I Like This (but please don't misinterpret as a political statement)

I'm reading The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, by Shane Claiborne...and as with anything we read, discernment is key, and God may speak to me clearly through one part that sounds like heresy to someone else...but there was so much truth in this book. Most of it boiled down to what really matters concerning the heart of God and His kingdom. It's WAY different from what you may hear in church or on TV, and especially from the media. This is a portion of the end of the book that I really really like:

"I am going to Iraq because I believe in a God of scandalous grace. If I believed terrorists were beyond redemption, I would need to rip out half of my New Testament Scriptures, for they were written by a converted terrorist. I have pledged allegiance to a King who loved evildoers so much he died for them (and of course, the people of Iraq are no more evil or more holy than the people of the US), teaching us that there is something worth dying for but nothing worth killing for. While terrorists were nailing him to a cross, my Jesus pleaded that they be shown mercy, for they knew not what they were doing. We are all wretched, and we are all beautiful. No one is beyond redemption. May we see in the hands of the oppressors our own hands, and in the faces of the oppressed our own faces. We are made of the same dust, and we cry the same salty tears.

I am going to Iraq in the footsteps of an executed and risen God. I follow a Jesus who rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey at Passover, knowing full well what he was walking into. This Jesus of the margins suffered an imperial execution by an oppressive regime of wealthy and pious elites. And now he dares me and woos me to come and follow, to take up my cross, to lose my life to find it, with the promises that life is more powerful than death and that it is more courageous to love our enemies than to kill them.

I am going to Iraq to stop terrorism. There are Muslim and Christian extremists who kill in the name of their gods. Their leaders are millionaires who live in comfort while their citizens die neglected in the streets. I believe in another kingdom that belongs to the poor and to the peacemakers. I believe in a safe world, and I know this world will never be safe as long as the masses lie in poverty so that a handful of people can live as they wish. Nor will the world be safe as long as we try to use violence to drive out violence. Violence only begets the very thing it seeks to destroy. My King warned his followers, 'If we pick up the sword, we will die by the sword.' How true this has proved to be throughout history. We armed Saddam in the conflict against Iran, and we armed Bin Ladin in the struggle against the Soviet Union. Timothy McVeigh, the most terrifying domestic terrorist in US history, was trained in the Gulf War, where he said he turned into an animal."

I hear people so often trying to categorize their sin, trying to convince themselves that they are better than someone else...better than the drug dealer or the adulterer, or the alcoholic...it's human nature I guess, but it's not God's nature. We are altogether missing the heart of God for His people, all of the people of the world, most importantly the people we don't want to look at or talk to or face.