Before you all think I've gone nuts and started backsliding allow me to qualify that comment!!! I've just started reading the Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne and it's AWESOME. If you're comfortable with your form of Christianity then don't touch this book with a barge pole but if you're ready to be rocked to the core of who you are and challenged about what a real Christian looks like and whether you actually are one then read it.
At the start of one chapter entitled 'In search of a Christian' the author talks about a friend of his declaring "I gave up Christianity in order to follow Jesus". The author continues by pondering "I wondered what it would look like if we decided to really follow Jesus. In fact, I wasn't exactly sure what a fully devoted Christian looked like, or if the world had even seen one in the last few centuries...it looked like some time back we had stopped living Christianity and just started studying it."
Soren Kierkegaard wrote this on the subject...
"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any word in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."
After reading these things, here's what I wrote in my diary...
"I want to give up Christianity and follow Jesus. I want to stop studying Christianity and start living it. I want to stop just reading about God and trying to gain knowledge about him - I want to actually know him personally. I want to see the face of God (I think - probably be quite scary. Maybe I'll regret saying that's what I want!). I want to be an ordinary radical and to find other ordinary radicals to do crazy things with. I want to go in search of true Christianity and to find real Christians - and I want to learn to be one myself!!"
People should read this.
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