Sometimes our tunnel vision is limited to what we see outside our window. Until racial injustice becomes personal then I don't think it moves us in our gut.
Shane ClaiborneThat is the power of the Eucharist. At the communion table you have rich and poor together in the early church and they were being challenged.
Shane ClaiborneKarl Barth said it well: "We have to read the Bible in one hand... and the newspaper in the other." Our faith should not cause us to escape this world but to engage it.
Shane ClaiborneIf the people of God were to transform the world through fascination, these amazing teachings had to work at the center of these peculiar people. Then we can look into the eyes of a centurion and see not a beast but a child of God, and then walk with that child a couple of miles. Look into the eys of tax collectors as they sue you in court; see their poverty and give them your coat. Look in to the eys of the ones who are hardest for you to like, and see the One you love. For God loves good and bad people.
Shane ClaiborneThe more you look at the death penalty, that's where you see that we're actually not killing the worst of the worst. We're killing the poorest of the poor. Where actually one of the biggest determinants of who gets executed is how many resources they have to defend themselves.
Shane ClaiborneWe think of justice sometimes as getting what you deserve, you knowโ - โwhat crime was committed and what is the punishment for that crime. That's how a lot of the criminal justice works. But God's justice is restorative, so it's not as interested in those same questions of "What did they do wrong?" and "What is the punishment for that?" It's more about what harm was done and how do we heal that harm, and that's a much more redemptive version. So, it definitely doesn't turn a blind eye to harm, but it does say we want to heal the wounds of that.
Shane Claiborne