Jesus for President

So I've been reading this new book called "Jesus for President" by Shaine Claiborne and Chris Haw. I've been trying to take the book slow, reading only a couple of pages at a time. Some things are just worth sharing.....if you're interested check it out at your local library.....

"Remember when old John the Baptizer sent his disciples to ask Jesus whether he was the one they were expecting and he didn't answer with a simple yes? Jesus instead told them to go tell John what they saw him doing. He knew that John could read the trail of crumbs. John knew that when lepers were healed, the blind saw, the dead rose, and the good news was preached to the poor, the one they were awaiting was indeed here.

What does our trail of crumbs look like? If someone asks if we are Christ followers, can we say, 'Tell me what you see'? Is there enough evidence to prove that we are taking after the slaughtered Lamb? What if they ask the poor around us? What if they ask our enemies? Would they say that we love them? Christians haven't always looked like Jesus. Perhaps the greatest barrier to Christ has been Christians who pronounce Jesus so loudly with their lips and deny him so loudly with their lives. ---(A recent survey of young adults who are 'familiar outsiders' to Christianity showed that the three most common perceptions of Christians by onlookers are that we are anti-homosexual (an image held by 91% of the folks surveyed), judgements (87 percent), and hypocritical (85) percent. How sad that the very things that Jesus scolded the religious elites around him for are the very things for which Christians are now know. We have a major image problem. To hear more about this study by the Barna research team, check out the book Unchurched (Baker, 2007) by our friends David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons.)

In the South, we have a saying: 'You are the spittin' image' of someone. Folks still speculate over how exactly the phrase originated, but I've heard it put like this. It's shorthand for "spirit and image." Spittin' image. (Go ahead and try it out: it won't hurt.) For us, it meant more than just that you look like that person. It goes beyond just appearance to include character and temperament. It means that you remind people of that person. You have their charisma. You do the same things they did. In the truest sense, Christians are to be the spittin' image of Jesus in the world. We are to be the things he was. We are to preach the things he preached and live the way he lived. We are to follow in the footsteps of our rabbi so closely that we get his dust on us. We are to remind the world of Jesus. The criterion for whether something is a manifestation of the kingdom of God is the person of Jesus. Does it look like him? "Be imitators of God" (Eph 5:1)--that word imitate derives from the same word as mimic, like a mime. "
pages 230-231

on page 232 is a quote by Aristides and the Emperor Julian--very contrasting!

"It is the Christians, O Emperor, who have sought and found the truth, for they acknowledge God. They do not keep for themselves the goods entrusted to them. They do not covet what belongs to others. They show love to their neighbors. They do not do to another what they would not wish to have done to themselves. They speak gently to those who oppress them, and in this way they make them their friends. It has become their passion to do good to their enemies. They live in the awareness of their smallness. Every one of them who has anything gives ungrudgingly to the one who has nothing. If they see a traveling stranger, they bring him under their roof. They rejoice over him as over a real brother, for they do not call one another brothers after the flesh, but they know they are brothers in the Spirit and in God. If they hear that one of them is imprisoned or oppressed for the sake of Christ, they take care of all his needs. If possible they set him free. If anyone among them is poor or comes into want while they themselves have nothing to spare, they fast two or three days for him. In this way they can supply any poor man with the food he needs. This, O Emperor, is the rule of life of the Christians, and this is their manner of life."
--Aristides 137 AD

"Those godless Galileans feed our poor in addition to their own."
--Emperor Julian