Peace of Mind.

December 3, 2008 in Prayer/Faith with 3 Comments

I am reading Shane Claiborne’s ‘An Irresistible Revolution’. It’s amazing. Here is a quote from that book. and then, I might write about it, or might open up for comments, or… both.

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.

So, I’ve asked myself.  How many lepers have I touched?  Zero.  I know that’s an extreme, but in all honesty, doesn’t this world need extremes?  I give money to homeless people, and most of the time, people look at me like I’m crazy. (Except Andrea, she gets it.)  But, would that man rather me sit down, spark a conversation, relate.  I think so.  My guess is that it’s lack of love that got that person there anyway.  In some shape or form, that man (or woman) probably doesn’t feel loved.  I am so high and mighty that i think giving the poor guy a dollar will make him feel good.  Chances are me giving away that dollar makes me feel a little better.  I’m buying my peace of mind for a dollar.  I hate being a hypocrite.

This holiday season, no, any season, I want to change.  I want to grow to know the poor, the marginalized.  Maybe, us with the (any) money ARE the poor the marginalized.  Maybe, When Jesus said it was easier for a camel to crawl through the eye of the needle he meant this:

For the homeless, or the poor to live, they NEED community.  Maybe the only thing that really keeps them alive, is community.  Their survival depends on eachother.  They each depend on, and love the next guy.  Their community may be the purest forms of what Christ meant when he said the church.  Maybe they have a stronger understanding of faith, because they have to live by it every day.  Maybe they have a stronger understanding of trust, because if they don’t trust the other guy, they’ll drive themselves mad with questions.

What if the one thing we’re missing in our lives is real community.  I mean raw, loving community.  I don’t mean, give my neighbor a Kroger gift card, because he lost his job.  I mean, beyond that.  What if I loved my neighbor.  What if my neighbor knew beyond anything else, he had someone he could trust.  He knew he was loved.  What if my neighbor knew, that inside of me, was Jesus Christ?

Well, what do you think?

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 do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.

  • jonathanstegall

    This is good stuff. One of the things that Pete Rollins said repeatedly while he was here is that we typically put truths like these, from Shane Claiborne and others, into our minds, but there is a disconnect because we can agree with them and not do anything about it. I hate that I do that. One of the things that he does at his community is move these kind of specific truths that we agree with, maybe after we dialog about them, into art and worship and… experiential things. In the hopes that people will do something about it.

    He also talks about how our dreams have to go beyond the systems in which we currently exist, or they are not big enough. The more I stick that one in my head, the more I start to wonder what's going on, if that makes any sense.

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  • http://jonathanstegall.com/ jonathanstegall

    This is good stuff. One of the things that Pete Rollins said repeatedly while he was here is that we typically put truths like these, from Shane Claiborne and others, into our minds, but there is a disconnect because we can agree with them and not do anything about it. I hate that I do that. One of the things that he does at his community is move these kind of specific truths that we agree with, maybe after we dialog about them, into art and worship and… experiential things. In the hopes that people will do something about it.

    He also talks about how our dreams have to go beyond the systems in which we currently exist, or they are not big enough. The more I stick that one in my head, the more I start to wonder what's going on, if that makes any sense.