What if...

I've been reading this book, "Irresistible Revolution." The copyright says it came out in 2006 - so I'm reading it in the wake of it's first run. I'm hip like that...missing trendy by half a decade or so. But I digress.

The book is good. Well it's good in a, "Oh Crap." sort of way. The dude (aka Shane Claiborne) is a hippy from Tennessee, and more recently Philly. Maybe he wouldn't own that title "hippy". But really: homemade clothes, dread-locks, and community garden = hippy, or neo-hippy. I went to school at CU Boulder; I know these things.

But Claiborne poses this question,and it chafes. What if following Jesus really changed the way you live - turned it upside down, even? The earliest disciples were absolutely wrecked for ordinary once they decided to follow Jesus. Many lost their homes, many lost family, and businesses. They were forced into exile and some died for their allegiance. They lived lives of radical community and wild adventure. They were NOT addicted to Netflix,or x-box. They didn't drive Beemers, and they were scare in covenant controlled communities. Just saying...

What if the American church was less interested in drawing a crowd, and entertaining? What if we were into transformed lives,and a call to risk everything for the only thing?

That hippy from Philly casts a vision that rumbles.

Now here's the grit of the thing: It sounds kinda pretty, but it's FREAKING hard to do. Because I do live in safe suburbs. But our house is full with 2 families - one of whom is is led by a newly single mom. It's a hard gig, that. And the messiness of it spills out into my life at the most inconvenient times. The answers aren't simple, or cookie cutter. Sometimes it isn't even fun. At all.

Then there is pumpkin of a three year old whom we call our baby. We adore her. Yet the trauma we were unable to protect her from will affect her all of her life. Invisible disability. And the brokeness of our world spills over in our living room.

Now most of Christian culture applauds this kinda stuff - at arms length. They are uncomfortable with the ambiguity. There is no, "kiss it and make it better." for urban poverty, generational addiction, foster care, and mental illness. Solutions are messy and costly.

Few are willing to roll up their sleeves. Pick up a shovel, and start shoveling out the sh**. And that's what we need.

Sometimes I'm one of the few who has been so transformed that I cannot wait to serve. But sometimes I would love comfortable suburbia, and I hold tightly to my latte and SUV. So this "Irresistible Revolution" feels very truly "resistible" for me. I've dabbled in it. I know the price tag; let's not be coy about that. It will cost my life. This kind of Jesus-loving is a destroyer of the American Dream.

I CAN say they times I've followed Jesus into place the Pro/Con chart would never recommend I haven't regretted it. It's good. Amazingly Good. Life but costly.