Best 206 quotes of Shane Claiborne on MyQuotes

All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe.

A lot of times people say whatever the government touches, they don't do that well, so why would we trust them with the power over life and death? Do we really believe the system is that perfect that it won't make any mistakes? You can't reverse these mistakes.

And since we are people of expectation, we are so convinced that another world is coming that we start living as if it were already here.

A pastor friend of mine said, "Our problem is that we no longer have martyrs. We only have celebrities.

As an American, and especially as a Christian, I am convinced that a love for our own people is not a bad thing, but love doesn't stop at borders. Love is infinitely boundless and all about holy trespassing and offensive friendships.

As my friend said that when people say the church is full of hypocrites, he says we always have room for more.

Believe in miracles. And live in a way that might necessitate one.

Because you can poke someone's eye out legally doesn't mean you should and that it's right. The Bible teaches us a more perfect justice.

Biological family is too small of a vision. Patriotism is far too myopic. A love for our own relatives and a love for the people of our own country are not bad things, but our love does not stop at the border.

But as I pursued that dream of upward mobility preparing for college, things just didn't fit together. As I read Scriptures about how the last will be first, I started wondering why I was working so hard to be first.

Charity wins awards and applause, but joining the poor gets you killed.  People do not get crucified for charity.  People are crucified for living out a love that disrupts the social order, that calls forth a new world.  People are not crucified for helping poor people.  People are crucified for joining them.

Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evildoers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. That’s the Christianity I grew up with. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinners and evildoers of our world crying out to God, groaning for grace. That’s the Christianity I have fallen in love with.

Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful.

David, Moses, Saul of Tarsus, these were all people who did terrible terrible things  -  they were murderers. The Bible would be a lot shorter without grace.

Discontentment is a gift. It's the stuff that changes the world.

Every 70-year-old needs a young person in their lives to mentor, and every 20-year-old needs a senior.

Faith is being idealistic, because we have made an idol out of the status quo.

Faith is not accepting the world as it is but insisting on building the world God wants.

For even if the whole world believed in resurrection, little would change until we began to practice it. We can believe in CPR, but people will remain dead until someone breathes new life into them. And we can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.

God can use anything, and anyone - even a king or a president, even a tax collector or a businessman, a priest or a prostitute, a Republican or a Democrat.

God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.

God doesn't want to change the world without you.

God's people are not to accumulate stuff for tomorrow but to share indiscriminately with the scandalous and holy confidence that God will provide for tomorrow. Then we need not stockpile stuff in barns or a 401(k), especially when there is someone in need.

Governments can do lots of things, but there are a lot of things they cannot do. A government can provide good housing, but folks can have a house without having a home. We can keep people breathing with good health care, but they still may not really be alive.

How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?

How ironic is it to see a bumper sticker that says 'Jesus is the answer' next to a bumper sticker supporting the war in Iraq, as if to says 'Jesus is the answer - but not in the real world.

I always tell our community that we should attract the people Jesus attracted and frustrate the people Jesus frustrated. It's certainly never our goal to frustrate, but it is worth noting that the people who were constantly agitated were the self-righteous, religious elite, the rich, and the powerful. But the people who were fascinated by him, by his love and grace, were folks who were already wounded and ostracized — folks who didn't have much to lose, who already knew full well that they were broken and needed a Savior.

I am convinced that if we lose kids to the culture of drugs and materialism, of violence and war, it's because we don't dare them, not because we don't entertain them. It's because we make the gospel too easy, not because we make it too difficult. Kids want to do something heroic with their lives, which is why they play video games and join the army. But what do they do with a church that teaches them to tiptoe through life so they can arrive safely at death?

I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

...I believe in a God of scandalous grace. I have pledged allegiance to a King who loved evildoers so much he died for them, teaching us that there is something worth dying for but nothing worth killing for.

I do believe that the Church is God's primary instrument for ushering in the Kingdom (God's dream) on earth as it is in heaven, but God is not limited to use only the Church, or only Christians for that matter.

I don't know if you've read the Bible, and if you haven't, I think you may be in a better place than those of us who have read it so much that it has become stale.

I engage with local politics because it affects people I love. And I engage in national politics because it affects people I love.

If every Christian family brought in a child who needed a family we would put the foster care system out of business.

I found that the death penalty  -  and I'm not a hot-button issue person, you know, I'm not a single issue person  -  but what I think drew me to the death penalty is because it raises some very deep, fundamental questions like: Is anybody beyond redemption?

If 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.

If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.

If we believe terrorists are past redemption, we should just rip up like 1/2 the New Testament because it was written by one.

If you have two coats you have stolen one. We have no right to have more than we need when someone else has less than they need.

I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor...I truly believe that when the rich meet the poor, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end.

I have this certain reluctance when it comes to this idea that we are spiritual but not religious and we want Jesus but not the church. Why can't we have both?

I just have a more holistic sense of what it means to be for life, knowing that life does not just begin at conception and end at birth, and that if I am going to discourage abortion, I had better be ready to adopt some babies and care for some mothers.

I learned more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than any systematic theology ever taught me.

I like how someone once said being a Christian is not about having new ideas but having new eyes. This is the ability to have our hearts broken with the things that break the heart of God. That is part of what it means to be a Christian.

I'm excited we can be part of making the death penalty history.

I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, "When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me.

I moved to Philadelphia to go to school at Eastern partly because I wanted to study the Bible and I also went to study sociology. I like how Karl Barth said we have to read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other so that our faith doesn't just become a ticket into heaven and a license to ignore the world around us.

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion - I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, 'I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you.' If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.

In fact, the Gospel shows us change comes from the bottom rather than the top, from an old rugged cross rather than a gold royal throne.

In the Bible, God uses brothel owners, pagan kings, murderers and mercenaries as instruments of good; at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey.