Fishing for Justice
This morning was a very early morning. I took Trina in for the dreaded wisdom-teeth-removal operation. She was strong, and got through it without TOO much pain. She’s still working through some major adjustment issues (we bought her a dry-erase board, for example), but we’re praying she’ll be back to full health before her trip next week. Praise be to God for his faithfulness…
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I’ve been reading more from Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution, a book I’ve been wanting to read ever since my Bostonian friend was raving like a lunatic about it last Spring. Claiborne is a Christ-ian; a radical follower of Christ. Although he would twinge at the word “radical”, since he sees what he is doing as the ordinary - this is what people who actually follow Jesus’ teachings are supposed to do. Just listen to a few of his words:
“We hang out with kids and help them out with homework in our living room, and jump in open fire hydrants on hot summer days. We share food with those who need it, and eat the beans and rice our neighbor Ms. Sunshine makes for us…We reclaim abandoned lots and make gardens amid the concrete wreckage around us…We hang out on the streets. We get fined for distributing food. We go to jail for sleeping under the stars…We wrestle to free ourselves from macrocharity and distant acts of charity that serve to legitimize apathetic lifestyles of good intentions but rob us of the gift of community.”
Christians have become a society of individuals with “good intentions”. We write checks to charities, who hand out government cheese. We donate clothes to Goodwill, or serve at a soup kitchenand feel like we’ve contributed to the homeless “problem” in our city. We head out on short-term missions trips, and return telling others how “blessed” we are.
What a sham.
I’m convinced that until we begin to truly KNOW the poor we’ve been serving across a desk or a checkbook, we wont be able to ask the bigger, more systemic questions like “Why is he poor and I am not?” That question cut you to the heart.
Claiborne says, “We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.”
I don’t think Jesus was all about personal piety and “feeling good”. His mission went way beyond that. Know this! There will be more written on this book coming from this site!
Last 5 posts by Mark
- God is Wholly - October 2nd, 2008
- The Great Moderation - September 30th, 2008
October 21st, 2006 at 9:56 am
Glad you’re liking Shane’s book, Mark. It’s challenging and raw. We hope to head down the highway some weekend coming up to observe the Simple Way in Philly. They’ve been doing the intentional residential community thing for a few years now.
October 21st, 2006 at 6:21 pm
hey man, sounds like i gotta read this one! the quote you gave anything like the rest of it?
i like what i’m hearin’, it sounds like a lot of us are on the same chapter if not the same page.
peace
October 21st, 2006 at 6:48 pm
I’m only about half way through it right now, but so far I like what I read. It has a distinctively subversive feel to it. I lent the book out to someone today, and have 2 others who want to borrow it after that! Will I ever get to finish it!?
October 21st, 2006 at 10:42 pm
Wow, this book sounds awesome. I threw it on my Amazon wishlist with the other 150 books :-D.
I particularly liked the author’s thoughts and your interaction with the idea of macrocharity. It puts a finger one something that has long troubled me about instiutionalizing good deeds. Some folks prefer to write a check to have someone else be nice to poor people FOR them so they don’t have to get their hands dirty.
I observe a similiar phenomenon with institutional ministers though: cut a check to have somebody else study bible and pursue a life of piety and charity FOR you, so you don’t have to, and then listen to their weekly Sunday morning report on how your spiritual life is being done on your behalf.
It’s so good to see more and more of these kinds of books coming out all the time. Look out!