Need a Summer Read?

I am reading a book by Shane Claiborne entitled The Irresistible Revolution.  It is hard for me to describe in a few words what this book is about.  Claiborne is an activist, writer, and speaker.  He writes with passion as he conveys his sincere love for Jesus.  He challenges his readers to live out an authentic Christian faith.  His words are poetic and life changing.  Be warned if you dare pick it up to read.  This is not your typical Christian read.  As read from the back description of the book, "This book will comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable, and invite believers to change the world with Christ's radical love."

Claiborne's book has stirred up quite a bit within me.  His zeal is quite contagious.  Author Brian McLaren says this, "Read this book and let it make you uncomfortable, as it did me.  We need this kind of discomfort more than we know."  I agree totally.  Claiborne tells story after story of simply living in a radical way that is basically surrendering to Christ.  Author Tony Campolo says this of Claiborne's book, "Shane expresses the kind of authentic Christianity that most of us are trying to avoid because the cost is too great." 

Here is a bit from a chapter entitled Jesus is for losers:

When we look through the eyes of Jesus, we see new things in people.  In the murderers, we see our own hatred.  In the addicts, we see our own addictions.  In the saints, we catch glimpses of our own holiness.  We can see our own brokenness, our own violence, our own ability to destroy, and we can see our own sacredness, our own capacity to love and forgive.  When we realize that we are both wretched and beautiful, we are freed up to see others the same way.  

Later Claiborne writes:

We are made of the same dust.  We cry the same tears.  No one is beyond redemption.  And we are free to imagine a revolution that sets both the oppressed and the oppressors free.