Tonight I went with a few friends to the Film, Faith and Justice night at the University of Washington Campus. The night was put on by The Other Journal which is an online quarterly publication promoting vibrant discourse surrounding the intersections of theology, culture, and social justice (a quote from their page).
The key speaker for tonight was Shane Claiborne who is a part of a community in Philadelphia called The Simple Way. Shane is a follower of Jesus, an author and an activist. I was blown away by his words and life. The thing that really struck me is that he is very intentional about what he does. He is intentional about where he buy's cloths, living in community, and how to fight for the rights of the oppressed. The way he talked about Jesus was so beautiful and so true.
As Christians I feel like we spend most of our time trying to be better people. Read your bible more, pray more, go to church, be a good friend, don't do bad things and don't drink cheap American light beer. Well the last one I would have to agree on. What Jesus focused on was caring for the poor, visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, hanging out with orphans and widows, and loving your enemy. How many times in church or at camp do we hear those things? Now I am not knocking church or camp, I love them both, but I am saying that there is more, much more.
"Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you." James 1:27. Shane talked a lot about this. Who are we caring for? Why do we do the things we do? What can we be doing less of and what can we be doing more of? How do we love our enemy? How can we, little us, change the world? These are the ways we need to be thinking. The thing is that the more we pray, the more we read our bible, the more we spend time with believers the more we should be doing the James 1:27 stuff, but it seems as thought so many times we just stop at the growing in Jesus part.
Jesus got away from the crowds to spend time with the Father so that He could go back and be doing His will. It shouldn't stop with growing in Jesus, that should be the beginning and the thing that sustains us till the end while we are doing His will. I encourage you to buy and read Shane’s book The Irrresistible Revolution.
2 comments:
Amen. Thank you for the inspiration, challenge and truth... especially the part about cheap American light beer.
Hey, hey...just doing some catching up as my older mac at home has been having issues. I guess I'm gonna have to read this book. So many people are recommending it to me...it's almost irresistible! The tacos in Ensenada are also irresistible. I just went for the first time with a team from our town...wow.
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