avoid poverty.

you need only do three things in this country to avoid poverty-
- finish high school, marry before having a child, and marry after the age of 20.
only 8 percent of the families
who do this are poor; 79 percent of those who fail to do this are poor.
-william galston, clinton white house

the irresistible revolution: part IV

quotes from the irresistible revolution, chapter four.

you can read part l, part ll, and part III here, here, and here.

“according to mother teresa, it is among the wealthy that we

can find the most terrible poverty of all- loneliness.” (93)

-

“the Gospels were not just for mother Teresa and st. francis,

and that the sermon on the mount is as meaningful today as it was two thousand years ago.” (98)

-

“we do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named nicodemus.

but if you tell me i have to be born again to enter the kingdom of God,

i can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor,

because Jesus said that to one guy too..but I guess that’s why God invented highlighters,

so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest.” (rich mullins, 98-99)

-

“sometimes i was incredibly frustrated and angry, wondering how

these extremes could exist in the same world, let alone in the same church” (99-100)

-

“Jesus never says to the poor, ‘come find the church.’

but he says to those of us in the church, ‘go into the world and find

the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned.’ Jesus in disguises.” (tony campolo, 102)

-

“with the most sincere hearts, we do not want to see anyone

walk away from Jesus because of the discomfort of his cross,

so we clip the claws on the Lion a little, we clean up a

bit the bloody Passion we are called to follow.” (104)

-

“their rebirth will cost them everything they have” (104)

-

“we can end up merely cheapening the very thing we want folks to

experience. this is the “cheap grace” that…dietrich bonhoeffer called

“the most deadly enemy of the church” (105)

-

“funny that one of the first stories of the early church in acts is the bizarre

tale of a couple named ananias and sapphira, who withhold a portion

of their possessions from the common offering and then lie about.

peter confronts them in a way that seems quite rude (not very seeker sensitive),

and then on top of it God strikes them dead (not very tolerant or inclusive).

perhaps we should be thankful that God isn’t into that anymore,

otherwise we’d have much smaller congregations.” (105-106)

-

“everyone can be a christian but no one knows what a christian is anymore” (106)

-

“true, the cross is not always seeker sensitive. it is not comfortable.

but it is the cornerstone of our faith” (106-107)

-

“the more I read the Bible, the more i felt my comfortable life interrupted.” (107)

-

“what we do is not nearly as important as who we are” (108)

-

“what would a twenty-year-old Jesus have said if they asked him,

“what are you going to do when you grow up?” i don’t know, maybe

something like, “i’m going to turn the world upside-down. i;m going

to hang out with prostitutes and tax collectors until people kill me.” (108)

-

“somehow I had missed the fact that singles was a beautiful means of

discipleship and that church history is filled with folks who

followed God as singles- Jesus for one…” (111)

-

i had come to see God as lover and provider and to desire a life of singleness and poverty”(111)

-

“God created us in his I age, and we decided to truth the favor” (bernard shaw, 112)

-

“we create a western conception of the mediterranean peasant revolutionary

who lived two thousand years ago, whom we can relate to and who

cares about what we care about (eats at mcdonald’s and vote republican).” (112)

-

“’shane, we need you to play Jesus, because you are white and

from america.’ ouch! God forgive us.” (113)

“i asked participants who claimed to be ‘strong followers of Jesus’

whether Jesus spent time with the poor. nearly 80% said yes.

later in the survey, i sneaked in another question. i asked this same group

of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor,

and less than 2% said they did.” (113)

-

“we can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did…

we can adore his cross without taking up ours. i had come to see that

the great tragedy in the church is not that rich christians do not care

about the poor but that rich christians do not know the poor.” (113)

-

“i truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning.

and when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end. (114)

the irresistible revolution: part lll

quotes from the irresistible revolution, chapter three.

you can read part l and part ll here and here.

"from my desk at college, it looked like some time back
we had stopped living christianity and just started studying it." (71)
-
"we pretend to be unable to understand [the Bible] because we know
very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act
accordingly. take any words in the New Testament and forget everything
except pledging yourself to act accordingly. my God, you will say, if i
do that my whole life will be ruined." (soren kierkgaard, 71)
-
"i went looking for a christian. i looked around hoping to find
someone else who might be asking, what if Jesus meant the stuff
he said? and i kept coming across dead people...
it was hard to miss that these dead people might have lived a little
longer had it not been for reading this little Book." (72)
-
"we are called not to be successful, but faithful"
(mother teresa, 78)
-
"what we are doing may seem insignificant, but it is more
important that we do it." (78)
-
"we can do no greaty things, just samll things with great love,
it is not how much you do, but how much love you put
into doing it" (mother teresa, 78)
-
"i also heard many a volunteer scolded for not putting enough
gravy on the rice, since the plate was being served to Jesus himself." (78)
-
"as you walk into [the morgue in the home for the dying in calcutta],
a sign on the wall read,s "i'm on my way to heaven" and when
you turn around to walk out, another sign says "thanks
for helping me get there". i could truly say, "where, oh death,
is your victory? where, oh death, is your sting?" (1 cor. 15:5) (79)
-
" was finally seeing a church that was storming the gates
of hell itself to save people from its horrors" (79)
-
"the true atheist is the one who denies God's image in the
'least of these' (dorthry day, 79)
-
"we are the flesh and blood of Jesus alive in the world
through the Holy Spirit-God's hands, feet, ears." (79)
-
"namaste means "i honor the Holy One who lives in you" (80)
-
"one of the lepers explained to me that oftentimes
lepers don't even know the words thank you because they
have never needed to say them." (81)
-
"what would the world look like if we truly believed,
as the apostle paul figured out, that we no longer live, by only
Jesus lives in us (gal. 2:20)? (84)
-
"Jesus healed the sick, but they eventually caught some other
disease. He fed the thousands, and the nest 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.
and the incredible thing about that love is that it now lives inside of us." (85)
-
"beyond the miracles, what has lasting significance is love" (86)
-
"i remember praying the leper colony each morning with the brothers,
"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
and perhaps for the first, time those were no longer empty words
that i hoped would come true someday. they became
words we are not only to expect to come true but also to enact." (87)
-
"a new community marked by interdependence and sacrificial love" (87)
-
after mother teresa died, i was in an interview with some reporter
who asked me if mother teresa's sprit will live on. i said, "to
be honest, mother teresa died a long time ago, when she gave her
life to Jesus. the joy and omcpassion and love that the world
finds so magnetic are only Jesus, and that is eternal." (88-89)
-
"i knew we could not end poverty until we took a careful
look at wealth." (89)
-
"i was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had
forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness." (89)

the irresistible revolution: part ll

more quotes from the irresistible revolution by shane claiborne...
(chapter 2)
(you can read part l here which has quotes from the
foreward, author's note, introduction, and chapter 1)

"they reminded us that we all need each other and assured
us that if we all shared with one another, there
would be enough for everyone." (57)
-
"maybe they were angels, though they didn't look like the
pictures in sunday school" (61)
-
"the body of Christ was alive, no longer trapped in stained-glass
windows or books of systematic theology. the body of Christ
was literal, living, hungry, thirsty, bleeding." (62)
-
"the church became something we are- an organism,
not an organization. (62)"
-
"and yet amid all the spiritual movement, we kept bumping into
this other thing people still called church, and i wasn't sure what to
make of it. it seemed so far from the Scriptures, so far from the poor,
so far from Jesus." (63)
-
"at that moment we decided to stop complaining about the church
we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming the church we dreamed of." (64)
-
"we knew we could end poverty." (64)
-
"he wants to ask why God allows all of this poverty and
war and suffering to exist in the world. and his friend says, "well,
why don't you ask?" the fellow shakes his head and says he is scared.
when his friend asked why, he mutters "i'm scared God will ask
me the same question." (64-65)
-
"we do indeed have a God of resurrection, a God who can
create beauty from the messes we make of the world." (67)

the irresistible revolution: part l

if you go to eastern, i'm sure you've heard of shane claiborne.
he is one of the founders of the simple way and
he wrote a book called the irresistible revolution.
i started reading the book before, after reading an article
in relevant magazine about shane, but never finished it.
today i read about half of it for a class and next
week i'll finish it up. i thought i'd share with a
sampling of quotes from it that i underlined while reading.
i'm kind of a hyper-underliner, so i'm probably going to do this in parts. :)
but i've found that this book is a culmination of what i've
been learning about all semester and is written in a similar
style to that of donald miller's blue like jazz, which i love (and
it's going to be a movie soon!! that's a whole other topic though...)

"..his notions of fidelity to the gospel seem to directly counter
the political loyalties that many conservatives on the religious
right have made into an almost doctrinal litmus test of faith."
-
"shane's disaffection from america's cultural and patriotic
Christianity came not form going "secular" or "liberal"
but by plunging deeper into what the earliest christians called "the way"-
the way of Jesus, the way of the kingdom, and the way of the cross"
-
"our battle was against a private piety that limited religion to
only personal matters, then compromised faith in a tragic capitulation
to the economic, political, and military powers that be."

pages 11-15 (foreward), Jim Wallis
-----
"being a christian is about choosing Jesus and deciding to do something
incredibly daring with your life" (18)
-
"so i am a radical in the truest sense of the word:
an ordinary radical who wants to get at the root of what
has made such a mess of our world." (20)
-
"another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
on a quiet day, i can hear her breathing" (arundhati roy). the whisper
cries out for God to save the church from us christians and
breathe new life into the aging body." (23)
-
"the truth is that much stands in the way of God's will for our world,
beasts like what dr. martin luther king jr. called the giant triplets
of evil: racism, militarism, and materialism" (26)
-
"folks separate the spiritual from the political or social, as if the
political and social issues were of no spiritual significance, and as if God had
no better vision to offer this world." (28)
-
"most good things have been said far too many times and
just need to be lived" (32)
-
"but then you start thinking there must be most to christianity,
more than just laying your life and sins at the foot of the cross" (38)
-
"i had gorged myself on all the products of the christian
industrial complex but was spiritually starving to death. i was
marked by an overconsumptive but malnourished spirituality, suffocated
by christianity but thirsty for God." (39)
-
"i met people who lived like they believed in heaven and hell, who
cried and worshiped like they were actually encountering God." (44)
-
"perhaps the devil is just as likely to wear a three-piece suit
as to have horns and a pitchfork. and perhaps the angels look more
like the bums in the alley than like feathered white babies." (50)
-
"we saw a homeless man lay a pack of cigarettes in the offering plate
because it was all he had." (50)
-
"i met a blind street musician who was viciously abused by some
young guys...one of us said, "there are a lot of bad folks in the world,
aren't there?" and she said, "oh, but there are a lot of good ones too.
and the bad ones make you, the good ones, seem even sweeter." (50-51)"
-
"mother teresa used to say, "in the poor we meet Jesus
in his most distressing disguises." (51)

hope is fading

Hope is Fading – Orphan Sunday from Allan Rosenow on Vimeo.

the facts part 5

the top .01% of our population earns an income of, on average,
$27, 342, 212.

the bottom 90% of our population earns an income of, on average,
$31, 244.

members of congress earn an income of, on average,
$912, 000.
they have a 50% chance of being a millionaire.

the wealth of america is obviously not split equally among everyone.
but is it fair that the top 20% (1/5) of the population owns
85% of the wealth, while 60% (4/5) owns only 15%?

the facts part 3

african american men make up 6.5% of the american population
they also make up 40.2% of the incarcerated population

sending men to jail doesn't solve the fundamental problems.
if it did, then prisoners who are released wouldn't be so likely to return.
we usedpunishment instead of dealing with root of the problem.
there are direct correlations between literacy and
drop out rates and going to jail.
poor, uneducated, black men are the most likely targets to go to jail.
incarceration takes fathers out of homes and workers
out of the community. it deteriorates families and communities.

watch

“in the face of the largest prison buildup in the history of civilization, with two million citizens in prison, and one in every three black men under judicial constraint, we start to wonder what good the thirteenth amendment is if slavery is illegal unless a person is convicted of a crime.” (152, the irresistible revolution by shane claiborne)

with actions and in truth

¹⁶ This is how we know what love is:

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

¹⁷ If anyone has material possessions

and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them,

how can the love of God be in that person?

¹⁸ Dear children, let us not love with words or speech

but with actions and in truth.

1 john 3:16-18 niv

there need be no poor

⁴ however, there need be no poor people among you,

for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance,

he will richly bless you, ⁵ if only you fully obey the LORD your God

and are careful to follow all these commands i am giving you today.

⁷ if anyone is poor among your fellow israelites

in any of the towns of the land the LORD your God is giving you,

do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them.

⁸ rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need.

¹¹ there will always be poor people in the land.

therefore I command you to be openhanded toward

your fellow israelites who are poor and needy in your land.

¹² if any of your people—hebrew men or women—

sell themselves to you and serve you six years,

in the seventh year you must let them go free.

¹³ and when you release them, do not send them away empty-handed.

¹⁴ supply them liberally from your flock,

your threshing floor and your winepress.

give to them as the LORD your God has blessed you.

verses from deuteronomy 15:4-15
NIV, emphasis added

an appalling contradiction

conservative evangelicals...have tended to downplay numerous
systemic problems associated with contemporary liberal capitalism.
these include persistent and sometimes devastating income
and wealth inequality both within and between nations, gross
concentrations of economic and political power both stemming from
and contributing to the exploitation of the poor but the rich...

the fact that most north american believers continue to be
"rich christians in an age [a world] of hunger" (sider, just generosity)
remains an appalling contradiction that followers of Christ Jesus
ought to address with utmost seriousness, however complex the problems.

pg 424-425 in kingdom ethics
by stassen and gushee

if you...

3.2 billion people live on less than $2 a day.
that's about half of the worlds population.

it is in your power

He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow,
and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.
And you are to love those who are foreigners,
for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.

dueteronomy 10:18-19 NIV

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due,
when it is in your power to do it.

proverbs 3:27 ESV

the facts

60 million people in africa starve not because there
isn't enough food, but because they can't afford the food.

in the usa 10% of the population is malnourished while
90% is overweight. in india, it's the opposite.

the worlds richest 3 families are worth the 48 most
impoverished countries.

from: my notes taken during my
anthropological economic systems class