Shane Claiborne Quotes

76 Sourced Quotes

The world is looking, not for Christians who are perfect, but for Christians who are honest and who are willing to be honest with some of our contradictions and hypocrisy.

Shane Claiborne
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.

Shane Claiborne
The church is like Noah's ark. It stinks, but if you get out of it, you'll drown.

Shane Claiborne
The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do.

Shane Claiborne
I heard one of the teaching pastors at Willow Creek speak on the rich young ruler text that Rich (Mullins) had talked about in Wheaton's chapel. The teaching pastor had said, "now this doesn't mean you have to go sell your rollerblades and golf clubs," and he went on to "contextualize" the teaching to show that we just need to be careful not to make idols of our things. I wasn't so sure about that. Jesus doesn't tell the man to be a better steward, or to treat his workers fairly, or not to make money an idol. He tells this highly educated and devoutly religious young man that he lacks one thing: giving up everything he owns to give the poor.

Shane Claiborne
We have to use our discontentment to engage rather than disengage - our hope has to be more powerful than our cynicism.

Shane Claiborne
The true atheist is the one who refuses to see God's image in the face of their neighbour.

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

Shane Claiborne
The love that makes community is the willingness to do someone else's dirty work.

Shane Claiborne
My goal is to speak the truth in love. There are a lot of people speaking the truth with no love, and there are a lot of people talking about love without much truth.

Shane Claiborne
We might hope to change the world through better, bigger programs to stop global warming, but global warming will not end unless people become less greedy and less wasteful, gaining a fresh vision of what it means to love our global neighbor.

Shane Claiborne
Someday war and poverty will be crazy and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist.

Shane Claiborne
There is nothing more sickening than talking about poverty over a fancy dinner.

Shane Claiborne
Today the logic goes something like this: 'Calling a ruler Son of God is out of style. No one really does that nowadays. We can support a president while also worshiping Jesus as the Son of God.' But how is this possible? For one says that we must love our enemies, and the other says we must kill them; one promotes the economics of competition, while the other admonishes the forgiveness of debts. To which do we pledge allegiance?

Shane Claiborne
But what had lasting significance were not the miracles themselves but Jesus' love. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but eventually caught some other disease. He fed the ten thousands, and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love. It wasn't that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers.

Shane Claiborne
Recognizing that something is wrong is the first step toward changing the world.

Shane Claiborne
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.

Shane Claiborne
Christians pretty much live like everybody else, they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way.

Shane Claiborne
Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived.

Shane Claiborne
One by one, these disciples would infect the nations with grace. It wasn't a call to take the sword or the throne and force the world to bow. Rather, they were to live the contagious love of God, to woo the nations into a new future.

Shane Claiborne
When we realize that we are both wretched and beautiful, we are freed up to see others the same way.

Shane Claiborne
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.

Shane Claiborne
The Christian icon is not the Stars and Stripes but a cross-flag, and its emblem is not a donkey, an elephant, or an eagle, but a slaughtered lamb.

Shane Claiborne
When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God.

Shane Claiborne
What is the point in calling anything God if it does not also hold sway in every part of one's life—especially one's politics?

Shane Claiborne