Quotes from Shane Claiborne

Surround us with your subtle and hidden prophets, that we might have help to overcome self-deception and face the truth that sets us free. Amen.

this: for some strange reason, God doesn't want to change the world without us. There are times when we throw our hands up at God and say, "Do something!" and if we listen closely, we can hear God respond, "I did do something. I made you." Sometimes we are waiting on God, and God is waiting on us. When

she was tempted to give up on God because she couldn't reconcile her doctrine with her deity. She

between God's permissive will and God's perfect will. This

I've grown to admire the humor of a God who uses foolish things to shame the wisdom of this world, and weaklings to remind the strong that they may not be as mighty as they think they are.

So often we think it is our job to push people, and it really is a lack of faith that the Spirit is already at work in them, leading them. We think the Spirit can't work without us jumping in to help make sure they know what the Bible says, or this or that.

So I am a radical in the truest sense of the word: an ordinary radical who wants to get at the root of what it means to love, and to get at the root of what has made such a mess of our world.

I remember hearing a story about Clarence Jordan, a pecan farmer and theologian down in Georgia. He was speaking to a wealthy congregation that had an enormous gold cross. He asked how much they had paid for it. They explained that it was a gift from a wealthy donor and told him how much it was. When he heard how much it cost, he said, "Wow! Ya'll got ripped off. Christians used to be able to get a cross for free!" Brilliant.

When the church becomes a place of brokerage rather than an organic community, she ceases to be alive. She ceases to be something we are, the living bride of Christ. The church becomes a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff. Both go away satisfied (the rich feel good, the poor get clothed and fed), but no one leaves transformed.

When we did so poorly at helping folks recover from drug addiction, we stepped back and said, "Duh, no wonder. None of us are heroine addicts.

What do we do when the foolishness of the cross actually makes more sense than the wisdom of the sword?

Not many people get argued into thinking differently, but experiences and stories move us, especially when we have the humility to listen and view the world from a different lens, from someone else's eyes.