Book Review: The Irresistible Revolution

Other than posting a short blurb on my 4000 books post, I usually do not review books unless they were given to me as review copies. But The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne deserves a blog post. I’m not sure yet if it will gain a place on my Burning Books list, but time will tell.

No matter what you believe about the role of Christians in society and culture, especially in regard to social issues like hunger, poverty, and war, Shane’s book will challenge you to think and act differently. It is the story of how he and some friends entered into one of the worst areas of Philadelphia to live out the love of Jesus among the people who were there. Shane gives plenty of examples about the things they have done and the lessons they have learned along the way.

For example, their community developed a statement of beliefs to show people that they were not a cult, but they also developed a statement of practices to show they were not just believers (p. 125). I would love to see this sort of thing adopted in churches everywhere. We have doctrinal statements, but how many of us have practical statements? If what you believe isn’t leading you to do something for others, what good is it? (That sounds a lot like James 2.)  And of course, their community in Philly didn’t just write a statement of practices, they actually practice them. That’s important too.

Here are some of the other ideas that challenged me:

• The greatest tragedy in the church today is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor (p. 113, 127, 157).
• We don’t need more churches. What we need is a church (p. 145).
• We lose our children to the culture of drugs and materialism, violence and war, not because we did not entertain them, but because we did not challenge them to actually live the gospel in difficult and heroic ways (p. 226).
• If we believe terrorists are beyond redemption, we should rip out half our New Testament, since it was written by a converted terrorist who became an extremist for grace (p. 272).
• Violence is for those who have lost their imagination (p. 279).
• We should no longer talk about “issues” and “needs.” We need to talk about and get to know people. For example, it’s easy to talk about “ending world hunger,”  but such theoretical discussions cease when we discover that Jim lost his job and doesn’t have any money to put food on the table for his wife and three kids. Stop talking about issues and needs, and get out there and find someone who is dealing with such things, and then help them (p. 292).
• Bigger is not better. We do not need million-dollar mansions for God to accomplish His will for the world. In fact, those megabuildings might only get in the way (p. 322ff). We need to grow smaller and smaller until we take over the world (p. 340).

Not everyone is going to agree with Shane, his beliefs, or his practices. There were several things he said and did in the book that made me quite uncomfortable. Like the time they went and threw $10,000 worth of coins onto the sidewalks of Wall Street to make a point about greed (pp. 188-189). I’m still not sure what was accomplished, and it seemed a somewhat wasteful way of using $10,000.

I highly recommend this book. And I, for one, am going to do more than just read it. I am going to start trying to live the Kingdom of God ideas it contains. Read this book. Let Shane challenge you to change.