Claiborne says many times that Christians need to show more of God’s love to those who we encounter everyday. I defiantly agree that as Christians we need to show God’s love by loving those around us. I love his call for action in the world and to show the world what Christianity is all about. However, I did feel that he spent a lot of time convincing us that the way to do this was through helping the homeless and the poor. This is great, but there are a lot of other ways that we can help the world and show love. God can be working anywhere. This seems like something Claiborne wants everyone to know, but he makes in seem like this is only being done on the streets.
In the book, The Irresistible Revolution, Claiborne writes that people don’t describe Christians with words like love, grace, or community. Christians are sometimes thought to just be complete hypocrites and that is terrible. As Christians we should spread love to the world. People who say that they are Christians and then turn around and act an opposite way to what the Bible says and just follows the world’s way give Christians a bad name. Claiborne confronts this, but sadly Christian hypocrites are probably not likely to read his book because they do not usually act like a Christian in the world.
I love the stories of forgiveness that Claiborne uses in Chapter 10. It reminds us of true forgiveness and of God’s forgiveness. The stories of forgiveness remind me just how much we need God’s help in this world. It would be hard for me to give forgiveness to someone who meant harm to me or people that I care about, but with God’s help and love I can learn how to forgive a lot easier.
I am not sure that God ONLY works in little ways. I guess it depends on the way a person looks at it, but God can do great things too. He chooses to work in all different ways. I see it from the perspective that anything that God does will be great in the end. Claiborne spends a great amount of the book talking about the small things God does and it seems like everything that is good is small, poor, or last. Many different types of people can do many different small (or great) things.