Quotes from Shane Claiborne

When we ask God to move a mountain, God may give us a shovel.

One by one, these disciples would infect the nations with grace. It wasn't a call to take the sword or the throne and force the world to bow. Rather, they were to live the contagious love of God, to woo the nations into a new future.

The greatest sin of political imagination: Thinking there is no other way except the filthy rotten system we have today.

The true atheist is the one who refuses to see God's image in the face of their neighbour.

As Christians, we should be the best collaborators in the world. We should be quick to find unlikely allies and subversive friends, like Jesus did.

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.

But what had lasting significance were not the miracles themselves but Jesus' love. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but eventually caught some other disease. He fed the ten thousands, and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love. It wasn't that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers.

We are faithful not to the triumphant golden eagle (ironically, also an imperial symbol of power in Rome) but to the slaughtered Lamb.

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. Then we need not stockpile stuff in barns or a 401(k), especially when there is someone in need.

Clarence Jordan, co-founder of Koinonia Farm, wrote, "The Good News of the resurrection is not that we shall die and go home with him, but that he is risen and comes home with us, bringing all his hungry, naked, thirsty, sick, prisoner brothers with him.

If we want to know what it means to be human, we look at Jesus. He does things we'd culturally consider feminine - like weep - and others our culture would consider masculine - like flip tables in the temple. But really all these things are just human. And since Jesus is God, these characteristics are also divine.

While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness, I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.

The Christian icon is not the Stars and Stripes but a cross-flag, and its emblem is not a donkey, an elephant, or an eagle, but a slaughtered lamb.

We have not shown the world another way of doing life. Christians pretty much live like everybody else, they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way.

So even as we see the horror of death, may we be reminded that in the end, love wins. Mercy triumphs. Life is more powerful than death. And even those who have committed great violence can have the image of God come to life again within them as they hear the whisper of love. May the whisper of love grow louder than the thunder of violence. May we love loudly.

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?

What if evangelical mega churches became known around the world for things like providing water access for entire countries or fighting to end the AIDS pandemic? Imagine what integrity that would give to the good news we preach, especially the gospel that Jesus declares is good news to the poor.

God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.

the church was an international institution long before globalization.

Lord, free us from our self-deception and attune our hearts to your Spirit, that we might remember how you humbled yourself, and learn to serve one another, whatever our disagreements. Amen.

If the devil can't steal your soul, he'll just keep you busy doing meaningless church work.

When i ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, i can feel the Spirit whisper to me, 'you tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.

Patting mother Theresa on the back, someone said to her: 'i wouldn't do what you do for a million dollars.' She said with a grin: 'me neither.

Repentance, rebirth, and conversion were exchanged for cheap grace, and the integrity of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus faded. People join the church in droves, but Christian disciples were hard to come by. Christianity had an identity crisis. It's the same old story of the forbidden fruit--it's the beautiful things that get us. It's the things that seem good, but are not quite of God, that steer us off the course of holiness into destructiveness.