Thursday night I had the opportunity to hear Shane Claiborne speak at Whitworth College. I read his book "The Irresistible Revolution" back in June and simply fell in love with his approach to the gospel. He has what some might consider to be a fairly liberal approach to politics, but his theology is right on so it's hard to argue with, mostly because he's not trying to argue.
So that's me sitting in the front row at Shane's talk. I believe this photo was taken right after he has answered my question and had moved on to one of the people behind me who was asking a question.
To learn more about him, or even better the community he's a member of, check out http://www.thesimpleway.org
And so I titled this post "motivation" because in filling out all my forms so I can be a Young Adult Volunteer I was frequently asked why I wanted to go into mission work, what my motivation was. Over and over again my atheist and agnostic friends will try to argue that we should do good things whether there is a God or not, we shouldn't need motivation based on the fact that it's what God wants of us, or that the people we help are children of God, and while I say they're absolutely right, we *should* do it anyway I think they're missing the point. If there's not standard of equality, for example we are all made in the image of God, then there is no reason to give preferential treatment to some and not others. Why would we need to love our enemy? These are the same people who would rather ignore those they don't like than trying to engage them and talk with them, that might seem like a better option but it's simply the violence of indifference. In order to work for peace one cannot be passive, if we want peace we must love our enemies and love is a verb, an action, we have to *DO* something.
We are called to love.
Love in Christ,
Maggs
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