The post title is stolen from Scot McKnight over at the Jesus Creed blog, and it’s a little bit misleading, because it would be a slight mistruth to call all these people friends, some of them I only know through what they write. So this is a posting of semi-random quotes from what I’m being inspired by in the blogosphere.

The first one is from Hamo over at Backyard Missionary – “Some (final) thoughts on misison in suburbia”. Don’t just look at the quotes below though – if you haven’t already please do yourself a favour and have a read of the post – it’s pure gold.

“If we are to have time for people then it will require us to choose to live at a different pace and to choose to forego some of the things we may believe we are entitled to or we may feel it ‘neceesary’(sic) to own.”

….”Yes, of course Jesus came to give us ‘life to the full’ but he also spoke of self denial, of taking up a cross, of suffering. They killed him for his message! These are not words suburbanites like to hear. It is a hard gospel to sell. There is nothing in suburbia that really lends itself to suffering and downward mobility.

It much more palatable to preach ‘middle class values with a little dab of Jesus on top’, but as we have done that we seen the ultimate syncretism where in many places we now equate middle class morality with Christianity.”

Choosing to live at a different pace. It’s certainly resonating with where my mind is going at the moment: there has to be some serious creedence in blowing away the mindset that I must work my butt off to support a lifestyle of opulence. Mate, just watch me resign….

Now just to keep the theme of cost and counter-culturalism going here, it’s something from my good friend little Paulie:

“From my personal perspective, if I’m only interested in God as an extension of being interested in myself, I may as well cut down on active expressions of faith altogether and embrace an illusion. I could just be toddling along to a random church for Easter and Christmas, comfortably calling myself a Christian and completely missing the point at the same time.”

I wonder just how much of this attitude to Christianity comes from how we draw people to Christ in the first place. Our evangelism is all about fitting the needs of the individual – whether that’s from a “turn or burn” approach, or the more acceptable (in my circles at least) “personal relationship with Jesus”, the focus is almost completely on the individual. So once we then get the new believer “over the line” (yes, I’m deliberately being this coarse), it ought to be little surprise that they then struggle to comprehend the notion that being a disciple of Jesus is a communal experience – not an individual one. We’re selling them a Mercedes and then later explaining that they’ve bought a Mercedes Van and that there are going to be 8 other people sharing the van with them. But unfortunately, I only know what the symptoms are, I don’t have any idea of where to start with a cure.

Next to a blog that I’ve only just got onto, thanks to Scott and Christina – Darryl Gardiner’s blog “Angry and Shallow” (what a name)

“A lot of people, Christians in particular, say that homosexuality, and the rights they now have, will destroy the family in New Zealand. What a load of crap! The family in New Zealand has been disintegrating for a long time and for a range of reasons. I would suggest the number one is fathers that are working too hard and long, that are abusive or that are absent (physically or emotionally)!”

So the theme continues. Are we called to rebel against the time-poor, always busy, living to work mindset of this world? Can anyone disagree without using the word “stewardship”. I’m really struggling to justify my current lifestyle. This wasn’t how this post was suppossed to go – I just wanted to be inspired

My last bit is from the comments on “A Beautiful God?” right here on the Geoff Report.

“Personally I reckon we blokes have lost our freedom to feel beautiful without being gay. Its almost like gay people have a monopoly on beauty and rainbows and happy things. I don’t have any issue with gay people and they are welcome to as much beauty and raibows and happy stuff as they want… but I reckon we should fight for our right to those things too. ” – Timmeh

“I like Timmeh’s thought about the ownership of manly appreciation of beauty: strange, given obvious notings of the re-casting of ‘manliness’ following us all perhaps losing our identity of manliness – on one side there’s FHM/Ralph and arrogant matesy drinking (we’ve almost left it to the breweries to define what a bloke is now!), and on the other there’s touchy feely fab 5 style maleness; not much in between that’s out there and trendy; but who cares about trendiness?” – Matt

This hit on a pretty raw personal nerve. There’s no doubt that I have issues with trying to understand where beauty fits into my world as a hetereosexual Australian male. I still don’t know, but I might be willing to chase after finding out.