Last night, I sat front and sort of center on the floor in an auditorium at Discovery Church in Orlando. While I sat, Chris Haw and Shane Claiborne spoke and a couple of guys from Psalters played [amazing] music as part of Chris and Shane’s Jesus for President tour. Jesus for President is a book about politics for ordinary radicals. I’m only in the second section, but the talk inspired me to jump on finishing that book. In fact, I’d like to read a chunk before I fall asleep tonight, so I’ll make this quick.
Here’s what I got out of it (not including a high five from a nomadic musician I really admire and a hug from Shane Claiborne): Change isn’t something that should happen one day in November every 4 years. Change is something we can spark every day. We vote with what we buy, where we go, what we do, and who we represent and how we represent them.
Chris talked about Exodus and about how some called to wander into the wilderness felt that slavery was more stable than that. It felt safer, more stable and comfortable to stay in the bonds of slavery than to wander into the wilderness, sleeping in unfamiliar places, surrounded by entire cities worth of people who’d probably call them their enemies.
Such a parallel! I’ve been bound for so long to this world’s culture that no matter how called I feel toward counter-culturally living like Jesus (which would probably feel a lot like wilderness wandering), I seem so stuck inside this society.
But last night was another push in the right direction.
