I should start off by letting you know that my hope is best described in Christ manifesting himself through the Church. I’ve gone the traditional political action path and it proved hollow to me. There is no legislation that can love. The checks and balances of programs whether governmental or church-based ensure that the least of these is never served. Programs are incapable of love, people of God love.

The average person walking down the street today sees Christians as hate-filled hypocrites who hate gays and want to outlaw abortion.

Christ says that they will know you are Christians by your love.

My call today is for us to die to ourselves and, instead, become a people of love—costly, difficult, wonderful, painful, relational, messy, uncomfortable, sacrificial, transforming, beautiful, unconditional, love.

We have become mesmerized by the power of this world—the hope of principalities and governments. We have done an analysis and figured out that we should best spend our resources in leveraging the government to coerce the world into behaving as if it were Christian. That goes for both the Christian right and the Christian left.

We have figured out that it is much less costly to comfort our guilt by having the government outlaw abortion instead of seeking to open our spare-bedrooms up and offering refuge to mothers and their babies. We have said that it is much easier to leverage the government to provide healthcare to those in need rather than to assume that cost ourselves as the people of God called to care for the poor. We would rather protest war than to go thousands of miles away from our homes to, as peacemakers of God, stand between oppressors and the oppressed.

We are more interested in proclaiming truth to government than living out truth as God’s people. And guess what? The world has called our bluff. Until we are willing to live by the call of Christ ourselves, we have nothing to say to our elected officials.

My call today is for us to be a prophetic witness of love, first to our brothers and sisters in Christ and then to the world. I don’t know about you, but I have a long way to go in this respect.

A few examples of how this might play out:

In the mid-1800’s, there was a similar amount of abortion per capita as there is today. The church saw that this was a problem and began to open up homes for women and their babies and even their spare bedrooms. The rate of abortion plummeted without any changes in the law.

Throughout the world Christians provide healthcare to those in need, in fact there is a history of similar action in the United States. Think of how many Methodist, Baptist, and Catholic hospitals you know of. These were originally founded by the church.

Christian peacemaker teams today choose the costly path of going abroad to stand alongside people being bombed and oppressed.

You see it is much more important what you do before and after voting than what you do in the voting booth.

If you are called to politics, do politics. Don’t however do politics because you believe that will maximize your impact. Be willing to seek after God and obey, even if that means you are called to do something that in your view will only help a handful of people.

The Holy Spirit deploying the people of God to do the work of God knows exactly where and how each of us fit in bringing the Kingdom of God to earth. It is up to us to make the decision to accept that call—the call that will cost us our life.

Download | Link

Artist: Speaking of Faith

Duration: Appx 58 min

Created: Thu, 10 May 2007

Category: Speech

Subject: Shane Claiborne

Interviewer: Krista Tippett

NPR’s show Speaking of Faith this week explores New Monasticism in an interview with Shane Claiborne.

If the time comes when despair sees violence as the only possible way, it is because Christians were not what they should have been. If violence is unleashed anywhere at all, the Christians are always to blame. This is the criterion, as it were, of the confession of sin. Always, it is because Christians have not been concerned for the poor, have not defended the cause of the poor before the powerful, have not unswervingly fought the fight for justice, that violence breaks out.

A friend sent me an e-mail with the Alternative Allegiance Version of the Christian PEACE Witness for Iraq document. I think it does a much better job of expressing the point that we as Christians must first take responsibility instead of blaming the American government. The first 4 pages are the revised version and the next 2 are the original. I posted it on my webspace at http://www.mattpritchard.com/CPWalt.pdf.

What do you all think?

He lost the election when we chose to proclaim the Gospel with our votes as a substitute for our lives…When we decided it more expedient to manifest the kingdom in our laws, in our congress, and in our courtrooms than in our neighborhoods, in our families, and in our hearts…

I pray that we may repent and leave our comfort, our security, our control, our success, and the ways of this world so that the Kingdom of God may break forth more boldy among us!

The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Rating: 5 out of 5

Author: Shane Claiborne

Year: 2006

Publisher: Zondervan

ISBN: 0310266300

As I have traveled the country talking with fellow 20-somethings, it has been clear that God is speaking to us in a united voice, however it has been difficult to find the words that correspond with this calling. Shane Claiborne artfully articulates what so many in our generation are hearing. A theologian who truly lives out the Call, he challenges the Church with exceptional love and truth.

The only negative is that in chapter 11, I felt he crossed the line from solidarity with the poor and oppressed to political action. At any rate, it’s a difficult path to navigate and Claiborne does it exceptionally (both in his writing and life)!

I have given away over 150 copies. A must read!

Blinded by Might

Rating: 4 out of 5

Author: Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson

Year: 1999

Publisher: Zondervan

ISBN: 0310226503

Written by two former leaders in the “Moral Majority,” Blinded by Might argues that seeking the Kingdom through political means in problematic.