I’ve been reading Shane Claiborne’s “Irresistible Revolution,” this week.(by the way frequent readers will notice I use quotations for books, that’s because I don’t know how to use the italics on blogger).
This is the best book I’ve read in a long time. Before I hear some of the groans from you literary types, really well read types or even super theological/philosophical types, let me add that it is the best book “I’ve” read in a long time. Maybe not even because it’s so fantastic, but maybe cause it hit me at just the right time.
I plan on posting a few things about this book over the next few days, but here is my first thought.
I’m really impulsive. Especially in the way I process data and the speed at which I sometimes do. So as you can imagine, I have this sudden need to be more socially justice minded because Claiborne has me, once again, believing that this is really what it means to follow Jesus.
It might be helpful to say what this does not mean then. This does not mean that my main concern is getting people saved or getting people to church or even being missional or emergent. It means that in whatever context I am in, I try to be Jesus.
So here’s the two teeny tiny steps I’ve taken. 1. I got rid of a lot of books and clothes for the garage sale. I tried not to be the guy that donates “used toothbrushes” and give something that might be really meaningful for someone. But lets be honest this will only raise another $5-10 for the church. I think this step was more me overcoming my need to hang onto my “stuff,” something which I see myself really guilty of.
Speaking of stuff, my second move. 2. I feel really guilty about having all my DVDs. No it’s not that I believe Jesus thinks my DVDs are ridiculous, though He may, but I guess it symbolizes this same problem in my life. I started by collecting a few DVDs that I liked, but eventually this grew to ones I kind of liked and before I knew it we have 200 DVDs.
So instead of throwing out my DVDs or selling them, something that would mimic the adolescent secular music cleansing ceremonies we all know about, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and make good use of them. I started by inviting the neighbors from across the street to come over and pick a few out. I hope to add more people from the neighborhood as a way to get to know them better.
Some of you may think this is an excuse for me to hang onto my possessions and you may be right, but if so I ask that you please pray for me. In a strange way I feel like Claiborne is inviting me to really follow Jesus for the first time in my life. This decision is more difficult than I thought.
That’s all for now.
10 comments:
Per our conversation this morning, and from reading this, let me say how much I appreciate your honesty in admitting how difficult all this is. As you know, I get real turned off by the glamorization of social and environmental justice by those who wish to be modern-day prophets, who act as pious and holier-than-thou as the evangelical-fundamtelist-right wing Republicans preaching "family values," and are just as hypocritical. Neither faction makes good persuaders, which is why we need guys like Claiborne who won't guilt us into living like Jesus, but rather offer us an invitation.
I'm praying for myself to have the strenght to accept.
Josh,
As always when you write from your heart about conviction and the terribly self-endangering call to follow Jesus Christ I too am led to reconsider my own discipleship. Thanks for your witness to the life-altering call of Jesus Christ.
Can I nit-pick? You write, "It means that in whatever context I am in, I try to be Jesus." I want to know what you are emphasizing in this statement. If it means that call to genuinely follow Christ's way of life, then I could be persuaded this is what it means to live Christianly. However, do we really try and be Jesus? That's a scary statement. I'm not him. I don't make atonement for people, I don't save people, I don't reconcile the world to God, I don't bring freedom to the oppressed, I don't do all the various things that Christ does. But, when I follow Christ, offering myself wholly in his service, embodying that way of life he calls us all to live (even poorly), I live in the prayer that the Holy Spirit would take my life and point people to the one who does all the things that I am incapable of doing.
When you get rid of your books, or use your DVD collection towards investing in people's lives, you challenge a way of living with the way of Jesus Christ, in hopes that others may embrace the God who in Christ radically embraces and loves them. Maybe its just the Reformed part of me coming alive, but I think its a pretty crucial thought.
Finally, I loved the post. Like I said, its nit-picking, but you know me. Its what I do. Thanks for this heart-felt post, even if I had to go and get all analytical and stuff.
Erik,
You remind me to be more calculated in my statements. I guess I was opting for the former suggestion.
I'll think about what you have said.
would it have made all the difference if I would have put "be 'like' Jesus"?
good to hear from you. any updates on MN.
Josh,
Yeah, that probably would have been a nice way of putting it. The reason I wanted to write something about it was because that's kind of my big issue, especially in youth ministry. So many youth ministries talk about being Jesus to young people, and that just seems so misguided. We always let people down, even if we simply leave for another church. What does that then communicate about Jesus if we say that is what we are to kids (or anyone else for that matter)? That's why I like to make sure we're saying precisely what we mean when talking about Christ and our ministry/way of life.
Josh, I enjoyed the post. I remember a time back in 8th grade when you got rid of all your CD’s for different reasons but also for your faith. I would have to say the present reasoning seems to show a maturity that I for one approve of. Erik, I agree that all too often we are not concise in the use of language, particularly in youth ministry. Yes, including myself. Do you really think that we are not called to be Christ to our neighbors or for that matter our students?
If you do not think we are called to that, I must disagree with you. Now don’t go off thinking I have a god complex, far from it. I typically agree with most reformed theology, particularly Barth. I will not agree however, with the notion that we can’t act as Christ. Can we save people, reconcile the world to God, bring freedom to the oppressed, or do all the various things that Christ does? Let me ask instead are we members of the body of Christ? Are we empowered by the Holy Spirit? Is Christ really present in His Church, or does He merely represent it? What Christ is to the Church the Holy Spirit is to the individual. Where the Holy Spirit empowered individual is at work on behalf of his neighbor there too is Christ, not simply represented by the individual in the body of Christ but truly present. In that moment how do we separate the individual, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ? Does that mean we are God? No. Are a husband and wife not truly made one? Are they also not still individuals?
I completely agree that all to many youth pastors use vague language that leaves them in the inevitable position of failure. Far more however, never truly take up their cross, and never truly suffer beside their students. Many youth pastors never hear the words that Barth wrote and you quoted in CD IV/3.1 "I, Jesus Christ, am the One who speaks to you. You are what you are in Me, as I will to be in you. Hold fast to Me. I am your guarantee. My boldness is yours. With this boldness dare to be what you are."
-Tom
Josh,
I hope you don't mind Tom and I having a discussion on your blog, and doing so in the context of a post that was so motivating and spiritually enriching. Apologies if we are overstepping any bounds.
Tom,
Nothing in what I said implies what you attribute to me. I did not speak about a lack of Christ's presence in the Holy Spirit empowered moments which the church is called to pray for and live into. In fact, the idea of such presence is precisely the task of the church and minister whose sole task is to bear witness to Jesus Christ. We live in the midst of our God-given vocation of witness in order that people may, through our embodied acts, be pointed away from us to the present and risen Christ who bears witness to himself in the power of the Holy Spirit. That is Barthian Reformed Theology at its finest, if you ask me. But, and this is very clear from Barth and in my opinion the gospel, we are not called to be Christ to other people. That puts the church/ministers/people in the same class as Christ, and simply put we are not in that class. There is only one Incarnate Son of God, one Word made flesh by whom the world is reconciled to God, and it is the church's calling to bear witness to this reality. This is what grounds everything Josh wrote about in this post, and all the concerns that you bring up. It is because of what Christ has done that the church now lives in light of that reality, offering the eschatological hope of Christ for the world validated in the resurrection.
I think your objection based on eliminated distinctions between Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the the church misses the mark of what I'm really saying (probably because I wasn't clear in the first comment). Can we separate Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the church? We better, unless we want some type of deified ecclesial body. But, is there a union? Yes, and the union emerges when all persons undertake the task given to them, and this is why I have written elsewhere (I think in our conversations) that the church can do no more, but can also do no less, than fulfill its God-given vocational calling to "be my witnesses" (Acts 1:8). That is what involves the church in Jesus Christ's mission of reconciliation, when it points away from itself to the one in whom we are reconciled.
Wow, you all are awesome and thought-provoking. Thanks for thinking deeply and sharing.
Josh, I am happy to hear you are enjoying that book and I am genuinely thankful for your struggle to put it into practice because it is a lot easier to be passionate about the ideas than learn to live it out in life.
Baby is due this Wednesday and I'll keep you posted.
If I may, I truly appreciate "conviction number 2" about "making good use" of your DVD collection. It makes me laugh to think at one point, I would have believed tossing my DVDs, CDs, etc. was a way of "sharing faith and being a light." Now I know a little better. And the way you are sharing and engaging is probably closer to the way it should be.
O I forgot. Josh, Sarah said to tell your wife thanks for the milk shade. She uses it all the time. Just so you know we spell my daughters name Kirsten, so I felt like totally disconnected from the bloody little boy and will therefore keep buying my garments from foreign sweat shops. Besides that kid bleeding all over my 5 dollar wal-mart t-shirt puts food on his table that he would not otherwise have, so I am totally of the hook with God. Hanity told me that personally, or was it Limbaugh?
-Tom
Josh,
I'm glad you didn't throw out your DVDs. When you did that in the 8th grade with your CDs, you threw out some of my U2 and Over the Rhine CDs. That made me kind of mad.
-Noel
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