My Dangerous Lover

Seriously, everyone needs to read The Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne. I will even buy it for you- it's completely ruining me, and I pray that it would ruin us all.

Here's a preview for you:

(speaking about the fear of God) "On one hand, the shuddering is like that of new lovers- giddy, obsessed, infatuated. Any portrait of or story about our new lover that we can get our hands on, we cling to. Whenever someone metions his or her name, our eyes twinkle and our hearts jump- that kind of shudder. Jesus, the one I long to fall asleep cuddling with, run off into the woods with, live and die with... my lover.

On the other hand, it is a shiver of awestruck wonder. I have no idea what's going to happen next, just throw my hands into the air and hold on, like riding a good roller coaster. Have you ever seen the Lion King? It's like the part where the hyenas are talking about Mufasa, and one of them says his name and they all shake and say, "oooh! say it again... Mufasa...oohh!" That kind of shutter. "Jesus..ohhh! say it again!" Just the thought brings buterflies to my stomach. That's the Jesus I love. And that's the Jesus who scares me to death. There are plenty other options for living that will not get you jailed, mocked, or nailed to a cross. And there are much easier ways of being cool than by trying to follow Jesus.

..As French theologian Jacques Ellul once said, 'Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.'

When I got home fron Iraq, a woman came up to me, pointed her finger in my face, and said, "How dare you be so careless with your life and put your mother through all that? Jesus would be shaking His finger in your face, saying 'How dare you be so reckless?'" I listened silently, wondering what Jesus she was talking about. The Jesus who died on a Roman cross and invited his disciples to do the same? The Jesus who taught his disciples that if they wanted to find their lives, they should lose them? (And most of them did, perhaps leaving behind angry parents.) For centuries, Christians have been jailed, beaten, and executed for preaching that Jesus. How was I to tell this lovely lady that Jesus was actually the one responsible for my traveling to Iraq in the heat of the bombing, not a decision that I would rationally make, even on my worst days?"

"All around you people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safetly. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe."