Shane Claiborne Quotes - Page 4

Violence is for those who have lost their imagination.

I like how someone once said being a Christian is not about having new ideas but having new eyes. This is the ability to have our hearts broken with the things that break the heart of God. That is part of what it means to be a Christian.

We have to use our discontentment to engage rather than disengage - our hope has to be more powerful than our cynicism.

[Mahatma] Ghandi said in a world with so many hungry people it just makes sense that God would come as food. God sent the living bread and the living water in a world where there is so much thirst and so much hunger.

I always tell our community that we should attract the people Jesus attracted and frustrate the people Jesus frustrated. It's certainly never our goal to frustrate, but it is worth noting that the people who were constantly agitated were the self-righteous, religious elite, the rich, and the powerful. But the people who were fascinated by him, by his love and grace, were folks who were already wounded and ostracized — folks who didn't have much to lose, who already knew full well that they were broken and needed a Savior.

We're remembering each other's heroes, too. We are learning each other's songs. We are reminding ourselves that we are a global family praying together. We're all trying to live in the light of the history that shines through the biblical narrative.

Faith is believing in the impossible because we have a God who is master of impossible.

Discontentment is a gift. It's the stuff that changes the world.

No one has seen God, but as we love one another, God lives in us.

When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God.

In fact, the Gospel shows us change comes from the bottom rather than the top, from an old rugged cross rather than a gold royal throne.

[Jesus] said that they will know we are Christians - not by our bumper stickers and T-shirts - but by our love.

I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, "When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me.

David, Moses, Saul of Tarsus, these were all people who did terrible terrible things  -  they were murderers. The Bible would be a lot shorter without grace.

The best critique of what is wrong is the practice of something better. So let's stop complaining about the church we've experienced and work on becoming the church we dream of.

That is part of our critique of some of the charity and service work is that we can still keep relationships at a distance by creating programs that offer services but we don't really create a reconciled community.

We see God all the time here. People only hear bad things about our neighborhood. Kensington is known as the badlands. I always say you have to be careful when you call a place the badlands because that is exactly what they said about Nazareth. Nothing good can come from there. I think we see God in the margins.

Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.

The love that makes community is the willingness to do someone else's dirty work.

We have a relational problem with those who are suffering or who are different from us. All of us are most comfortable around people who are like us culturally and economically.

Our churches should attract the people Jesus attracted and frustrate the people Jesus frustrated.

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.

Governments can do lots of things, but there are a lot of things they cannot do. A government can provide good housing, but folks can have a house without having a home. We can keep people breathing with good health care, but they still may not really be alive.

Sometimes people call folks here at the Simple Way saints. Usually they either want to applaud our lives and live vicariously through us, or they want to write us off as superhuman and create a safe distance. One of my favorite quotes, written on my wall here in bold black marker, is from Dorothy Day: "Don't call us saints; we don't want to be dismissed that easily

Jesus taught us a prayer of community and reconciliation, belonging to a new people who have left the land of 'me'.