My good friend Matt has been recommending The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne for some time now; I finally pushed through and finished Tuesday night. It’s not that this book is an especially long or difficult read; I have just had a hard time pushing through it. Let me say up front that I don’t really like this book. However, there are two levels to why I don’t like it: 1) its an awesome, challenging, Godly call to community and love and 2) there are parts where I think the message gets lost to proselytizing. To be clear, while I don’t ‘like’ this book, I believe that God has used it to really challenge my perceptions of Him and grow me as a disciple. (Note: the following discussion may not make much sense unless you have read the book — so go read it)

Shane has a huge heart to see glimpses of the Kingdom come to our life now, and it is in the expression of this God-given desire that I believe his vision is at its strongest. I feel that his vision for community is truly radical, especially to a society that values individual accomplishment, privacy, and ‘freedom’. While real community is messy, it is the way in which God uses us to touch each other’s lives. What is the best way to share the gospel? By sharing God’s love daily with our community. How will poverty be eliminated? When the poor come into contact with the rich and see the sorrow that love of money brings and when the rich commune with the poor and see the need to use the riches God has placed in their stewardship for the good of others. This is radicalism because it takes us away from who we want to be and into who God has created us to be; this is radicalism because it requires the help of God.

Where I feel that Shane strays from true radicalism is when he goes into the realm of politics. It is not so much his heart that I have issues with than with how it has played out in his life. He takes Jesus’s call for active non-violence and spoils it with glib peace-nick rhetoric that vilifies “warmongers” and those who practice “redemptive violence” against those who wronged us. ‘How can we teach our kids not to hit when our country is dropping bombs on innocent civilians?’ I feel that this is an over simplification of a difficult question; I believe that there are Godly people on both sides who have prayerfully struggled through to their conclusions. I believe that any issue that involves life and death at such a scale demands no less. Crying out against a government whose ordinance might put children in the hospital is easy; being a leader who has the unenviable responsibility to decide between two undesirable choices is not. Rather than using deception to get into a position to make your protests heard (something Shane did at the Republican convention) – which is a lot easier (and perhaps more personnally satisfying…) – we should wrestle with wisdom and pray for God’s illumination.

The other issue I have with Shane’s writing is that I feel he often throws out statements without leaving room for debate or prayerful consideration. We are told the names of corporations who are ‘notorious’ for human rights abuses without being told why or at least where we can go to investigate. He quotes the like of Che Guevara (a violent revolutionary) and Michael Moore (who at very least bends his facts) to back up his political views. When contrasted with how he deals with radical community, it is almost like reading two different authors. His writing about God’s call to radical love through community is marked with a deliberative and sharing tone that brings the reader along … developing community with the reader.

Inspite of my issues with the book (or maybe because of them), I feel like I have grown more by reading this book than most of my recent reads. I feel that Shane’s call to radical community is something our Christian community desperately needs; we have traded expensive discipleship for cheap grace. We have traded real community for a network of aquantences. We have hardened so much that we are now useless marbles rather than beautiful, useful grapes (I stole that one from my pastor). May there be many more books I ‘don’t like’ as much as this one.