The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne

Author:Shane Claiborne
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf, epub
ISBN: 9780310296089
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2012-06-29T10:43:35+00:00

CHAPTER 8

JESUS MADE ME DO IT!

When I got home from Iraq, a woman came up to me, pointed her finger in my face, and said, “How dare you be so careless with your life and put your mother through all that? Jesus would be shaking his finger in your face, saying, ‘How dare you be so reckless?’” I listened, silently, wondering what Jesus she was talking about. The Jesus who died on a Roman cross and invited his disciples to do the same? The Jesus who taught his disciples that if they wanted to find their lives, they should lose them? (And most of them did, perhaps leaving behind some angry parents.) For centuries, Christians have been jailed, beaten, and executed for preaching that Jesus. How was I to tell this lovely lady that Jesus was actually the one responsible for my traveling to Iraq in the heat of the bombing, not a decision that I would rationally make, even on my worst days?

I had a college professor who said, “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.” In my youth-group days, I had seen all too many wild would-be Jesus radicals fall by the wayside because they had never been trusted with the adventure of revolutionary living. When I was a youth leader, one of the high school kids who had “given his life to Jesus” got busted only a few weeks later for having acid in school. I remember asking in disappointment, “What happened, bro? What went wrong?” He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “I got bored.” Bored? God forgive us for all those we have lost because we made the gospel boring. 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 are they to do with a church that teaches them to tiptoe through life so they can arrive safely at death?

THE DANGER OF SAFETY

I’m not sure where we get the notion that Christianity is safe or that Christians should play it cool. Growing up, I always thought that Christians were good upstanding citizens, but the more I get to know Jesus, the more trouble he seems to get me into. Søren Kierkegaard puts it well: “To want to admire, instead of follow, Christ is not an invention of bad people; no it is more an invention of those who spinelessly want to keep themselves detached at a safe distance from Jesus.”1

Some Christians take so few risks, it’s no wonder folks have a hard time believing in heaven. Most of us live in such fear of death that it’s as if no one really believes in resurrection anymore.

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