I’m Moving…

… to bunderwood.missionalrichmond.net

the Ordinary Radicals movie trailer

The death of a blog?

Ok… now that Jesus For President is over, I’ve been trying to think about what i need to do with this blog.  I’ve come up with three ideas for it that keep coming back around, so I need some help.

1.  I’ve been thinking about taking a sabbatical from blogging and then come back doing the same type of thing I was doing before we started the J4P community series.

2. I liked the J4P series and having the community of differing voices heard about the book, although there are a few things I’d change- like not dragging it out over 2+ months(I think it would be better to have put out posts back to back rather than every other day).  So, I’m thinking this could be a place to discuss different books throughout the year.  There are many reasons why this may not work, but I’d love to hear your thoughts or even books that might be of interest to the larger community.

3. It is time to kill it!  For those who don’t know, the Underwoods are in major life transition right now.  This is a difficult thing for me to think about because I have felt this a safe place to wrestle with many of the questions that I have.  I have had to take the time to write out my thoughts as i write them down in a way that birthed new hope in me at a time when the wilderness was feeling eternal.  I started this blog with the title ‘Hope like Mad” because I believed that there had to be more than what I had been sold.  I have found this to be true thanks to many of you who have walked beside me with your comments, encouragements and critiques.

So, what do you think?  Or do you have a different idea for this blog?  I’d love to hear you thoughts!   thanks -b

J4P – Pictures

Thanks for everyone that helped put together the Jesus for President Book tour here in Richmond and for all those who came out to the event!

J4P – …Endorse No One

This came from Sojourners today, so I thought I’d pass it along.

Advise Everyone… Endorse No One (by Shane Claiborne)

As we pass the half-way point of our Jesus for President tour, we remember Jesus’ admonition that we be “as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.” There is a lot of momentum around our little campaign of political misfits – from some of the mainstream media and from the dozen cities where we’ve had thousands of folks come together to plot goodness. And with the momentum comes temptation.  Click to continue to read the whole article

J4P – Loving the Hell out of People

Philip Watkins is today’s guest blogger for the Jesus for President Community Blog

Christians must discern between the voices competing for their allegiance.

One of the most profound statements (he makes many) Shane makes in this section talks about our allegiance to a nation instead of it lying in a Savior.  As Shane quotes President Bush and Osama Bin Laden both talking about freedom and how to rid the world of “moral evil,” you can easily see the similarities in the two.  They both believe it is their right and calling to deliver the world from the evil.  As they both believe in ridding each other from the world, Claiborne talks about our duty as Christians (or what should be our duty) to ‘excommunicate’ a baptized follower of Jesus from taking part in communion because of doctrine or moral behavior that is adjudged to offend against God or the Christian community.

He talks about the gift of community and how precious God intended it to be and how this idea is not meant to bully or rid the church of them but rather bring proper and healthy discipline.  When viewed with the ideas of exiled, execution, and bombings we see that this idea of excommunication is not only somewhat reasonable, but almost a great idea.

I am compelled by his statements about love and hell.  This idea of “loving the hell out of people” is incredibly difficult to live out but yet it is truly life altering.  Shane discusses and walks through the two different situations when Jesus talks about hell in a violent way both having to do with us creating a chasm between us and others therefore building a wall between God and us.  He talks about Matthew 25 as well as the rich man and Lazarus.  Jesus never uses hell fire and brimstones sermons on the mount, but rather loving our enemies, taking care of the poor, feeding the homeless, and loving the widows and orphans.  Instead of scaring people into heaven we need to love them out of hell.  In essence…loving the hell out of people. Since hell is something we create and live now, on this side of eternity, we have the opportunity to help others escape their hell.

May we as followers of Jesus love the hell out of people.  May we believe and hope that there is more than a pledge and flag of a nation.  May we rise up and become a true follower of Jesus and live a life in allegiance with what the Scripture says instead of what our government or nation says.  May we represent the Jesus in the Gospels and not the one of the paintings, stories, and lies crafted by societies and cultures.  May we truly find ourselves living this out every day and not just on November 4th.

Philip Watkins is the summer intern at the Imago Dei church plant in Richmond, a student at Liberty University and a Redskins fan (but we’ll forgive him for that).

J4P – Amish for Homeland Security

Diana Butler Bass wrote a post for the God’s Politics blog called, What if the Amish were in charge of the war on terror?

Below is a brief section from that article:

Despite attempts to avoid this particular news, the stories of the Amish practice of forgiveness eventually captivated me. Their practice of forgiveness unfolded in four public acts over the course of a week. First, some elders visited Marie Roberts, the wife of the murderer, to offer forgiveness. Then, the families of the slain girls invited the widow to their own children’s funerals. Next, they requested that all relief monies intended for Amish families be shared with Roberts and her children. And, finally, in an astonishing act of reconciliation, more than 30 members of the Amish community attended the funeral of the killer.

Be sure to read the whole article here and then let us know what you think.  Do you find this compelling?  Are there ways to translate these actions of the Amish into the broader picture of what is going on today?

Happy B-Day!

The other day we were in a store when keila went up to the desk to pay while just holding Tessa. The lady behind the desk exclaimed…

“Wow, you look amazing for just having had a baby”

Keila blushed as she said “thank you” while the lady behind the desk turned to her co-worker to make the same point.

“She looks good for just having a baby, doesn’t she?”

After a few comments about Tessa being a cute baby, the rest of the Underwood children converged onto the scene.

With a dropped jaw the lady behind the desk asks, “these aren’t all yours, are they?”

Keila with a little chuckle said, “Yep.”

Which got the great reply of, “Girl… you look too young to have four kids!!!!”

This proves that ** years old has never looked so good! Happy Birthday my young hottie!

Be sure to stop over at her blog and wish her a happy birthday!

J4P – Love over Surefire Results

Guest Blogger: Ryan Ellis

A Real Security Plan

First reading this section, the strongest idea that I see is stated rather clearly: that our lifestyles drenched with materialism and independence make it harder for us to follow Jesus, to love others. We have to change the way we behave economically if we want to change the way we behave socially. We simply can’t live the status quo with our wealth and still follow Jesus and love others. It’s a charge that demands action on the financial level, so I did a little research.

Turns out, this Jesus fellow once told some decently affluent chap to sell all his stuff and give it to the poor or something like that. Frankly, following Jesus economically doesn’t sound like its going to be easy. So anyway, what do I need to do? I have to do something, that’s clear enough. Should I be selling everything I own? Should I be putting my car on craigslist right now? Since it’s for the poor, should I try to get the best price for my laptop on ebay, or should I just take what I can get? Would Jesus leave his songs on his iPod when he pawned it off? Difficult questions, to be sure.

Anyway, other things have brought up this debate before. What do we do economically? Should I be poor? Is that what is asked of me? Well, though I really really want to, I haven’t run out and sold everything. First off, my wife, not a big fan of poverty. Secondly, its hard for poor folks to write blog posts. So what do I do? I feel the message. I want to follow Jesus economically. I want to do something that feels radical like selling everything, just without selling everything. The ideas that materialism and individualism and having loads of stuff, as far as I can see, do make it harder to follow Christ, but what do I do? I’m ready, but I can’t seem to answer the question: what do I do?

Which is why I like the next sections. The first of which is…

The Third Way of Jesus

…which does not answer the question at all. It does, however, with a mix of a stolen power tool, Les Mis, and school bullies, remind me that love is not easy. Whatever it is that I need to do, it’s going to be hard. Going forth in love will require a lot of effort. I know this. I’m ready. I’m a bit scared, but I’m enthusiastic. So what do I do?

Bustin’ Out a Can of Grace

This section doesn’t answer the question either. In fact, none of them did for me. I don’t think that will surprise anyone though. Rather I found here a little encouragement for wrestling with the question. Shane finds himself in a blatant WWJD situation, and he comes up with a bit of a blank. He doesn’t know what to do. Granted the situation in which the question “What do I do?” arose for him did require a bit more urgency than does mine (perhaps we could all use a little threatening of mob violence now and again), but he does something a bit inspiring. When he doesn’t know how to answer the question, he just does something. He tries. He tries to be creative, to do something unexpected. Something imperfect, something difficult. A bit of trying would be a step forward for myself most of the time. Possibly even more important than just trying is the fact that the normal thing to do in the situation would have been fine. It would have gotten him out of the immediate trouble. But he tries to do something better, even if he doesn’t know what. He fights the instinct, the common sense, the normal behavior, the tried and true, and he opts to go for something difficult, with no guarantee that anything amazing would happen. He has no assurance that he will get results for his effort, but he tries to show love, even if he doesn’t know exactly what to do.

Sure, he got a kid hit in the face with a broomstick, but love is hard.

We need to try to love, even when, and especially perhaps, when the normal, the accepted behavior might have worked out alright. So what does that look like on a daily basis? I’m worried that I’m not creative enough to know what to do…

Like King David

For example, giving your stolen horse a haircut, top and tails style, and then leaving it tied to a tree? I would have never thought of that one.

Lydia

We believe in love. Ideally, we don’t want our materialism, and we’d say that we’re willing to give up our independence, but we’re still working on what to do. What does it look like?

Four out of these five sections, including this one, deal with theft or robbery. It is interesting to see all these stories of problems which arise from people who have need, yet the most explicitly stated difficulty in following Jesus in all five sections is having stuff and being independent. It makes one want to imagine a situation that rectifies this imbalance. We’ve pegged independence as a villain, and we see an uneven distribution of wealth as a cause for social instability. I’ll be honest and say I haven’t read the rest of this book, but I’m guessing that it holds high the idea of community. Somehow we need to be dependent. We need to depend on each other, on our neighbors, on the poor. We need them to depend on us.

I still don’t know what it looks like exactly, but it’s nice to see these stories of people trying to love in creative ways, not simply heralding a quick solution or some get-poor-quick scheme. I often feel like I need to know that if I try to do something creative, something difficult, something unexpected in the name of love, that I’ll get results, which usually means I don’t do anything unexpected. I have a fear of giving up things I want to give up, like some of my materialism and independence; because I want to be sure in giving them up I’ll get results. I like to read these stories where people seem to have chosen love over surefire results. I’ve still got a lot to learn as far as any of this goes, and knowing that love isn’t easy, I appreciate this last section about the woman name Lydia as she demonstrates a bit of courage.

Ryan Ellis is simply one of my best friends for helping me to see things in new and fresh ways. He is newly married and is currently living in Virgina in between stays in South Korea, England and possibly Thailand.

J4P – Imaging another world one step at a time (part 2)

Daniel Farrell – Guest Blogger for the Community Book Review of Jesus for President.

Be sure to check out part 1 as well.

God’s Streets

Crime is the next topic on our agenda.  They used the example of a church in Chicago that started their own nonviolent security team.  I feel like there is a lot of room for something like this here.  Crime is less of an issue in Richmond than it was just a few years ago, but the answers that people come up with(block captains programs that work with the police and neighborhood watch) just funnel people into the prison system instead of trying to help them recover.

My only thought here on resources would be the Richmond Peace Education Center which does conflict resolution training and other helpful things.  Again, if you know of other resources please leave them in the comments.

Living with Old People

This is a topic I’m less than familiar with.  They used the example of a couple they know who adopted an elderly woman with Alzheimer.  We have a penchant for just pushing the elderly away into retirement communities and nursing homes.  These can be some of the lonely places around.  Does anyone know of groups that visit shut-ins and nursing homes?

Give to Uncle Sam what is Uncle Sam’s

Taxes.  They say there are 2 guarantees in life, death and taxes.  But what do we do when nearly 50% of our taxes go to fund war and war related activities?  They give some examples of groups who have chosen to live completely simple lives and stay below the poverty and tax line.  While I don’t think that an easy transition to make it is something to consider.  Beyond that they offer some creative options but nothing that I really found practical.

Make Stuff

And the final stop in our rapid fire things to make the world better is in making our own stuff.  Expressing your creativity is a way to show that you are made in the image of a creative God.  It’s also a way to avoid being a part of exploitation.  Much of our clothing was made in sweatshops around the world by workers forced into awful situations.  Making your own clothes means that there will be less demand for clothes made in sweatshops.  Beyond sweatshops it’s also a way to practice resurrection by creatively reusing things and also a way to demonstrate that we can be sufficient without being fully dependent on the global economy.

I would have liked to see some more thought given to fair trade and local economies around this section.  But I guess that means I should write about that some myself.  But this rapid fire look at alternative ways of living was helpful to inspire me some and I hope it helps inspire you as well.

Daniel Farrell is a follower of Jesus, a husband to Alicia and owner/operator of Farrell IT. He lives, works and plays in Richmond, VA. You can follow along the Pilgrimage that Daniel finds himself on here