other sororities and fraternities decided not to participate in another sorority’s philanthropic fundraiser
Christmas break is always a time for me to put away school books and bring out books I want to read. The past few years I have grown to enjoy non-fiction books, particularly Christian non-fiction. Most of the time they are just interesting books, but do not really challenge my thinking any, probably in part to the fact that I’m reading books that people have recommended who think a lot like me as it is and those people would probably never recommend a book that they disagree with.
The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne is what I am making my way through right now. I have known a few people to have read it, but they never said much about it other than that it was a pretty good read. I picked it up a few months ago, but never got around to reading it because of school and work. I am glad I never got to read it during those busy months because it would have been read quickly and not taken in adequately.
Maybe you could read it and not be torn, confused, and even slightly upset by it. I can’t. Shane takes all these things that we (I’m taking some liberty in using “we” and assuming you’ve grown up with these things and beliefs in America just like me) have grown up with and heard and calls them out. Charities, church, the war, politics.
Charities are good, but they allow the rich to stay a safe distance from the poor, from the down and out and still allow us to feel good about ourselves for giving money. He says,
“Tithes, tax-exempt donations, and short-term mission trips, while they accomplish some good, can also function as outlets that allow us to appease our consciences and still remain a safe distance from the poor…I’m not convinced that Jesus is going to say [when we get to heaven], ‘When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me,’ or, ‘When I was naked, you donated clothes to the Salvation Army and they clothed me.’ Jesus is not seeking distant acts of charity. He seeks concrete acts of love: ‘you fed me…you visited me in prison…you welcomed me into your home… you clothed me.’”
The charities thing got to me a little bit, because I know exactly what Shane is talking about. While I do not think that charities are wrong, I think they are great ways for resources to be distributed, I also believe that Shane makes a good argument. I am in no position to call out people for not helping the poor in a more direct way, because I’m right there with them. My helping out goes with the Operation Christmas Child, tithes, prayer, the adopt a child monthly giving, giving money to the missionaries who come and talk at church. I’m not saying these are wrong, I think we need to do what we can, but is that all we’re supposed to be doing? This morning I woke up thinking about a conversation my best friend and I had several months ago. Her sorority, and several other sororities decided not to participate in another sorority’s philanthropic fundraiser. She said it was because that sorority never helps out with any of their fundraisers. So it was kind of a “stick it to them” act. Up until today I thought it was a totally respectable reason. But today I realized it’s not about if they help you out or not. The point is for the money that is being raised for whatever charity that fundraiser helps. It’s because our whole way of thinking has become this, “If you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” thinking that we’re in the position we are. I know I just used a charity as an example after talking about how charities aren’t direct, etc., but it was for the sake of the argument that we have become so focused on how someone is going to help us out with what we are doing, that we refuse to help them out on what they’re doing if they don’t return the favor. We really just need to forget favors. Doesn’t the Bible talk about that? The whole don’t lend money, just give it to them type of thing.
The next few things are what really make me uncomfortable and make take a good look at myself and what I believe. Do I believe how I believe because it is what I have been told my whole life or do I actually have a good reason?
One year Shane Claiborne was able to be an intern at a church and he used that church in a lot of examples. This church did not have a single cross displayed, but had the American flag displayed. After preaching a sermon, the pastor came up to him and told him the pulpit is not a place for politics and that’s when he noticed the American flag hanging there. What’s more political than a country’s flag? For a church that is supposed to be universal, joining every member of the body of Christ together to form that body, to hang a flag that separates it from other Christians worldwide, isn’t that pretty political? Isn’t the cross supposed to be the symbol that unites us all? It is because of what happened on that cross that we are even able to call ourselves children of God.
There are churches on every street corner. If you live in the south, you’re used to driving down streets where there’s 3 or 4 churches on that street alone. Churches split because of fickle arguments that they refuse to work out. Denominations have come into being because of use of relics, praying to anyone other than God, the proper way to baptize, if you can lose your salvation, how to be saved. Even as I sit here and write this, I am trying to decide if these are really that big of a deal. I mean, I guess they constitute having different churches, but I KNOW they should not cause riffs between the members of those churches. In the end, we should all be able to sit down and agree that Jesus is the reason we have any hope here on earth or in life to come and that we are all called to love and are members of the same Church.
A few years ago I had the opportunity to work at the Southern Baptist Convention. My friend and I were passing our flyers for a meeting later on that day. The song, “Lord, You are Good” was being played in the meeting that we were standing outside of, and my friend was tapping her foot to the beat and bobbing her head. Hardly what anyone would call dancing. An older pastor comes up to her, puts his arm on her shoulder and says, “We don’t do that here.” He was completely serious. Churches have been split because of something as stupid as if you can dance, raise your hands when you’re singing, clap, if you can have a guitar or drums on stage or if only old hymns with a piano and organ are acceptable in church. It’s when we allow such stupid arguments as these to cause dissension that we get ourselves into even more trouble.
My dad is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves. For 3.5 years I lived in Alaska next to an army post and an air force base. My church was probably 60-75% military. Every single military holiday was celebrated with the military branches’ songs played, a HUGE American flag displayed as the backdrop to the stage, and recognition to all our former and active duty military watching by television or in the audience and anyone related to them. Our pastor took a major stand for the war in Iraq, my school was a ministry of my church and the chief administrator of my school was active duty in the military and went on 2 or 3 deployments to Iraq while I was attending. The principal was in the military for 20 or 30 years…you get the picture. When I moved my senior year of high school, our next church also supported the war in Iraq, and used the pulpit to urge the congregation to support it as well. I think my church here in college supports it as well.
Then I started reading The Irresistible Revolution. I’m still on the chapter talking against the war. Talking about how we don’t need the military if we were all to live a Christian life. Christians shouldn’t be for the war, any war, for violence of any kind. Valid arguments are made. The verse, “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword” is used and examples of how Jesus never used violence. Shane went to Iraq and the Iraq people would ask him why his government was doing this. With each page I read, I get a little angry. Partly because I have friends over there who firmly believe in what we are doing and I have friend’s parents who have died while fighting over there and partly because all I have ever heard from any “respectable Christians” is that this war is good. It has only been those “crazy Democrats” who have said this war is wrong and it seems like half of what I hear is that Democrats can’t be Christians, or at least not good Christians and that their thinking needs to be changed.
My church here in college talks about voting for people who are running on campaigns that match up with our Biblical beliefs. This really always ends up just being about abortion and homosexuality and everything else falls to the wayside. My old church allowed any political candidate to come to our church on certain Sundays and say their name and the position for which they are running. This always ended with the pastor saying about the same thing as the church I go to now. My churches have never talked bad about our Presidents, granted it’s not until now with President Obama that they have had a “reason” to, and I don’t mean that he’s a bad president, but because he’s a Democrat, and my churches have only ever endorsed Republican candidates. I am glad I can say that my present pastor does not talk ill of our President and tells us almost weekly that we need to respect him. He is our President and even if he takes stances on things we don’t agree with, he is in a position of God ordained authority,
Romans 13:1-7 “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.
In the end, I’m completely thankful for this book. It has become an eye opening read, taking me from automatically thinking the American Christian way is correct. Christianity has been utterly Americanized here in the US. It’s not an American religion. It didn’t start here. We have warped it into something not very much like it was in the beginning.
