Jesus
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not "perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
Martin Buber
“In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. For those who enter into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retains any importance—neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven—but everything is included in the relationship. For entering into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything but seeing everything in the You, not renouncing the world but placing it upon its proper ground. Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help either; but whoever beholds the world in him stands in his presences…” (from
I and Thou)
C.S. Lewis
“When I attempted a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light… For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can, no one cares. Now, a scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable Something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in the universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, the bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.” (from
The Weight of Glory)
Terrence Malick
Badlands (1972)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The New World (2005)
Martin Heidegger
“Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears. Appearance—as this being of truth in the work and as work—is beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth, truth’s taking of its place. It does not exist merely relative to pleasure and purely as its object.” (from “The Origin of the Work of Art.”)
Saint Paul
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (I Corinthians 13:12)
Marshall McLuhan
“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.” (from
The Medium is the Massage)
Sufjan Stevens
And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid
(from “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“And as I sat there brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s long dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it, He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.” (from
The Great Gatsby)
Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Story (1953)
George Steiner
“All representations, even the most abstract, infer a rendezvous with intelligibility or, at the least, with a strangeness attenuated, qualified by observance and willed form. Apprehension (the meeting with the other) signifies both fear and perception. The continuum between both, the modulation from one to the other, lie at the source of poetry and the arts.” (from
Real Presences)
Paul Tillich
“What is the nature of a being that is able to produce art? Man is finite. He is, as one could say, mixed of being and nonbeing. Once he was not. Now he is and some time he will not be. He is not by himself, but thrown into existence and he will be thrown out of existence and cease to be for himself. He is delivered to the flux of time which runs from the past to the future through the ever-moving point which is called the present. He is aware of the infinite. He is aware that he belongs to it. But he is also aware that he is excluded from it… Out of the anxiety, and the double awareness that we are finite and that we belong to infinity from which we are excluded, the urge arises to express the essential unity of that which we are in symbols which are religious and artistic.” (from
On Art and Architecture)
Dorothy Sayers
“Poets have, indeed, often communicated in their own mode of expression truths identical with the theologians’ truths; but just because of the difference in the modes of expression, we often fail to see the identity of the statements.” (from
The Mind of the Maker)
Over the Rhine
What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be.
Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy.
And I use these words pretty loosely.
There's so much more to life than words.
(from “Latter Days”)
Soren Kierkegaard
“He will grant thee a hiding place within Him, and once hidden in Him he will hide thy sins. For He is the friend of sinners... He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, 'Come hither'; no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes--yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman, He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners.” (from
Training in Christianity)
Richard Linklater
Before Sunrise (1995)
Waking Life (2001)
Before Sunset (2004)
George MacDonald
“In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they; we see in them, in a distant way, as in a glass darkly, the face of the unseen. It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them.” (from
The Voice of Job)
Emily Dickinson
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity
John Steinbeck
“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.” (from
East of Eden)
Bob Dylan
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care,
pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside
to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.
(from “Simple Twist of Fate”)
Walker Percy
“What is the malaise? You ask. The malaise is the pain of loss. The world is lost to you, the world and the people in it, and there remains only you and the world and you no more able to be in the world than Banquo’s ghost.” (from
The Moviegoer)
Sofia Coppola
Virgin Suicides (2000)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Kathleen Norris
“Church is to be participated in and not consumed. The point is not what one gets out of it, but the worship of God; the service takes place both because of and despite the needs, strengths, and frailties of the people present. How else could it be?” (from
Dakota)
Marilynne Robinson
“Whenever I think of Edward, I think of playing catch in a hot street and that wonderful weariness of the arms. I think of leaping after a high throw and that wonderful collaboration of the whole body with itself and that wonderful certainty and amazement when you know the glove is just where it should be. Oh, I will miss the world!” (from
Gilead)
N.T. Wright
“Preaching the gospel means announcing Jesus as Lord of the world; and, unless we are prepared to contradict ourselves with every breath we take, we cannot make that announcement without seeking to bring that lordship to bear over every aspect of the world.” (from
What Saint Paul Really Said).
David Bazan
It's weird to think of all the things
That have not been keeping up with the times
It's ten o' clock the sun is down
Just begun to set the western hills on fire
I hear that you don't change
How do you expect to keep up with the trends
You won't survive the information age
Unless you plan to change the truth to accommodate the brilliance of man
The brilliance of man
(from “Letter From a Concerned Follower”)
G.K. Chesterton
“Gazing at some detail like a bird or a cloud, we can all ignore its awful blue background; we can neglect the sky; and precisely because it bears down upon us with an annihilating force it is felt as nothing. A thing of this kind can only be an impression and a rather subtle impression; but to me it is a very strong impression made by pagan literature and religion. I repeat that in our special sacramental sense there is, of course, the absence of the presence of God. But there is in a very real sense the presence of the absence of God. We feel it in the unfathomable sadness of pagan poetry; for I doubt if there was ever in all the marvelous manhood of antiquity a man who was happy as St. Francis was happy.” (from
The Everlasting Man)
Gus Van Sant
Elephant (2003)
Paranoid Park (2008)
Solomon
"I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor--it is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by." (Ecclesiastes 3:10-15).
Jack Kerouac
“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” (from
On the Road)
St. Augustine
"Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee..."
Martin Luther
“Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
The Son (2002)
The Child (2005)
In all earnestness, did your publisher pick the term Christian Hipster? It’s deflating, and I honestly think that if you lost it you could uncover a truth that’s not paraphrased, pre-packaged and is worth hearing.
I can’t help but love Shane for what he says…but it IS true, what he’s preaching right now is definately hot and of the moment. I’d like to think he’s been on that bandwagon longer than most though, and will stick with it longer than the rest of us…
Great interview by the way.
Matthew,
Say wha?
There is no way Shane Claiborne would qualify as a hipster, unless there’s some alternate definition of hipster that comes from the burbs, or people who don’t actually know hipsters.
Just a quotation from Goudzwaard & Lange’s book, “Beyond Poverty & Affluence: Toward an Economy of Care”, that seems to touch on what Shane is talking about.
“…the appeal to alter our lifestyle does not consist of urging us to make painful sacrifices for the sake of others. On the contrary, our appeal is fundamentally different in principle. It involves the realization that because of our collective drive for more and more, we directly damage our own well-being. We require another vision of life, a vision in which the word enough plays a positive role. The implementation of such a vision will create new possibilities for neighborliness, for demonstrating care for our surroundings, and for having more time available in our harried lives. Such a vision will help us liberate not only the poor but also the rich.”
It’s tragic that one’s motives become suspect when what one does is thought popular.
Tim, who said anything about anyone’s motives being “suspect”? I’m not questioning Shane’s motives at all.
I was mostly responding to a combination of your penultimate paragraph and Meghan’s first comment.
Good interview, Brett. He is certainly an interesting guy and is doing great things for that community in Philly.
I do wonder about one of his comments from your interview though. It was when he was quoting Dorothy Day and he said, “Dorothy Day used to say, ‘If every Christian home had a room for a stranger, it would end poverty.’ We would end homelessness.” As the Lord himself said, the poor will always be with us. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to help them, but I don’t believe we should be consumed with the belief that we can conquer poverty either. It won’t happen and isn’t meant to.
I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant when he said ‘The poor you will always have with you.’ It was less fortune telling or statement of permanence, but more along the lines of I’m about to die, you should stop contradicting me whenever I speak.
Then why didn’t he just say, “I’m about to die, you should stop contradicting me whenever I speak” Tim? He said similar things to his apostles on many occasions (sans the “about to die” bit).
I prefer to fix on what Jesus did say instead of what I don’t think he meant.
The truth is that we will always have the poor with us because sadly some people choose homelessness. It’s one of the more tragic aspects of this issue.
Luke, that is exactly what Jesus says: The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. He’s rebuking the disciples, who are griping. He isn’t making a general statement about the poor (or that ‘some people choose homelessness,’ whatever that means), he’s telling the disciples to stop complaining and pay attention because he’s about to die. I know that that’s what he’s doing in this passage because that’s what he says.
Tim, we’re quibbling over words here, which seems par for the course with most of the interactions that I have had with you in the past here (heh).
Jesus is absolutely rebuking the disciples for griping, and before that he states that you will always have the poor with you. There are no grounds to assume that Jesus didn’t actually mean what he said how he said it, especially since you are taking the rest of his statement at face value. You are forcing your own interpretation on his statement, I assume because you do not like/believe what the statement concludes.
Tim, have you ever worked with homeless or impoverished people? I’m only asking because in the small amount that I have volunteered my time, one thing stood out very clearly for me. Some people choose the street. Many homeless people have families and homes that they have left behind for a myriad of reasons (mental illness, choosing an addiction over a family, stress, etc). The amount of people who are forced into homelessness is actually a smaller fraction of the larger problem than most people think. At least this has been my limited experience with the situation.
I believe this bears out the truth of Jesus’ statement. We will always have the poor among us because there will always be people who choose poverty, either through their actions or inaction.
Luke, my quibble is that you took Christ’s statement that amounts to ‘honestly folks, deal with the poor later, believe me, they’ll still be there, but I won’t be for much longer’ to mean that conquering poverty isn’t ‘meant’ to happen– you use Christ’s statement which has nothing to do with permanence and everything to do with the temporary and use it as an argument against Claiborne’s suggestion that Christians live more akin to Christ. You are taking Claiborne’s words incredibly literally, and you are refusing to acknowledge the context in which Jesus is speaking. Jesus did not say, ‘The poor you will always have with you.’ He said, ‘The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.‘
This is going nowhere. Just because there is a comma in a sentence, doesn’t mean that you are not supposed to pay attention to the segment that preceeds the comma.
You didn’t answer my question about working with the poor and disenfranchised. Do you volunteer your time to help? If yes, then you’re doing your part and there’s no need to worry about all this. If no, then you have no stake in this conversation, so why spend time quibbling?
After following this blog for the past year, it’s my honest assessment that more often than not, you like to argue for the simple sake of arguing, Tim. Obviously it’s a free country (and not my blog), but it does get tiresome.
No one is suggesting that we ignore the independent clause. I am suggesting that we pay attention to what Jesus is saying, rather than taking half of a sentence entirely out of context. The first part of the sentence is a reference to Deuteronomy 15.11, wherein God is laying out to Moses what will become known as the Year of Jubilee– every seven years, all debts are to be forgiven. God goes on to instruct,
This is the tradition that Jesus is citing– the requirement from God that we give without hesitation, without ceasing, without forethought. There is an obligation to give: it’s a commandment. Jesus’ point is similar to one he makes time and again during his ministry, though: Obedience to this commandment must not be slavish, or by rote, but out of genuine love for our neighbor and obedience to God. Jesus says, ‘The poor you will always have with you’– that’s true, we are obligated to give and to serve– ‘but you will not always have me.’ This is the part that’s a rebuke: our service to others proceeds from our service to God; we must not loose sight of why we bear this obligation. The disciples are not trying to serve, but merely to play holier-than-thou with the woman who bought the expensive perfume, and Jesus is calling them out on it.
In light of this, I remain utterly flabbergasted that anyone can read this passage and think that Jesus is talking at all about how poverty can’t be solved. I’m not attempting to argue that poverty can be solved, but that has absolutely nothing to do with what Jesus said.
Tim, people will use any argument they can find to excuse themselves from the task of systemic analysis of class.
Just as, no doubt, many people engage in endless systematic analysis of class to excuse themselves from the task of actually going to the streets, getting their hands dirty and helping homeless people.
Yep, both extremes are to be avoided. The main question is: am I doing something to help? Lots of ways to do so and lots of needs to be filled.
Whoah, this seems irrelevant in light of the pretty intense debates above, but I was wondering if you had seen this article Brett
(http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_9418)
They call them the poorgeoisie for their purposes, but I think hipster can also apply, and that you might be interested….
Thanks for that link! Amazing article. I just wrote a blog post about it… Thanks for the tip!