For the last 2 days, I've been writing a final paper for an elective course called Media, Religion & Society. My topic is broad and unmanageable, I'm running out of time, and the research is far more captivating than the actual writing. In short, the paper is a disaster.
What's more, Shane Claiborne is wrecking me.
I picked up The Irresistible Revolution because I thought I could profile Claiborne's simple living community called The Simple Way as a corollary to the megachurch phenomenon so popular these days. And I don't even want to write this paper anymore, I just want to read the book! There is something so profoundly worshipful about their approach to community. Their bottom line is "small things with great love." What a standard to live up to.
I am also struck by the fact that they are successful apart from income. In fact, they live frugally (in the Franciscan sense - for real). And I'm being hit hard with this concept: Christians aren't called to be rich. They are not. It is not biblical. The kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor. And this, right after I have purchased a very nice car, secured health insurance, both things I "need," but not really.
I'm not overcome by guilt, I'm not going to rush out and join a simple living community. I'm not going to give away all my clothes, but I'm going to stop purchasing them. I have ENOUGH.
What I am going to do is to search for the hold that Brand Jesus (not the resurrected Son of God, but the symbol of the religion I have purchased through my American consumerism) has on my life, and eradicate its traces. If you want to know more about Brand Jesus, buy the book of the same title by Tyler Wigg Stevenson. It will not make you comfortable. Like Irresistible Revolution, it will comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. It will open your eyes and you will probably have to wrestle with its contents, like I did. But your response will probably not be to write a 20 page paper on it. Your response will be more introspective and have more to do with self-discipline. Yours is the better option, trust me.
2 comments:
interesting... maybe i'll have to read that book. hope youre doing well!
I read Irresistable Revolution while on vacation in Mexico... talk about conviction. I was surrounded by poor people, staying at a nice resort, and feeling so guilty that I wasn't doing anything productive!! I, too, was shaken up by the book, and challenged to see how my ideas about God and the church have been Americanized. And it was a good reminder that we could live on so much less that what we think we "need". There were some things I didn't quite agree with, but lots of good ideas. Hope your paper went well! :)
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