Upon Further Review. . .

I finished reading Jesus for President a couple weeks ago, but I've been meaning to write my final opinion on the book. I put down the book with mixed feelings - on one hand I really felt inspired and affirmed in some of the things that I believe, but on the other I felt guilty about not being "set apart" enough and buying into what America is selling me. I wanted to take time to really consider this conviction because Claiborne's ideas about the life of a follower of Christ are really radical to the average American Christian, and I didn't want to dismiss these ideas simply because they are new and scary and pretty much mean I'm currently a total failure. Upon further review, however, I feel pretty secure in saying that, while the ideas and lifestyles presented in Jesus for President are virtuous and make sense in light of our calling to be "not of the world", they are not for everyone and I am not living in sin if I don't ride a bike everywhere, grow my own food, and live with twenty other people.

There are a lot of good points made in the book that have helped to really consider the ramifications of my actions. What are my actions saying when I buy cheap stuff made by foreign workers that live and work in awful conditions so I can save a couple cents? How can I support war and the military when we are called to be peacemakers and supposed to be loving our neighbors? If I believe that God created the world and called us to be stewards of it, why don't I care more about sustaining it and making more eco-conscious decisions? It's these little aspects of my life that I was really challenged about, and makes me reconsider my motivations behind the decisions that I make.

One of the things I didn't really care for was the over-emphasis on the soft, hippie, lovey-dovey portrayal of Jesus. I feel like much of the recent Christian movement, led by guys like Piper and Driscoll, has been about portraying Christ as a powerful and sovereign dude that is not to be messed with. This re-emasculation of Jesus has been, in my opinion, long-overdue and a more accurate description of the nature of Christ, and so it was a little weird for them to dwell on the softer portrayal - it seemed a little out of touch, or something like that. Claiborne took a very passive and monastic approach to dealing with people and culture. As I said I think it works for some and in some situations but not for all.

I think that's all I'm going to write for now. I would definitely recommend that everyone read it and consider it. I think it leads to really good and creative discussion about what our lives should look like.

I haven't been very tenacious about reading recently, but I did recently purchase a collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor called " A Good Man is Hard to Find" and I've been slowly working my way through that. If you've never read anything by her, you owe it to yourself to. Especially the story that the collection is named after, it is amazing.