In Irresistible Revolution Shane Claiborne presents himself as an 'ordinary radical', suggesting that he is no-one special and that the way he lives and advocates is open to all. Even though he presents his case convincingly, I am not so sure. Certainly Claiborne is an ordinary human being - he eats, he drinks, he gets tired, he shits out of the same hole as the rest of us. But the direction he has taken in his life is quite extraordinary. I read about his life and I think "I couldn't do that".
I feel the same when I experience this close to home. I have some friends who have spent most of the past two decades living in various slums in India. Their children have grown up living in one-room dwellings without sanitation or running water, surrounded by poverty and hardship. Of course many people have to live this way but they didn't, they chose it. I know for sure that they are ordinary people, a lot like me in many ways, and that their children don't feel that they have been deprived in life - indeed, they feel very grateful for the life they have shared with their parents. However, I still feel like I couldn't do it.
There's a character in Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country who I really relate to. The story, written in South Africa in the 1940s, centres around the Rev. Stephen Kumalo, a rural Zulu pastor who travels to Johannesburg to find his wayward son. He has a brother John who runs a successful business in that city and is a leader of the anti-apartheid movement. John is a powerful orator. In private, holding court in his shop, he will say some quite radical, even incendiary things. However, when he speaks at rallies he watches his words carefully and avoids saying anything too inflammatory because he is fearful of losing his business and his security. He is committed to the struggle, but not to the extent of placing himself at risk.
I can identify with John Kumalo's dilemma. I turned 55 last year. I have a thirty-plus year career in human services, community development and social policy. I own a house and have a pretty good balance in my superannuation account. I run a small consulting business which depends entirely on my reputation. I have two adult children and a couple of little grandkids who share my comfortable middle class life. I'm doing pretty well out of the way the world is now.
Another guy I can really relate to is Peter, who I wrote about last Easter. Peter vows that he will follow Jesus even to death. When the time comes and Jesus is arrested, Peter follows the arresting party all the way to the High Priest's courtyard, but when the moment of decision arrives he pulls back and denies that he knows Jesus. As I wrote back then.
I am like Peter. I see the evil of the world all too clearly. I have read Jesus' words many times. I know how far I should be prepared to go to serve those who are entitled to my service, to resist the evil that is so clearly revealed on this Easter Friday. I walk to the edge, I look at what must be done, but I pull back. My courage fails me, I am weak and afraid. Often I feel a physical sickness in my stomach at the evil of the world, my own powerlessness to change it, my own complicity in it.
I feel the same when I experience this close to home. I have some friends who have spent most of the past two decades living in various slums in India. Their children have grown up living in one-room dwellings without sanitation or running water, surrounded by poverty and hardship. Of course many people have to live this way but they didn't, they chose it. I know for sure that they are ordinary people, a lot like me in many ways, and that their children don't feel that they have been deprived in life - indeed, they feel very grateful for the life they have shared with their parents. However, I still feel like I couldn't do it.
There's a character in Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country who I really relate to. The story, written in South Africa in the 1940s, centres around the Rev. Stephen Kumalo, a rural Zulu pastor who travels to Johannesburg to find his wayward son. He has a brother John who runs a successful business in that city and is a leader of the anti-apartheid movement. John is a powerful orator. In private, holding court in his shop, he will say some quite radical, even incendiary things. However, when he speaks at rallies he watches his words carefully and avoids saying anything too inflammatory because he is fearful of losing his business and his security. He is committed to the struggle, but not to the extent of placing himself at risk.I can identify with John Kumalo's dilemma. I turned 55 last year. I have a thirty-plus year career in human services, community development and social policy. I own a house and have a pretty good balance in my superannuation account. I run a small consulting business which depends entirely on my reputation. I have two adult children and a couple of little grandkids who share my comfortable middle class life. I'm doing pretty well out of the way the world is now.
Another guy I can really relate to is Peter, who I wrote about last Easter. Peter vows that he will follow Jesus even to death. When the time comes and Jesus is arrested, Peter follows the arresting party all the way to the High Priest's courtyard, but when the moment of decision arrives he pulls back and denies that he knows Jesus. As I wrote back then.
This is why Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God. We rich men (and women too, but men especially in our patriarchal society) have a big investment in the current world order. We are a powerful conservative force, responding with fear and anger at the possibility that our comfortable lifestyle might be curtailed, be it ever so slightly.
The form of Christianity I was converted to, and that I practiced as a teen and a young adult, was quite conservative, even 'fundamentalist' in some ways. Many of my early teachers advocated either a principle of non-participation in political life, or a highly conservative brand of politics. In 1987, as Joh Bjelke-Petersen was being deposed by his party in the wake to the Fitzgerald Inquiry's exposure of corruption in his government, a leader of my church asked us all to pray for 'Sir Joh' as the full story was not being told, the implication being that he was being unfairly persecuted.
The form of Christianity I was converted to, and that I practiced as a teen and a young adult, was quite conservative, even 'fundamentalist' in some ways. Many of my early teachers advocated either a principle of non-participation in political life, or a highly conservative brand of politics. In 1987, as Joh Bjelke-Petersen was being deposed by his party in the wake to the Fitzgerald Inquiry's exposure of corruption in his government, a leader of my church asked us all to pray for 'Sir Joh' as the full story was not being told, the implication being that he was being unfairly persecuted.
Yet at the same time, my university education exposed me to more radical ideas - Marxism, Gandhian non-violence, anarchism, social democracy, liberation theology - and much of this struck a chord with me. For a long time I felt a real dissonance between my work life, which revolved around trying to get more just outcomes for people on the margins, and my faith life which revolved around sustaining a conservative theology. When my church asked me to pray for Sir Joh, I quietly asked those in authority, "you know he's corrupt, right?". But I had little power to change things there.
Over time I've been able to bring these things closer together, to find church companions who have a stronger sense of God's call to justice, and to find ways for my faith to more clearly inform my work life. But there is nothing extraordinary about the way I live. I'm no Shane Claiborne. I have made a lot of compromises with my society. I live a comfortable middle-class life, although I try to do it within a framework of social and ecological responsibility.
When I read about people like Shane Claiborne or talk to my friends who have been in India I wonder, am I doing enough? Should I be making greater sacrifices? I feel bad, knowing the state of the world in general and how puny my own efforts at change are.
I tend to respond to this in two ways. The first, when I'm being honest, is to admit that yes I could and should be doing more. Much of what holds me back is what holds back John Kumalo or Peter - a fear of consequences, a love for my own safety and security. I could spend more time and energy trying to bring about change, make more changes in my own lifestyle. All of this would be moving me towards greater fulfilment of Jesus' call to radical discipleship.
At the same time, beyond the excuses and justifications is a core piece of knowledge - nothing I do will be enough. One of the hardest lessons for us Westerners to learn is the lesson of humility. I am one of seven billion people. Even here in Australia I am one in over 20 million. If I stopped emitting carbon, the planet would still warm. If I gave away everything I had, there would still be poverty. Changing these things is not up to me, it is up to all of us. I can't solve the problem. All I can do is be a small part of the solution.
So while he is not exactly my hero, John Kumalo is a comfort to me. I will not be perfect. I will be compromised. I will do less than what I could. But despite this, I can still make an attempt. I can devote at least some of my attention to being part of the solution instead of part of the problem. I won't save the world. But then neither has Shane Claiborne. If we all do what we can, and perhaps a little bit more, we can bring the Kingdom of God that little bit closer.
Over time I've been able to bring these things closer together, to find church companions who have a stronger sense of God's call to justice, and to find ways for my faith to more clearly inform my work life. But there is nothing extraordinary about the way I live. I'm no Shane Claiborne. I have made a lot of compromises with my society. I live a comfortable middle-class life, although I try to do it within a framework of social and ecological responsibility.
When I read about people like Shane Claiborne or talk to my friends who have been in India I wonder, am I doing enough? Should I be making greater sacrifices? I feel bad, knowing the state of the world in general and how puny my own efforts at change are.
I tend to respond to this in two ways. The first, when I'm being honest, is to admit that yes I could and should be doing more. Much of what holds me back is what holds back John Kumalo or Peter - a fear of consequences, a love for my own safety and security. I could spend more time and energy trying to bring about change, make more changes in my own lifestyle. All of this would be moving me towards greater fulfilment of Jesus' call to radical discipleship.
At the same time, beyond the excuses and justifications is a core piece of knowledge - nothing I do will be enough. One of the hardest lessons for us Westerners to learn is the lesson of humility. I am one of seven billion people. Even here in Australia I am one in over 20 million. If I stopped emitting carbon, the planet would still warm. If I gave away everything I had, there would still be poverty. Changing these things is not up to me, it is up to all of us. I can't solve the problem. All I can do is be a small part of the solution.
So while he is not exactly my hero, John Kumalo is a comfort to me. I will not be perfect. I will be compromised. I will do less than what I could. But despite this, I can still make an attempt. I can devote at least some of my attention to being part of the solution instead of part of the problem. I won't save the world. But then neither has Shane Claiborne. If we all do what we can, and perhaps a little bit more, we can bring the Kingdom of God that little bit closer.
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