When I think of being “Christian” or the “Church,” pleasant feelings generally do not come to mind. Conjured up are memories of boredom and irrelevancy in the 9 years I attended Catholic school in addition to a few more years of regular church service (before I escaped to “free-thinking secularism”). I had memorized a bunch of prayers and passages from the bible, as well as being able to go through the routines of Catholic Mass in my sleep (stand, sing, sit, repeat 2x, kneel, stand, sing, walk, kneel, stand, sing, the end). But I wasn’t left with much more than that. Sure, I learned that Jesus was a pretty awesome dude, treating everyone really nicely, but he was the Son of God after all.

While I grew skeptical of the American Dream^®, I also started to become skeptical of Christianity. I decided after a while of reflection that all this institutionalized religion was nothing but another means of social control. I felt it kept us content not living up to our potential in this life as well as acquiescent to the monstrosities committed in our name to maintain our incredibly unsustainable and wasteful lifestyles that comes off the back of the rest of the planet. Besides, hasn’t enough bloodshed and oppression flowed from the power of the Church anyways? Crusades, inquisitions, genocide of “Indian savages,” up the present day sex scandals, persistence of the white Jesus, and marginality of women (what’s up with all these male leaders?) as well as people in the LGBT community–none of this atrocious behavior committed in carrying out God’s will is even disputed.

But in the past few years, a curious thing has occurred to me. I met religious folks who shared my desire to work for justice here and now. After growing tired of using drugs to escape from my problems, I usually had more in common with the lifestyle of religious folks too (at least in college anyways, but this probably also had to do with my own quickness to judge). Eventually, I had more close friends who practiced some form of religion than who otherwise identified as secular. Yet I still held on to the notion that traditional religion had some kernels that were good, but I was still turned off by the rituals and the whole God in the sky always watching concept. My negative experiences with Christianity continued to plague me.

Then a friend let me borrow “The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical” by Shane Claiborne. At first I thought it was simply a leftist take on Christianity, kind of like the opposite of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson’s fundamentalism. Yet I seriously had a difficult time fitting Claiborne’s writings into a pre-existing category.

His main argument is that the Gospel provides the basis for something more than just a boring, complacent Christianity. It is not just about expressing one’s belief in Jesus, but actually following Him in the way one lives. Claiborne intertwines this message with a reflective autobiographical narrative, in which he breaks down the myth that only the Son of God and saints can be revolutionary lovers by showing just how possible it is to collapse the strict divisions that rule our life (e.g. Myself/others, rich/poor, family/non-family, black/white, man/woman, american/rest of the world), much like the iconoclast wandering Rabbi did in first century Galilean society.

This message is directly confrontational to our consumerist-oriented culture, where we are told success/fulfillment is derived from personal accumulation of income and objects, where our desires are conditioned to be selfishly at the expense of others (e.g. objectifying woman as sexual toys or monopolizing the world’s resources for a lifestyle of wasteful convenience). The anecdote is to not just the opposite of living in wealth in comfort. It is not simply enough to sell our possessions, as Jesus commanded of the pious rich man (Mark 10:21), to “leave everything” to follow Jesus (Mark 10:29) in a life of aesthetic voluntary poverty. Rather, a third way is in order: the practice of “God’s economy” where we consider others part of our family and “money loses its relevance,” where we trust in God to provide our providence (Mt. 6:25-34). When this occurs, an interesting phenomena happens, which Claiborne calls “mystical multiplication.” What actually happens is that through sharing rather than hoarding, and trusting that others are doing the same, all will be fed and given “our daily bread.”

This is not some impractical fantasy or biblical metaphor, as the early Christian community of discipleship did just this. We know according to their writings that if one found themselves on hard times in the community, all fasted until there was enough to go around. Stemming from the commandment for “those with two shirts to share with those who have none” (Luke 3:11), Basil the Great, one of the early church leaders, wrote:

“When someone strips a man of his clothes, we call him a thief. And one who might [be able to] clothe the naked but does not–should not he be given the same name? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute.”

Some may defensively argue this an archaic, unrealistic Christian theology that no longer applies to our modern society. However, no one can argue that it is being embodied by a small but growing minority, like the very recent Catholic Worker Movement and the host of New Monastic communities like the Simple Way, which was founded by Claiborne and friends. “The Irresistible Revolution” is full of real life examples as well, like how an infertile couple Claiborne knows invited a homeless mother to live with them. They helped raise her child together and sponsored the mother to attend nursing school like she always dreamed of. When the couple was struck with an unfortunate disease, the mother ended up being able to nurse the couple back to health. I have even been fortunate enough to witness some of these small “miracles” of multiplication at my work on a community organic farm. We provide cheap organic produce to many families pretty much at cost, and in turn many people invariably go out of their way to cook us food while we work and offer their services in various ways, like fixing all the tires on our wheelbarrows for free.

Yet Claiborne differs most noticeably from other “leftist” theologians in his belief that we should not focus on, or worse wait around for, a specific end goal like revolution or an utopian community. Rather, we should concentrate right now on changing our way of being to one of ceaseless, unconditional love for all. These “end goals” like sharing and community will then “flow naturally out of love for God and neighbor” as he puts it, thus making “capitalism impossible and Marxism unnecessary.” This was similarly stated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Christian who was executed for his resistance to Nazism:

“The person who is in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community where ever they go.”

Similar to Claiborne’s experiences, I have witnessed organizations whose end goal is to fight for justice devolve into infighting, judging others in order to feel better about oneself, perpetuating the injustice that is supposedly the enemy. Many times, I have instigated or participated in this hypocrisy. I have been guilty so many times of sacrificing personable, concrete love for some abstract idea of social change.

But I feel there is hope. Claiborne has taken the liberty to share some very inspiring (as well as disturbing) reflections and stories. As he says, the way is simple but not easy.