Quotes from Shane Claiborne

a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of. And

God's people are not to accumulate stuff for tomorrow but to share indiscriminately with the scandalous and holy confidence that God will provide for tomorrow.

We always have to be careful that in exposing one truth we don't cover up another. Or

can sing my wife a song, but she really knows I love her when I do the dishes.

When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God. After all, what is the point in calling anything God if it does not also hold sway in every part of one's life—especially one's politics?

Andre Trocmé, who pastored the remarkable Le Chambon community during World War II, said, "Nonviolence was not a theory superimposed upon reality; it was an itinerary that we explored day after day in communal prayer and in obedience to the commands of the Spirit.

At that moment, we decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming the church we dreamed of.

Grow us slowly, persistently, and deeply, Lord, to be people who watch without distraction, listen without interruption, and stay put without inclination to flee. Amen.

Liturgical theologian Aidan Kavanaugh says it well: "The liturgy, like the feast, exists not to educate but to seduce people into participating in common activity of the highest order, where one is freed to learn things which cannot be taught.

Tony Campolo, back at Eastern College: "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,' Jesus in his disguises.

In college, one of my professors said, "Don't let the world steal your soul. Being a Christian is about choosing Jesus and deciding to do something incredibly daring with your life.

In our culture of "seeker sensitivity" and radical inclusivity, the great temptation is to compromise the cost of discipleship in order to draw a larger crowd. With the most sincere hearts, we do not want to see anyone walk away from Jesus because of the discomfort of his cross, so we clip the claws on the Lion a little, we clean up a bit the bloody Passion we are called to follow.

Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived.

And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.

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

Mother Theresa always said, "Calcuttas are everywhere if only we have eyes to see. Find your Calcutta.

Only God is awesome.

There are some things to die for but none to kill for.

For even if the whole world believed in resurrection, little would change until we began to practice it. We can believe in CPR, but people will remain dead until someone breathes new life into them. And we can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.

Only Jesus would be crazy enough to suggest that if you want to become the greatest, you should become the least. Only Jesus would declare God's blessing on the po0r rather than on the rich and would insist that it's not enough to just love your friends. I just began to wonder if anybody still believed Jesus meant those things he said.

The more I get to know Jesus, the more trouble he seems to get me into.

Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful.

When we truly discover how to love our neighbor as our self, Capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.

Biological family is too small of a vision. Patriotism is far too myopic. A love for our own relatives and a love for the people of our own country are not bad things, but our love does not stop at the border.