And I’ve just finished reading his recent book, “Jesus for President”, and it’s just as mind-blowing.

I totally agree with the author of this post; Claiborne has a message which is desperately needed by the Church.

I wish everybody would read them, everybody!

You know when you come back from a mission trip, and you’re all jazzed up to be sacrificial and share of your excess, and have materialism and consumerism in perspective? Well, these kids are feeling like this months BEFORE going on a mission trip.

Claiborne is just telling us what Jesus already did — we just tend to skip over those portions of Scripture and do the easy stuff.

Cause when has giving away the stuff we hoard been easy? When has loving strangers—the dirty ones, the penniless ones, the unlovables—ever been comfortable?

My wife and I have really been challenged ourselves and are questioning EVERYTHING about the way we live our lives — how we live, what level of excess or what quality of life we DESERVE, how we can benefit others, even the brands we sponsor.

Read it, people. I pray that it renews your mind so you might break out of the patterns you might be living in.

Anyway , I haven’t read the book yet , just ordered it. I saw an interview on the local PBS station WHYY(philly). The message I get is , get out and live in the community, do what you can to help poorer people , preach by example , go against the grain of secular and religious-right social work , and try to literally follow the teaching of Jesus both his words and actions.
The interview moved me to tears. I think Mr Claiborne is very courageous and I am going to investigate what is going on down there in the philly “bad lands”.

Thanks for the review.

Everything we do is from doctrine, whether incorrectly or correctly held from the Bible. When we divorce action from doctrine, historically we have about one generation until orthodoxy takes a huge slide for the worse. We seem to already be limping a bit and it might pay to be extra cautious with anymore truth we jettison since there’s not much left around. Clairborne does any excellent job with “what”, but his “how” is vague or misguided. His Christology is in flux (most emergent movements have this) and his view of salvation must follow the flux of his Christ. If Christ becomes too much a man, salvation becomes too much of our effort as we outwardly mimic the shoes off this “Jesus” but inwardly miss the mark. If Christ becomes too transcendent, it becomes a vague sense of “ughhhh….I’ll just say a prayer and hope it pans out”.

True imitation comes from implantation of the Divine nature, and I don’t see much “regenerative” focus in Clairborne’s view. Though I believe he has experienced it, I don’t think he emphasizes it. (The Rich Mullins story at Wheaton shows this). This and much more is my beef with this book, obviously I liked it if I prodded this obsessively through it, yet I doubt I could recommend it to a single person because of the frustration it brought me. And no it was not frustration with the implications of how we should live, I agree with it very much. I was frustrated because he usually ejected the why a few pages before.

This criticism sounds vaguely familiar. Where have I heard it before?

The shoe might fit on the other foot.

You should warn people about this book at least, not just give them a blanket statement approval.

Thanks for this review. I have reserved this book at our localLibrary. Ohio has the best Library system……You can order books from any Library in the State. There are six copies of this book floating around.

I hope the book will be everything you say it is.

Bruce