God of the City (and everything)

This YouTube interview of the lead singer of Bluetree (click on the title above) about the inspiration of his song, "God of the City", captures a spirit of action and service that I want to embody in my own faith practice and that I want to teach to my students and children. If those of us who claim the mantle, "Christian", would begin living and serving out of our love for Jesus instead of criticizing those whose morality or perspective is not our own, we could truly make a difference! We would also be taken more seriously by those who are currently criticizing us as hypocrites!

Encounter with Jesus

The jaunt to Samford U with a group of UGA students to see Shane Claiborne was a profound experience. Much of what Shane said can be found in his books & videos. However hearing him weave the stories together on stage while sitting in a chapel filled with excited students provided a spirit-filled milieu to hear the stories anew.

I've copied some of the most inspiring or disturbing thoughts and quotes below. Though these emerge from his experiences, they were all inspired by Shane's life-changing reading of scripture and encounter with Jesus. In his word's meeting Jesus didn't make his screwed up life perfect and whole. Encountering Jesus messed his normal, Christian life up; "I'm still recovering from my conversion experience".

Here are some of the nuggets that i'm struggling through:

Faith is a way of living, not just a way of believing
Each American consumes the equivalent of 500 Ethiopeans per year
Jesus took what was thought to be unclean (dirt and spit) and provided healing (wiped them in someone's blind eyes)! He radically transformed perspectives and worldviews
Mother Theresa said that in the poor and lame, in the least of these, "we see Jesus in his most distressing disguises"
"The best things to do with the best things in life is to give them away"
Ask yourself, "what if Jesus meant the things that he said?" So much of what he said collides with the way we live, with our USAmerican approach to life. "We need a new imagination of the way to live in the world" to not conform, but to be transformed. Most imprisonments (1 in 8 African Americans) are related to economics - that's a justice issue that we have not sufficiently addressed
Christians are not normal, are not of the status quo, they "seek to bring about the world that God dreams of"
Jesus sends us into the world as "radical nonconformists representing God's heart"
Jesus loves evil-doers so much that he died for them
There are a lot of things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for"
The question is not what job are you going to have "when you grow up" but "what kind of ____ are you going to be" - we are called to allow Jesus to transform what we are called and created to be/do into his likeness

I struggle through some of these issues I'll try to blog about them.