Book detail: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book is a philosophical exploration of the idea that one can be a radical agent of change in the world without needing to engage in extreme or unconventional behavior. It probably includes anecdotes and personal narratives from individuals who have made meaningful impacts through their ordinary lives, emphasizing the power of small, consistent actions. The book may also discuss societal structures and individual responsibilities, encouraging readers to consider their own roles in creating positive change.
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“God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Charity is merely returning what we have stolen.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“The true atheist is the one who refuses to see God's image in the face of their neighbour.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Violence is for those who have lost their imagination.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“The church is like Noah's ark. It stinks, but if you get out of it, you'll drown.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“It's hard to hear the gentle whisper of the Spirit amid the noise of Christendom.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“There is nothing more sickening than talking about poverty over a fancy dinner.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Someday war and poverty will be crazy and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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?”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“The time has come for a new kind of conversation, a new kind of Christianity, a new kind of revolution.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“It is a dangerous day when we can take the cross out of the church more easily than the flag. No wonder it is hard for seekers to find God nowadays.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“A pastor friend of mine said, "Our problem is that we no longer have martyrs. We only have celebrities.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Sometimes people call folks here at the Simple Way saints. Usually they either want to applaud our lives and live vicariously through us, or they want to write us off as superhuman and create a safe distance. One of my favorite quotes, written on my wall here in bold black marker, is from Dorothy Day: "Don't call us saints; we don't want to be dismissed that easily”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“The more I get to know Jesus, the more trouble he seems to get me into.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“So if the world hates us, we take courage that it hated Jesus first. If you're wondering whether you'll be safe, just look at what they did to Jesus and those who followed him. There are safer ways to live than by being a Christian.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“We are faithful not to the triumphant golden eagle (ironically, also an imperial symbol of power in Rome) but to the slaughtered Lamb.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Mother Theresa always said, "Calcuttas are everywhere if only we have eyes to see. Find your Calcutta."”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“...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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“I learned more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than any systematic theology ever taught me.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Too often we just do what makes sense to us and ask God to bless it.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Christians pretty much live like everybody else, they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“There is a movement bubbling up that goes beyond cynicism and celebrates a new way of living, a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“People had taught me what Christians believe, but no one had told me how Christians live.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“When we realize that we are both wretched and beautiful, we are freed up to see others the same way.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Recognizing that something is wrong is the first step toward changing the world.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream and struggle.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“And that’s when things get messy. When people begin moving beyond charity and toward justice and solidarity with the poor and oppressed, as Jesus did, they get in trouble. Once we are actually friends with the folks in struggle, we start to ask why people are poor, which is never as popular as giving to charity. One of my friends has a shirt marked with the words of late Catholic bishop Dom Helder Camara: “When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist.” Charity wins awards and applause but joining the poor gets you killed. People do not get crucified for living out of 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.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“The worlds of poverty and wealth collided, and I guess I felt a little dose of what the experts call culture shock. According to Mother Teresa, it is among the wealthy that we can find the most terrible poverty of all— loneliness. So perhaps I was still among the poorest of the poor, but these poor folks had some cash!”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“The lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like 6 september 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“You guys are all into that born again thing, which is great. We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy too…[And he paused in the awkward silence.] But I guess that’s why God invented highlighters, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“As I left Calcutta, it occurred to me that I was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness. Could we learn to feel again?”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“Protesters are still on the fringes like satellites, revolving around the system. But prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“St. Augustine: “The Church is a whore, but she’s my mother.” She is a mess and has many illegitimate children. But she is also our momma and managed to give birth to us and to give us enough of the truth that we have been able to ask the questions that we have in this book.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical