Radical Living

This summer I have started reading several books and one of them is this book by Shane Claiborne. The book is called "The Irresistible Revolution" and it is about living as a radical christian in a world that is completely corrupt. There are a lot of incredible things that Shane says throughout this book but there is one paragraph that has really caught my eye and has gotten me thinking.

I know there are people out there who say, "My life was such a mess. I was drinking, partying, sleeping around...and then I met Jesus and my whole life came together." God bless those people. But me, I had it together. I used to be cool. And then I met Jesus and he wrecked my life. The more I read the gospel, the more it messed me up, turning everything upside-down. I am still recovering from my conversion. I know it's hard to imagine, but in high school, I was elected prom king. I was in the in-crowd, popular, ready to make lots of money and buy lots of stuff, on the upward track to success.

Wow. This is pretty a pretty crazy paragraph. This world has convinced us of the american dream. We are supposed to grow up and get a good paying job. We are supposed to get married and have kids, a dog, a big house, and a nice, white picket fence. That is what is put into our brains from day one. To be honest with you guys, this sounds like a great life. I would love to be able to do some job that isn't very hard and make a lot of money. To be able to come home to a wife and kids and just lay back and watch TV. It sounds like the perfect life.

Then this Jesus guy came along. We are always on the track to getting that perfect life and this Jesus guy comes into our lives and totally messes everything up. We realize about the love of Christ and realize that God is calling us to something different than going to our perfect job and perfect home. God is actually calling us to something that is a lot greater. God calls us to the plan that He has set out for us and that is greater than above all things. Yes, I know that that last statement sounded like the same old, stale church answer that we get every Sunday morning. Sometimes, however, the church leaders kinda know what they are talking about and we ought to listen.

Now is the american dream wrong? I think not. I think that it is good to strive for. However as Gandhi said "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed." The moment that we actually take this quote in and learn what it truly means is when I will believe what Jesus meant we he said "To love your neighbor as yourself." Christ meant to take care of our neighbors when they were in trouble. Help them out in time of need. We get so caught up in what we can do for ourselves or how much money that we can make and we always forget that Jesus calls us to love the poor as we love ourselves. Just something to chew on until next time.