awesome quotes...

...from the Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne

"It's among the wealthy that we can find the most terrible poverty of all - loneliness."

"... assured me that 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."

"You guys are all into that born again thing, which is great. 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 things we like and ignore the rest."

"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...I couldn't help but wonder if we had highlighted only some of the verses in our Bibles... I saw all of the thousands of people who were becoming believers and it brought me great joy. And yet I could not help but wonder with Dorthy Day, 'Have we even begun to be Christians?'"

"...ultimatly we will be seperated into two groups of people, sheep and goats, and the criteria will be how we cared for the poor, hungry, imprisoned, naked masses... will we be with the sheep?"

rich young ruler (found in Matt. 19:16-30): "He tells this highly educated and devoutly religious young man that he lacks o ne thing: giving up everything he owns to give to the poor." The mans face sinks as he walks away. "Jesus doesn't run after the man he simply lets the man choose his wealth...The great temptation is to compromise the cost of discipleship in order to draw a large crowd. We do not want to see anyone walk away from Jesus because of the discomfort of his cross...Jesus doesn't exclude rich people; he just lets them know their rebirth will cost them everything they have."

"Rather than accumilating stuff for oneself, followers of Jesus abandon everything, trusting God alone for providence."

"...the temptation we face is to compromise the cost of discipleship, and in the process, the Christian identity can get lost."

"And yet we can end up merely cheapening the very thingwe want folks to experience."

"Jesus warns people of the cost of discipleship... their biological families, their pocessions, even their lives... Jesus allows people to walk away."

"...the cross is not always seeker sensitive. It is not comfortable. But it is the cornerstone of our faith and I fear that when we remove the cross we remove the central symbol of the nonviolence and grace of our Lover. If we remove the cross we are in danger of promoting cheap grace. Perhaphs it should make us uncomfortable. After all, it wasn't so comfy to get nailed to it."