Suffers It Should Be As Devastating To Us As If It Were Our Own Kid. That Is What The Early Church Said.

-Shane Claiborne

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Jesus Is Challenging That

Shane Claiborne

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Jesus Is Challenging That When Addressing "who Is Your Neighbor" And He Has A Lot Of Hard Things To Say About Family, "unless You Hate Your Own Family You Are Not Going To Be A Disciple." He Is Challenging The Limits Of Our Compassion And Our Love As If Someone's Kid Suffers It Should Be As Devastating To Us As If It Were Our Own Kid. That Is What The Early Church Said.

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The Church Is Like Noah's Ark. It Stinks, But If You Get Out Of It, You'll Drown.

I Just Have A More Holistic Sense Of What It Means To Be For Life, Knowing That Life Does Not Just Begin At Conception And End At Birth, And That If I Am Going To Discourage Abortion, I Had Better Be Ready To Adopt Some Babies And Care For Some Mothers.

The Eucharist Is A Symbol Of That As You Have Bread, The Staple Food Of The Poor, And Wine, A Luxury Of The Rich, Which Are Brought Together At The Table.

There Are Congregations On Nearly Every Corner. I'm Not Sure We Need More Churches. What We Need Is A Church. I Say One Church Is Better Than Fifty. I Have Tried To Remove The Plural Form Churches From My Vocabulary, Training Myself To Think Of The Church As Christ Did, And As The Early Christians Did. The Metaphors For Her Are Always Singular - A Body, A Bride. I Heard One Gospel Preacher Say It Like This, As He Really Wound Up And Broke A Sweat: "we've Got To Unite Ourselves As One Body. Because Jesus Is Coming Back, And He's Coming Back For A Bride Not A Harem.

Violence Is For Those Who Have Lost Their Imagination.

I Found That The Death Penalty - and I'm Not A Hot-button Issue Person, You Know, I'm Not A Single Issue Person - but What I Think Drew Me To The Death Penalty Is Because It Raises Some Very Deep, Fundamental Questions Like: Is Anybody Beyond Redemption?

The Time Has Come For A New Kind Of Conversation, A New Kind Of Christianity, A New Kind Of Revolution.

We Need To Be Politically Engaged, But Peculiar In How We Engage. Jesus And The Early Christians Had A Marvelous Political Imagination. They Turned All The Presumptions And Ideas Of Power And Blessing Upside Down.

Our Churches Should Attract The People Jesus Attracted And Frustrate The People Jesus Frustrated.

It's Always A Good Idea To Have A Nun Next To You When You Get Arrested!

We Know The Church Wasn't Born 200 Years Ago. It's Encouraging To See Some Of The Post-denominational Churches Actually Wanting To Reconnect With The Story And The Prayer Life Of The Larger Church.

There Is A Movement Bubbling Up That Goes Beyond Cynicism And Celebrates A New Way Of Living, A Generation That Stops Complaining About The Church It Sees And Becomes The Church It Dreams Of.

There Is A Certain Power When Old And Young Come Together - We Can Do More Together Than We Can On Our Own.

Together We Can

I Believe You Know Jesus Said "a Doctor Doesn't Come To The Healthy, But The Sick, And It's Not The Righteous But The Sinners That I've Come For," So I Think That That's The Scandal Of God's Love And Grace That No One Is Beyond Redemption, And We Can See That All Through Scripture, You Know.

But As I Pursued That Dream Of Upward Mobility Preparing For College, Things Just Didn't Fit Together. As I Read Scriptures About How The Last Will Be First, I Started Wondering Why I Was Working So Hard To Be First.

There Is One Big Misunderstanding Of The Monastics Leaving Society.

Misunderstanding

Only Jesus Would Be Crazy Enough To Suggest That If You Want To Become The Greatest, You Should Become The Least. Only Jesus Would Declare God's Blessing On The Poor Rather Than On The Rich And Would Insist That It's Not Enough To Just Love Your Friends. I Just Began To Wonder If Anybody Still Believed Jesus Meant Those Things He Said.

I Like How Someone Once Said Being A Christian Is Not About Having New Ideas But Having New Eyes. This Is The Ability To Have Our Hearts Broken With The Things That Break The Heart Of God. That Is Part Of What It Means To Be A Christian.

Charity Wins Awards And Applause, But Joining The Poor Gets You Killed. People Do Not Get Crucified For Charity. People Are Crucified For Living Out A Love That Disrupts The Social Order, That Calls Forth A New World. People Are Not Crucified For Helping Poor People. People Are Crucified For Joining Them.

God Comforts The Disturbed And Disturbs The Comfortable.

God's People Are Not To Accumulate Stuff For Tomorrow But To Share Indiscriminately With The Scandalous And Holy Confidence That God Will Provide For Tomorrow. Then We Need Not Stockpile Stuff In Barns Or A 401(k), Especially When There Is Someone In Need.

This Common Prayer Project Has Taken Years Of Energy, But We See It Not As A Way To Leave Our Individual Churches, But As A Movement We Hope To See Permeate The Larger Church.

Biological Family Is Too Small Of A Vision. Patriotism Is Far Too Myopic. 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.

I Do Believe That The Church Is God's Primary Instrument For Ushering In The Kingdom (god's Dream) On Earth As It Is In Heaven, But God Is Not Limited To Use Only The Church, Or Only Christians For That Matter.

We Can Also Cling To The Treasures Of Our Faith And Get Rid Of The Things That Are Cluttering That. It Is A Time We Are Seeing Some Trending Away From The Things That Were Cluttering Our Faith.

The Church Is A Place Where Broken People Can Fall In Love With A Beautiful God.

Falling In Love

It's Impossible To Separate Our Contemporary Practice Of The Death Penalty From Our History Around Race And Slavery, And Specifically, Lynching. Where Lynchings Were Happening 100 Years Ago Is Where Executions Are Happening Today. And That's A Haunting And Eerie Thing.

I Am Convinced That If We Lose Kids To The Culture Of Drugs And Materialism, Of Violence And War, It's Because We Don't Dare Them, Not Because We Don't Entertain Them. It's Because We Make The Gospel Too Easy, Not Because We Make It Too Difficult. Kids Want To Do Something Heroic With Their Lives, Which Is Why They Play Video Games And Join The Army. But What Do They Do With A Church That Teaches Them To Tiptoe Through Life So They Can Arrive Safely At Death?

Whenever Folks Say Radical Christianity Is "a Phase" Of Youth, I Tell Them They Need To Meet Our 80-year-old Nun Or My Friend Tony Campolo.

One By One, These Disciples Would Infect The Nations With Grace. It Wasn't A Call To Take The Sword Or The Throne And Force The World To Bow. Rather, They Were To Live The Contagious Love Of God, To Woo The Nations Into A New Future.

The Question For Me Is Not Are We Political, But How Are We Political? We Need To Be Politically Engaged, But Peculiar In How We Engage.

One Of The Great Dangers In Political Engagement Is Misplaced Hope.

I Wondered If There Were Other Restless People Asking The Question With Me: What If Jesus Meant The Stuff He Said?.

The End Of War Begins With People Who Believe That Another World Is Possible And That Another Empire Has Already Interrupted Time And Space And Is Taking Over This Earth With The Dreams Of God.

Because You Can Poke Someone's Eye Out Legally Doesn't Mean You Should And That It's Right. The Bible Teaches Us A More Perfect Justice.

If You Have Two Coats You Have Stolen One. We Have No Right To Have More Than We Need When Someone Else Has Less Than They Need.

Philadelphia Caught My Attention In 1995 When A Group Of Homeless Families Were Living In An Abandoned Cathedral. Even From The Beginning They Connected Theology With What They Were Doing. They Put A Banner On The Front Of The Cathedral That Said, "how Can We Worship A Homeless Man On Sunday And Ignore One On Monday."

We Are Faithful Not To The Triumphant Golden Eagle (ironically, Also An Imperial Symbol Of Power In Rome) But To The Slaughtered Lamb.

Jesus Is Challenging That When Addressing "who Is Your Neighbor" And He Has A Lot Of Hard Things To Say About Family, "unless You Hate Your Own Family You Are Not Going To Be A Disciple." He Is Challenging The Limits Of Our Compassion And Our Love As If Someone's Kid Suffers It Should Be As Devastating To Us As If It Were Our Own Kid. That Is What The Early Church Said.

We Can Ignore Suffering No Matter Where We Live. There Are People Who Live A Few Miles From Me Who Never See Much Poverty Or The Injustices That Live On Our Doorstep.

There Are Some - called 'death Fatigue' - people Who Just Grow So Tired Of Death, So They Don't Want To Keep Perpetuating Death And Creating More Victims And More Anger And More Pain. They Want To Heal From That, And I Think That's Exactly What God Wants To Do. And, Interestingly Enough, That's Part Of What God's Original Law Was Doing With The 'eye For An Eye' Thing. It Was Actually To Limit The Patterns Of Retaliation And Then To Begin To Heal From That.

I Have This Certain Reluctance When It Comes To This Idea That We Are Spiritual But Not Religious And We Want Jesus But Not The Church. Why Can't We Have Both?

I Always Tell Our Community That We Should Attract The People Jesus Attracted And Frustrate The People Jesus Frustrated. It's Certainly Never Our Goal To Frustrate, But It Is Worth Noting That The People Who Were Constantly Agitated Were The Self-righteous, Religious Elite, The Rich, And The Powerful. But The People Who Were Fascinated By Him, By His Love And Grace, Were Folks Who Were Already Wounded And Ostracized — Folks Who Didn't Have Much To Lose, Who Already Knew Full Well That They Were Broken And Needed A Savior.

When We Realize That We Are Both Wretched And Beautiful, We Are Freed Up To See Others The Same Way.

Faith Is Being Idealistic, Because We Have Made An Idol Out Of The Status Quo.

I'm Excited We Can Be Part Of Making The Death Penalty History.

Every 70-year-old Needs A Young Person In Their Lives To Mentor, And Every 20-year-old Needs A Senior.

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Recognizing That Something Is Wrong Is The First Step Toward Changing The World.

The More I Travel, The More I See How Important It Is To Each Population To See That Their History Of The Good And The Bad Is Remembered By Others.

A Pastor Friend Of Mine Said, "our Problem Is That We No Longer Have Martyrs. We Only Have Celebrities.

We See God All The Time Here. People Only Hear Bad Things About Our Neighborhood. Kensington Is Known As The Badlands. I Always Say You Have To Be Careful When You Call A Place The Badlands Because That Is Exactly What They Said About Nazareth. Nothing Good Can Come From There. I Think We See God In The Margins.

We Should Refuse To Get Sucked Into Political Camps And Insist On Pulling The Best Out Of All Of Them. That's What Jesus Did - Challenge The Worst Of Each Camp And Pull Out The Best Of Each.

Someday War And Poverty Will Be Crazy And We Will Wonder How The World Allowed Such Things To Exist.

When It Comes To The Big Issues Like Immigration, Everyone Has A Role. The Government Has A Role. The Church Has A Role. Every Christian Has A Role.

Too Often We Just Do What Makes Sense To Us And Ask God To Bless It.

The History Of The Church Has Been Largely A History Of "believers" Refusing To Believe In The Way Of The Crucified Nazarene And Instead Giving In To The Very Temptations He Resisted--power, Relevancy, Spectacle.

There Are Financial Bankruptcies In Many Parts Of The Church. No Question About That. But We See The Possibility Of Reimagining And Revitalizing The Church.

We Might Hope To Change The World Through Better, Bigger Programs To Stop Global Warming, But Global Warming Will Not End Unless People Become Less Greedy And Less Wasteful, Gaining A Fresh Vision Of What It Means To Love Our Global Neighbor.

When I Think Of Some Of The Great Renewals In The Church I Think Of Folks Like St. Francis And Clare Of Assisi Who, Through Their Lifestyle, Were Challenging The Patterns Of Materialism And Militarism And It Affected The Christianity Of Their Age.

There's An Understanding Of Common Prayer That I Think We're Seeing Grow, More And More. When I Travel, I Hear From People Who Are Deeply Touched That Our Common Prayer Takes Time To Remember Some Of The Terrible Tragedies That Have Happened Around The World.

And I Think That's What Our World Is Desperately In Need Of - Lovers, People Who Are Building Deep, Genuine Relationships With Fellow Strugglers Along The Way, And Who Actually Know The Faces Of The People Behind The Issues They Are Concerned About.

There Is A Difference Between Feeding Someone And Eating Dinner With Them. If Every Christian At Home Just Made Room For The Stranger We Would End Homelessness Overnight.

I Think In The End, God's Justice Is Redemptive, It's Restorative, It's About Giving Life, Not Taking Life.

My Goal Is To Speak The Truth In Love. There Are A Lot Of People Speaking The Truth With No Love, And There Are A Lot Of People Talking About Love Without Much Truth.

When We Truly Discover How To Love Our Neighbor As Our Self, Capitalism Will Not Be Possible And Marxism Will Not Be Necessary.

[mahatma] Ghandi Said In A World With So Many Hungry People It Just Makes Sense That God Would Come As Food. God Sent The Living Bread And The Living Water In A World Where There Is So Much Thirst And So Much Hunger.

We Have A Relational Problem With Those Who Are Suffering Or Who Are Different From Us. All Of Us Are Most Comfortable Around People Who Are Like Us Culturally And Economically.

It Is A Beautiful Thing When Folks In Poverty Are No Longer Just A Missions Project But Become Genuine Friends And Family With Whom We Laugh, Cry, Dream And Struggle.

There Is An Innocence Or Purity That We See In Renewals And In The Mennonite Church And A New An Invigorated Civil Rights Movement.

I Think Of The Catholic Worker Movement And Dorothy Day And Peter Maurin And Others.

So Even As We See The Horror Of Death, May We Be Reminded That In The End, Love Wins. Mercy Triumphs. Life Is More Powerful Than Death. And Even Those Who Have Committed Great Violence Can Have The Image Of God Come To Life Again Within Them As They Hear The Whisper Of Love. May The Whisper Of Love Grow Louder Than The Thunder Of Violence. May We Love Loudly.

It Is The Church's Responsibility, The Government's Responsibility, And The Personal Responsibility Of Every One Of Us To Love.

There Is Real Value In These Local Congregations. For Me, A Lot Of It Is The Value Of The Sacraments We Share. In Neighborhoods Like Ours, The Churches Provide Stability.

If Every Christian Family Brought In A Child Who Needed A Family We Would Put The Foster Care System Out Of Business.

Most Of The Ugliness In The Human Narrative Comes From A Distorted Quest To Possess Beauty. Coveting Begins With Appreciating Blessings: Murder Begins With A Hunger For Justice. Lust Begins With A Recognition Of Beauty. Gluttony Begins When Our Enjoyment Of The Delectable Gifts Of God Starts To Consume Us. Idolatry Begins When Our Seeing A Reflection Of God In Something Beautiful Leads To Our Thinking That The Beautiful Image Bearer Is Worthy Of Worship.

The Greatest Sin Of Political Imagination: Thinking There Is No Other Way Except The Filthy Rotten System We Have Today.

This Is What Jesus Had In Mind: Folks Coming Together, Forming Close-knit Communities And Meeting Each Other's Needs-- No Kings, No Major Welfare Systems, No Presidents Necessary. His Is A Theology And Practice For The People Of God, Not A Set Of Suggestions For Empire.

There Are Some Things To Die For But None To Kill For.

When You Look At The Bible, And I Read The Bible Very Seriously, For A Lot Of My Life, I Believed The Bible Ordained The Death Penalty, And The Bible Seemed To Be Very Clear About That. But The More I Look, The More Troubled I Became Because It's Not That Simple. In The Bible, There's Some 30 Death-worth Crimes, Like Working On The Sabbath, Or Disrespecting Your Parents. Are We That Fundamental That We Should Bring Back That Death Penalty?

I Think We've Misinterpreted Some Of The Scriptures To Justify The Death Penalty. So Whereas A Lot Of Folks In America Feel Like We Can Do Far Better Justice - it's More Expensive To Do The Death Penalty Than The Alternatives - there's So Many Reasons That People Come To The Conclusion To Abolish The Death Penalty.

Sometimes Our Tunnel Vision Is Limited To What We See Outside Our Window. Until Racial Injustice Becomes Personal Then I Don't Think It Moves Us In Our Gut.

Money Has Power. And So Withholding Money Has Power Too, Especially When A Bunch Of People Do It Together.

Let's Keep Refusing To Accept The World As It Is And Insisting On Building The World We Dream Of. Don't Let The Haters Have The Last Word.

I Am Sorry That So Often The Biggest Obstacle To God Has Been Christians. Christians Who Have Had So Much To Say With Our Mouths And So Little To Show With Our Lives. I Am Sorry That So Often We Have Forgotten The Christ Of Our Christianity.

When We Were Starting Our Community A Bunch Of Older Benedictine Nuns Said To Us, "if You Have Any Questions Or Want To Pick Our Brains, Please Do - We've Been Doing Community For About 1,500 Years Together So We've Learned A Few Things."

We Say It Is Idealistic To Think We Can Continue To Live The Way We Live - With 5% Of The World Using Half The World's Resources, With $20,000 A Second Being Spent On War.

What Is The Point In Calling Anything God If It Does Not Also Hold Sway In Every Part Of One's Life--especially One's Politics?

When We Ask God To Move A Mountain, God May Give Us A Shovel.

Mother Theresa Always Said, "calcuttas Are Everywhere If Only We Have Eyes To See. Find Your Calcutta."

Christianity Can Be Built Around Isolating Ourselves From Evildoers And Sinners, Creating A Community Of Religious Piety And Moral Purity. That’s The Christianity I Grew Up With. Christianity Can Also Be Built Around Joining With The Broken Sinners And Evildoers Of Our World Crying Out To God, Groaning For Grace. That’s The Christianity I Have Fallen In Love With.

The Dreams Get Anchored In Aged Wisdom Not Some Utopian Fantasy.

The Catholic Understanding Has Been That The Death Penalty Has Been Become, Like, Outdated Because In Industrialized Countries. We Have Other Ways Of Protecting Societies From Dangerous People Without Killing Them. And In Fact, It's Important To Remember That Much Of The World Has Done Away With The Death Penalty.

If Those Of Us Who Believe In God Do Not Believe God's Grace Is Big Enough To Save The Whole World... Well, We Should At Least Pray That It Is.

[people] Need To Find Words That Can Reconnect Them With Each Other. That Is The Gift Of Good Liturgy, Yeah. We're Not Talking About Fluffy Stuff. We're Talking About Real Life For People Around The World. Our Prayers Should Be Said Like The Daily Breath That Gives Us Life.

This Is The Company We Keep When It Comes To The Death Penalty: China, The Number One Executing Country; Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Those Are The Top 4, And Number 5 Is The Us. And Those Are Not Countries That Are Known As Champions For Human Rights, You Know.

There Are Some Christians Who Totally Disengage From Politics And Set Their Minds On Heaven So Much That Their Faith Is So Heavenly Minded That It Is No Earthly Good.

Faith Is Not Accepting The World As It Is But Insisting On Building The World God Wants.

To Refer To The Church As A Building Is To Call People 2 X 4's.

To All My Nonbelieving, Sort-of-believing, And Used-to-be-believing Friends: I Feel Like I Should Begin With A Confession. I Am Sorry That So Often The Biggest Obstacle To God Has Been Christians.

Faith Is Believing In The Impossible Because We Have A God Who Is Master Of Impossible.

I Had Come To See That The Great Tragedy In The Church Is Not That Rich Christians Do Not Care About The Poor But That Rich Christians Do Not Know The Poor...i Truly Believe That When The Rich Meet The Poor, Riches Will Have No Meaning. And When The Rich Meet The Poor, We Will See Poverty Come To An End.

It's Not That Hard To Say Slavery Is Wrong After We've Abolished It.

How Can We Worship A Homeless Man On Sunday And Ignore One On Monday?

Perhaps There Is No More Dangerous Place For A Christian To Be Than In Safety And Comfort, Detached From The Suffering Of Others.

Suffering Of Others

We Need Good Laws, But No Law Can Change A Human Heart - Only God Can Do That.

How Ironic Is It To See A Bumper Sticker That Says 'jesus Is The Answer' Next To A Bumper Sticker Supporting The War In Iraq, As If To Says 'jesus Is The Answer - But Not In The Real World.

The More You Look At The Death Penalty, That's Where You See That We're Actually Not Killing The Worst Of The Worst. We're Killing The Poorest Of The Poor. Where Actually One Of The Biggest Determinants Of Who Gets Executed Is How Many Resources They Have To Defend Themselves.

There Is Nothing More Sickening Than Talking About Poverty Over A Fancy Dinner.

One Thing That's Clear In The Scriptures Is That The Nations Do Not Lead People To Peace; Rather, People Lead The Nations To Peace.

If We Believe Terrorists Are Past Redemption, We Should Just Rip Up Like 1/2 The New Testament Because It Was Written By One.

The True Atheist Is The One Who Refuses To See God's Image In The Face Of Their Neighbour.

Liturgy And Worship Were Never Meant To Be Confined To The Cathedrals And Sanctuaries. Liturgy At Its Best Can Be Performed Like A Circus Or Theater - Making The Gospel Visible As A Witness To The World Around Us.

There Are Folks Who Burn The Koran And Hold Signs Saying, "god Hates Fags" And All Sorts Of Sick Things - And They Often Hijack The Headlines With Hatred. We Know That Is Not What Christ Was Like.

As An American, And Especially As A Christian, I Am Convinced That A Love For Our Own People Is Not A Bad Thing, But Love Doesn't Stop At Borders. Love Is Infinitely Boundless And All About Holy Trespassing And Offensive Friendships.

To Be Nonpartisan Doesn't Mean We're Nonpolitical.

And Since We Are People Of Expectation, We Are So Convinced That Another World Is Coming That We Start Living As If It Were Already Here.

Certainly The Institutional Church Is Ill. It's Hemorrhaging Young People At An Astronomical Rate.

When The Church Takes Affairs Of The State More Seriously Than They Do Jesus, Pax Romana Becomes Its Gospel And The President Becomes The Son Of God.

All Around You, People Will Be Tiptoeing Through Life, Just To Arrive At Death Safely. But Dear Children, Do Not Tiptoe. Run, Hop, Skip, Or Dance, Just Don't Tiptoe.

I'm Just Not Convinced That Jesus Is Going To Say, "when I Was Hungry, You Gave A Check To The United Way And They Fed Me.

I Think A Lot Of People View The Death Penalty As A Debate Class Or Something. The Cost And What's At Stake Is Really, Really A Big Deal.

The Problem Is That The Chicken-soup-for-the-soul Stuff May Feel Good, But None Of That Typical Stuff Helps When Somebody In Your Neighborhood Is Murdered.

The Christian Icon Is Not The Stars And Stripes But A Cross-flag, And Its Emblem Is Not A Donkey, An Elephant, Or An Eagle, But A Slaughtered Lamb.

I Don't Know If You've Read The Bible, And If You Haven't, I Think You May Be In A Better Place Than Those Of Us Who Have Read It So Much That It Has Become Stale.

Christianity Is At Its Best When It Is Peculiar, Marginalized, Suffering, And It Is At Its Worst When It Is Popular, Credible, Triumphal, And Powerful.

The Best Critique Of What Is Wrong Is The Practice Of Something Better. So Let's Stop Complaining About The Church We've Experienced And Work On Becoming The Church We Dream Of.

The Death Penalty Has Succeeded In America, Not In Spite Of Christians, But Because Of Us. The Bible Belt Is The Death Belt. Wherever Christians Are Most Concentrated Is Where Executions Are Happening, And That's Deeply Troubling To Me.

If The People Of God Were To Transform The World Through Fascination, These Amazing Teachings Had To Work At The Center Of These Peculiar People. Then We Can Look Into The Eyes Of A Centurion And See Not A Beast But A Child Of God, And Then Walk With That Child A Couple Of Miles. Look Into The Eys Of Tax Collectors As They Sue You In Court; See Their Poverty And Give Them Your Coat. Look In To The Eys Of The Ones Who Are Hardest For You To Like, And See The One You Love. For God Loves Good And Bad People.

As My Friend Said That When People Say The Church Is Full Of Hypocrites, He Says We Always Have Room For More.

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. There Are Safer Ways To Live Than By Being A Christian.

[jesus] Said That They Will Know We Are Christians - Not By Our Bumper Stickers And T-shirts - But By Our Love.

When We Really Began Executions Rather Than Lynchings, Black Folks Were 22% Of Our Population In 1950, For Instance, But They Were 75% Of The Executions. Now, African-americans Are 13% Of The Population, But They're Still Almost Half Of Death Row, And Over A Third Of The Executions. 34% Of The Executions Are Black Folks. So, Like, I Mean, Things Like The Race Of The Victim Is One Of The Biggest Determinants Of Who Gets Executed.

Karl Barth Said It Well: "we Have To Read The Bible In One Hand... And The Newspaper In The Other." Our Faith Should Not Cause Us To Escape This World But To Engage It.

We Give People Fish. We Teach Them To Fish. We Tear Down The Walls That Have Been Built Up Around The Fish Pond. And We Figure Out Who Polluted It.

I'm A Tennessee Boy. I Grew Up In East Tennessee Most Of My Life, Then Came Up To Philly To Go To College And Fell In Love With This City, And Particularly, My Neighborhood On The North Side Of Philadelphia.

As Christians, We Should Be The Best Collaborators In The World. We Should Be Quick To Find Unlikely Allies And Subversive Friends, Like Jesus Did.

For Even If The Whole World Believed In Resurrection, Little Would Change Until We Began To Practice It. We Can Believe In Cpr, But People Will Remain Dead Until Someone Breathes New Life Into Them. And We Can Tell The World That There Is Life After Death, But The World Really Seems To Be Wondering If There Is Life Before Death.

We're Remembering Each Other's Heroes, Too. We Are Learning Each Other's Songs. We Are Reminding Ourselves That We Are A Global Family Praying Together. We're All Trying To Live In The Light Of The History That Shines Through The Biblical Narrative.

That Is The Power Of The Eucharist. At The Communion Table You Have Rich And Poor Together In The Early Church And They Were Being Challenged.

Tony Campolo And I Both Speak A Lot, And We Began To Notice That There Were Some Crowds Of Old Folks That Desperately Needed Some Youthful Energy, And There Were Other Crowds Of Young Folks That Desperately Needed Some Aged Wisdom.

There's Something Beautiful About That Scripture That Says, "your Young Men Will See Visions, Your Old Men Will Dream Dreams" (acts 2:17). We Need Each Other. There Is Power When The Old And Young Dream Together.

It Is A Dangerous Day When We Can Take The Cross Out Of The Church More Easily Than The Flag. No Wonder It Is Hard For Seekers To Find God Nowadays.

The More Recent Effort To Encourage Everyone To Pray In Common Involves So Many People.

Jesus Taught Us A Prayer Of Community And Reconciliation, Belonging To A New People Who Have Left The Land Of 'me'.

We're Not Church Planters. We Are Community Planters And, As We Work In Our Communities, We Join Local Churches.

When One In Three Black Men Are In Prison, Those Larger Systemic Injustices Become A Part Of What It Means To Love Our Neighbor As Ourself. We Care About Dismantling Institutional Racism. That Begins In Relationships When You See Injustice Happen.

There Are People Who Are Dangerous, And Evil Is Real.

It's Unilaterally True That It Costs More To Maintain The Death Penalty Than The Alternatives To It, And We Can Leverage More Resources To Victims Families. We Can Do All Sorts Of Creative Ways Of Healing The Pain That People Have Done By Channeling The Energy And Resources To Other More Redemptive Forms Of Justice.

...i Believe In A God Of Scandalous Grace. I Have Pledged Allegiance To A King Who Loved Evildoers So Much He Died For Them, Teaching Us That There Is Something Worth Dying For But Nothing Worth Killing For.

The Early Christians Felt A Deep Collision With The Empire In Which They Lived, And With Politics As Usual. They Carelessly Crossed Party Lines And Built Subversive Friendships. And We Should Do That Too.

We're Remembering Both The Good And The Bad In Our History Together In This World. This Isn't An Attempt To Make People Feel Bad Every Morning And To Force Them To Go Stick Their Fingers In A Wall Socket. We Chose These Things We Included As A Way To Point People Toward The Possibility Of Transformation Even While Remembering The Great Pain We Have Experienced As Humanity.

I Say Let's Be Idealists. "faith Is Being Sure Of What We Hope For And Certain Of What We Do Not Yet See" (hebrews 11:1).

Rather Than Finding The Devil "out There," We Battle The Devil Within Us. The Revolution Starts Inside Each Of Us.

The World Is Looking, Not For Christians Who Are Perfect, But For Christians Who Are Honest And Who Are Willing To Be Honest With Some Of Our Contradictions And Hypocrisy.

The Monastic Folks Have The Spirit Of Being In The World But Not Of The World, Sort Of Peculiar People Who Have Gone To The Desert To Live On The Margins Of The Empire.

Jesus Still Has A Really Great Reputation And The Spirit Is Still Moving. I've Got A Lot Of Hope For A Generation That Takes Jesus Seriously, Once Again.

Little Movements Of Communities Of Ordinary Radicals Are Committed To Doing Small Things With Great Love.

We Can Tell The World That There Is Life After Death, But The World Really Seems To Be Wondering If There Is Life Before Death.

The More I Get To Know Jesus, The More Trouble He Seems To Get Me Into.

God Doesn't Want To Change The World Without You.

Changing The World

The Future Of The Church Is Also About Looking Back And Looking At Where We See These Wonderful Renewals And What We Can Learn From The Early Church. I Think It Is A Really Exciting Time Where Phyllis Tickle Said Every Few Hundred Years The Church Needs A Rummage Sale Where We Can Get Rid Of Some Of The Clutter.

Prayer Is Not So Much About Convincing God To Do What We Want God To Do As It Is About Convincing Ourselves To Do What God Wants Us To Do.

A Lot Of The World Looks To The United States, Whether We Like It Or Not.

There Is Extreme Poverty In Appalachia, Where I Was, And Increasingly Poverty Is Not Just An Urban Thing.

Over And Over, When I Ask God Why All Of These Injustices Are Allowed To Exist In The World, I Can Feel The Spirit Whisper To Me, You Tell Me Why We Allow This To Happen. You Are My Body, My Hands, My Feet.

Discontentment Is A Gift. It's The Stuff That Changes The World.

Changing The World

That Is Part Of Our Critique Of Some Of The Charity And Service Work Is That We Can Still Keep Relationships At A Distance By Creating Programs That Offer Services But We Don't Really Create A Reconciled Community.

When You Poll Snake Person Christians, Christians Born After 1980, It's Like 80% Of Them Are Against The Death Penalty. It's Not Because They've Thrown Out Their Faith, But It's Because Of Their Faith They Can't Reconcile The Death Penalty With Jesus And Their Commitment To Jesus.

I Engage With Local Politics Because It Affects People I Love. And I Engage In National Politics Because It Affects People I Love.

Jesus Did Not Send Us Into The World To Make Believers But To Make Disciples.

Maybe We Are A Little Crazy. After All, We Believe In Things We Don't See. The Scriptures Say That Faith Is "being Sure Of What We Hope For And Certain Of What We Do Not See" (heb. 11:1). We Believe Poverty Can End Even Though It Is All Around Us. We Believe In Peace Even Though We Hear Only Rumours Of Wars. And Since We Are People Of Expectation, We Are So Convinced That Another World Is Coming That We Start Living As If It Were Already Here.

Today The Logic Goes Something Like This: 'calling A Ruler Son Of God Is Out Of Style. No One Really Does That Nowadays. We Can Support A President While Also Worshiping Jesus As The Son Of God.' But How Is This Possible? For One Says That We Must Love Our Enemies, And The Other Says We Must Kill Them; One Promotes The Economics Of Competition, While The Other Admonishes The Forgiveness Of Debts. To Which Do We Pledge Allegiance?

We Are Setting Ourselves Up For Disappointment If Our Hope Is Built On Anything Less Than Jesus.

Most Good Things Have Been Said Far Too Many Times And Just Need To Be Lived.

Words Of Wisdom

A Lot Of Times People Say Whatever The Government Touches, They Don't Do That Well, So Why Would We Trust Them With The Power Over Life And Death? Do We Really Believe The System Is That Perfect That It Won't Make Any Mistakes? You Can't Reverse These Mistakes.

The Work Of Community, Love, Reconciliation, Restoration Is The Work We Cannot Leave Up To Politicians. This Is The Work We Are All Called To Do.

Love Has No Limits. Compassion Has No Party. It Is The Responsibility Of Every Human Being And Every Institution To End Poverty And To Interrupt Injustice.

David, Moses, Saul Of Tarsus, These Were All People Who Did Terrible Terrible Things - they Were Murderers. The Bible Would Be A Lot Shorter Without Grace.

The More I Have Read The Bible And Studied The Life Of Jesus, The More I Have Become Convinced That Christianity Spreads Best Not Through Force But Through Fascination.

It Doesn't Matter Who You Are. Everyone Has Something To Offer The Movement Of Justice

In Closing, To Those Who Have Closed The Door On Religion - I Was Recently Asked By A Non-christian Friend If I Thought He Was Going To Hell. I Said, 'i Hope Not. It Will Be Hard To Enjoy Heaven Without You.' If Those Of Us Who Believe In God Do Not Believe God's Grace Is Big Enough To Save The Whole World... Well, We Should At Least Pray That It Is.

We've Heard From People All Around The World, Telling Us That This Is Their Reality. People Need A Way To Connect The Sometimes Really Hard Reality In Which They Wake Up Each Morning With The Movement Of The Spirit.

Mother Theresa Said It Is Not How Much We Give That Is Important But How Much Love You Put Into Doing It. So It Is Not Just How Many Units Of Housing We Create Or How Good Our Health Care System Is, It Is That People Have Someone To Eat Dinner With And That People Have Someone To Hold Their Hand When They Die. That Is What We Are Called To Do And It Is The Love Of Christ. It Is Relationships.

I Think They [ Monastic Folks ] Were Going To The Desert To Build A New Society And In A Sense To Build A New World, A New Culture Together Where It Was Easier To Be Good And Holy.

We Think Of Justice Sometimes As Getting What You Deserve, You Know - what Crime Was Committed And What Is The Punishment For That Crime. That's How A Lot Of The Criminal Justice Works. But God's Justice Is Restorative, So It's Not As Interested In Those Same Questions Of "what Did They Do Wrong?" And "what Is The Punishment For That?" It's More About What Harm Was Done And How Do We Heal That Harm, And That's A Much More Redemptive Version. So, It Definitely Doesn't Turn A Blind Eye To Harm, But It Does Say We Want To Heal The Wounds Of That.

It's Hard To Hear The Gentle Whisper Of The Spirit Amid The Noise Of Christendom.

People Had Taught Me What Christians Believe, But No One Had Told Me How Christians Live.

Somehow Jesus's Reputation Has Survived All The Embarrassing Things That Christians Have Done In His Name.

Christians Pretty Much Live Like Everybody Else, They Just Sprinkle A Little Jesus In Along The Way.

We Have To Use Our Discontentment To Engage Rather Than Disengage - Our Hope Has To Be More Powerful Than Our Cynicism.

You Can't Really Learn God's Hope Like You Learn The Logic Of An Argument Or The Details Of A Story. It's More Like Learning To Belly Laugh. You Catch Hope From Someone Who Has It Down In Their Gut.

The Question Becomes Not Just How To Accumulate More, But How To Covet Less.

Believe In Miracles. And Live In A Way That Might Necessitate One.

We Don't Actually Have Rich And Poor Together Instead We Have A Family. What Does It Mean? If You Have Resources, You Hold Them With Open Hands. The Mark Of The Early Church Was That They Began Sharing And It Said There Were No Needy Persons Among Them. They Ended Poverty As They Created This New Loving Community.

The Love That Makes Community Is The Willingness To Do Someone Else's Dirty Work.

Charity Is Merely Returning What We Have Stolen.

It Is The Church's Job, As Dr. [martin Luther] King Says, To Be The Conscience Of The State, Not The Chaplain Of The State.

I Would Love To See The Church On The Right Side Of History.

But What Had Lasting Significance Were Not 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 Eventually Caught Some Other Disease. He Fed The Ten 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.

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