Monthly Archives: February 2010
the irresistible revolution
“We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians don’t care about the poor but that rich Christians don’t know the poor.
When the worlds of poverty and wealth collide, the resulting powerful fusion can change the world. But that collision rarely happens… I long for the Calcutta slums to meet the Chicago suburbs, for lepers to meet landowners and for each to see God’s image in the other. It’s no wonder that the footsteps of Jesus lead from the tax collectors to the lepers. I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end.”
Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living As An Ordinary Radical, (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2006), 113-114.
the simple life (?)
Over-extended work hours
Lack of family time
Outrageous and widespread financial debt
Ravenous natural resource usage
Sedentary “security”
Gluttonous consumption
Time-wasting “convenience”
Growing gap between rich and poor
Firmly plotted-out social segregation
Control by societal conception of “desirability”
Eating ourselves to death…
(…while others starve to death)
Wanting what I don’t need
Needing what I don’t want
“Disposable” income
Institutions supporting our descent in meaninglessness
Churches supporting our descent in meaninglessness
Theologies supporting our descent in meaninglessness
.
This is not a rant. It is a question…
Can’t life be simpler?
.
Why do I have to capitulate to a certain social/economic/political system?
To a certain theological/philosophical/ontological reading that supports the system?
To the seductive claws of the beast “empire”?
.
(I fear she will eat me alive, and I will never even know it.)
.
Is there a different way to live?
Yes.
.
So what is it? How is it?
.
Let Your Kingdom come…
