Customer Reviews:
 NOT IMPRESSED October 14, 2008
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
I AGREE WITH ALL THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS LISTED FOR THIS BOOK. I AM HALFWAY THROUGH THE BOOK AND CANNOT CONTINUE. I FIND SHANE CLAIBORNE ARROGANT, DISRESPECTFUL, AND EVEN ANGRY AT TIMES. HE THINKS WAY TOO HIGHLY OF HIMSELF. HE EVEN CALLS MOTHER TERESA "MOMMA T". I DOUBT THAT SHE GAVE HIM PERMISSION TO CALL HER THAT. HE IS A RADICAL OF THE WORST KIND. ONE THAT HIDES BEHIND JESUS. JESUS LOVES EVERYONE AND WANTS ALL PEOPLE TO BE SAVED, THAT INCLUDES THE RICH. CLAIBORNE THINKS THAT IF WE DON'T GIVE ALL WE HAVE TO THE POOR, WE ARE LESS THAN CHRIST LIKE. (P.142 "OTHERS WILL HOLD BACK FROM THE COMMON POOL AND LIE TO GOD, AND THEY WILL BE STRUCK DEAD LIKE ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. JUST KIDDING...HOPEFULLY") JUST KIDDING??!!WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN! HE TRIES TO SHAME US INTO BECOMING LIKE HIM. LIVING WITH THE POOR, BREAKING LAWS WITH THE POOR, STEALING. (P.143 A FRIEND OF HIS WORKED AT A FANCY RESTAURANT AND ONCE "SNEAKED" HIM A $100 A PLATE DINNER)
I WANT NO PART OF HIS KIND OF "CHRISTIANITY". I LEARNED A LONG TIME AGO, FROM MY NON-CHRISTIAN PARENTS TO WORK HARD AND DO THE RIGHT THING 'CAUSE IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO. I LATER LEARNED FROM MY BIBLE AND IN CHURCH THAT EACH BELIEVER IS GIFTED BY GOD IN SOME WAY TO FURTHER HIS KINGDOM. SOME GIVE MONEY, OTHERS TIME, STILL OTHERS THEIR TALENTS. EACH OF US MUST ANSWER TO GOD FOR THE THINGS WE HAVE DONE OR NOT DONE.
I HELP PEOPLE IN WAYS AS GOD CALLS ME TO, NONE OF WHICH INVOLVES BREAKING THE LAW, JUDGING, DISCRIMINATING OR COMPROMISING.
 Some insight, Some troubling contradictions September 14, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Claiborne has some great points, such as the silliness of some Christian fads, things like the "prayer of Jabez" (forget it already?), Christians spending millions on castle-like churches, etc. And he challenges Christians to engage and change the world, because even evangelicals get caught up in daily life and forget what they are called to do.
But sometimes he gets carried away in his activisim and forgets the Bible he's trying to live by. He sterotypes the youth groups of America by his bad experience. He's ignorant of the realities of war, unwilling to accept or understand that sometimes war is necessary. And, Shane, war can bring peace. It stopped the Nazis and Imperial Japenese, didn't it? The alternative was to let America, and Christianity, be destroyed. You can love your enemies, but you can always hold their hand.
Also, he makes it sound like we attacking the people of Iraq, and not the terrorists and insurgents in control of their country. Drinking left-wing propaganda, I see?
In fact he does alude that he does drink their kool-aid more often than a Christian should. He mentions by name violent "reformer" Malcolm X, killer Che Gueverra and that cop killer in Philly that left-wing kooks are always trying to release.
He also seems to like John Dominic Crossana, a liberal theologian who has spent a career destroying Jesus and professional liar Michael Moore, etc.
So living on the streets, among other homeless and jobless left-wing extremists, Claiborne at times has drifted away from Christianity. Other times he has dead-on insight into some of the churches problems.
By the way, Jesus wasn't homeless. He grew up in a home and during his ministry made his home where ever he went.
 Many Good Observations, But Many Problems August 31, 2008
32 out of 32 found this review helpful
Shane Claiborne has written a highly personal account of his journey as a follower of Christ and the call he feels to live radically for Christ. Much of The Irresistible Revolution is inspirational. Shane writes primarily to American evangelicals, who he calls out of their depressingly normal lives. Along the way, he levels numerous criticisms at the church, many of which seem on target.
The American evangelical church is in many ways indistinguishable from secular culture -- by its materialism, marketing, bigger-is-better mentality, and celebrity adoration. Worship services and youth ministry have almost become forms of entertainment. The church cultivates believers, but not always followers. Shane challenges his readers to take Jesus at his word when he spoke about the poor being blessed; the last being first; loving our enemies; denying ourselves; and serving Christ himself by serving the poor, lonely, sick, and imprisoned. And Shane criticizes the mixture of faith, patriotism, and conservative politics that characterize parts of the evangelical landscape.
Shane doesn't beat up his readers. He writes with a light, often humorous touch. He teaches almost entirely through stories, mostly his own. One of his appealing qualities is his willingness to take the unconventional route, to take risks for God. He seems to have cultivated an enjoyment of risk-taking, almost like that of a prankster. There is a streak of mischievousness that runs through his stories.
I wanted to like this book. There isn't very much about my walk of faith that I would call radical. Serious and heart-felt, yes. Sacrificial, to a degree. But radical, very little. One line from the book has stayed with me: "We have insulated ourselves from miracles. We no longer live with such reckless faith that we need them. There is rarely room for the transcendent in our lives."
However, as I read deeper into the book I began to notice many problems. By the end of the book I was pretty tired of these problems, several of which I describe below. Nevertheless, The Irresistible Revolution contains many good observations and will probably inspire and stick with many readers.
Now for the problems:
- I noticed an occasional harshness, even scorn, toward Christians with whom Shane disagrees. I don't know why he thinks this attitude is okay.
- Shane criticizes the mixture of biblical faith and right wing politics that exists in much of the church today. But his own politics are clearly left wing and his own faith and vision for the church are just as tinged by those politics. Nowhere does he acknowledge the truly difficult judgments involved in rightly engaging the culture with the gospel. Nor does he acknowledge the long cultural and moral slide that the Christian right has tried to address or propose alternative ways to address it.
- Shane is anti-war and anti-death penalty. His theology on these issues is anchored in Jesus' teaching to love our enemies and appears to preclude any use of violent force under any circumstances. Does he even believe the fight against the Axis powers in World War II was wrong? One of his heroes is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who opposed the Nazi regime. Shane approvingly quotes Bonhoeffer and calls him a fellow resister, but nowhere mentions the problem (for a pacifist) that Bonhoeffer tried to assassinate Hitler.
- Shane condemns the Iraq war, but the war he condemns is a straw man. Based on his description, one would think the war is merely an American conquest of Iraq. In fact, it is more complicated, consisting of a war to depose Saddam Hussein, a war against the Jihadists who subsequently poured into Iraq to destabilize the new democracy, and a civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
- At times Shane seems anti-capitalist, but he does not make his position completely clear, nor does he say what economic system would be an improvement over capitalism.
- Shane seems to romanticize the poor and credit to them a nobility that I don't see. He even refers to them as his teachers. The poor, at least the poor in America, are not simply victims of economic injustice. In my (limited) experience working with the homeless in San Francisco, I have mostly encountered people with a complex of problems, many being of their own making, and poverty being just one. These people are created by God and deserve practical help and love, but they are not particularly romantic or noble.
- In his anti-war and anti-poverty advocacy, Shane often expresses mushy sentiments about how we're all one big family, regardless of country, race, class, or religion. At times he seems to confuse the Body of Christ with the family of mankind. He sometimes sounds like mainline Protestantism of 50 years ago, with its de-emphasis of orthodox doctrines and its emphasis of the social gospel.
- Early in the book Shane refers to himself as a postmodern: "The things that transform us, especially us 'postmoderns,' are people and experiences. Political ideologies and religious doctrines just aren't very compelling, even if they're true." Perhaps I'm reading too much into these lines, but I found them disturbing. As a philosophical ideology, postmodernism holds that objective truth either does not exist or cannot be known; all one can know are stories, and no story is better than any other story. Reality, truth, and value are held to be arbitrary cultural and linguistic constructions. But Christianity has always claimed that objective truth exists and is knowable -- truth about God, mankind, and the world -- not exhaustive truth, but real truth. I don't know what we're left with if we abandon this philosophical foundation.
- Shane rightly asks what Jesus has to say about this life and this world, but at one point he asks a strange question: "Even if there were no heaven and there were no hell, would you still follow Jesus? Would you follow him for the life, joy, and fulfillment he gives you right now?" But Paul came very close to answering this question in 1 Corinthians 15: "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men." And: "If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'" If the gospel offers anything, it offers hope -- hope that we are not accidents, that we are loved by a good God, that our lives are going somewhere, and that we don't face personal extinction at death. It is only this hope that gives sufficient impetus to follow Jesus.
 Don't go by the reviews, read it for yourself August 30, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Yes, by my rating you can see that I love this book, however that's not what I intend to write about. I simply want to say that you should not rely on the reviews to form your opinion of this book.
I have repeatedly recommended this book to my friends, Christian or not, and whether they liked it, or agreed with it etc, it made them think, it created dialog. For those reasons alone I recommend this book. I do not believe that simply because one reviewer claims it to be biblically grounded, or not biblically grounded should change your decision to read it you need to read it and make your own decisions because whether you agree with him or not there are some important concepts that need to be considered even those who rated it poorly have said this. If you feel like you won't agree and don't want to lend money to the cause then go to a library, buy a cheap used copy, or borrow one. It would be irresponsible to make a judgment about the author based on someone else's review.
*edit note* I'd like to appologize for the weird punctuation, it's a bad habit.
Rated 5-stars by The Spiritual Reviewer August 26, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
"Christianity," says author Shane Claiborne, "often has offered little to the world, other than the hope that things will be better in heaven." This statement appears on the first page of the book, and it's a big clue that Shane isn't spinning a newer, fresher version of the same old predictable Christian party line that everyone else repeats. In fact, the whole purpose of The Irresistible Revolution is to present a radical idea of what it means to be a Christian. Even more importantly, it's about how one man, without aggrandizing himself, chose to do something daring, heroic and good with his life. Instead of buying into the prescribed formula for Christian living, Shane challenges us to break free of the empty roles and rituals "the living dead" pledge allegiance to, and take the path of Love. He talks about how he was "suffocated by Christianity, but thirsty for God."
Say good-bye to Jesus message t-shirts, big expensive churches, and tele-evangelical pleas for followers and cash. Say hello to a man who speaks in love, acts in love, serves humanity in love. This book is a collection of Shane's autobiographical stories about his transformation from a cookie-cutter evangelical youth to a disciple who thinks outside the box and who isn't afraid to shine his light for the world. We are fortunate to be on the planet at the same time with one so aware and one so willing to walk the talk. If you only read one book this year, make it Irresistible Revolution, and allow the passion from Shane's mega big heart to move you to loving action.
Message of Love:
"People always want to define you by what you do. I started saying "I'm not too concerned with what I'm going to do. I am more interested in who I am becoming. I want to be a lover of God and people."
What does it mean to love and how is love of God demonstrated? This is the fundamental question Shane explores and answers. Is it by passing out God-flyers on street corners, or is it by passing out bread to the homeless and poor and then teaching them how to make bread for themselves? In January 1997 Shane and five other like-minded cohorts moved into a little row house in Kensington, a poor neighborhood in Philadelphia, and formed The Simple Way. The Simple way is not just about managing poverty, but completely ending it.
"There are plenty of liberals who talk about poverty and injustice but rarely encounter the poor, living detached lives of socially responsible but comfortable consumption." To eradicate poverty it's essential to redefine the meaning of family and to become radically inclusive. There should be no difference between your relationship to someone who's connected to you by marriage, blood, religion or nationality and to someone who lives in the street or another country. Violence and disregard is born out of a narrow, rigid belief about family. Shane asks us to consider "what happens when people fall in love with each other across class lines?" There is nothing worth killing for, but there's something worth dying for -- and that is the love in our hearts that we have for each other.
Did you know that each day 35,000 children in the world starve to death? It's like a 911 event every single day or a tsunami that never ends. Poverty is not created by God. It's created by you and me because we don't see our brothers and sisters as ourselves. What's needed are concrete acts of love. No one can see God, but we can see each other, and God can live in and through us. Shane recommends "instead of waiting for God's special plan for your life, go find where God is doing work, and join in."
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