Jesus didn’t quietly fit into the politically correct culture of his day. He hung out with the people who others looked down upon – poor, children, tax collectors and prostitutes. In Subversive Jesus, Craig Greenfield tries to sort out what kind of life Jesus is calling his followers to lead in present day – a subversive life, a life against the established order.
I was part of the book launch team for this book and received an advanced copy of the ebook to read and review. I had not heard of Greenfield before this, but found his life and calling very interesting and convicting.
Greenfield feels called to live with the poor and has done so both in the slums of Cambodia and in downtown Vancouver – with his wife and children. He believes in coming alongside people and being there for them. They ate what the people ate and lived where the people lived, and in doing so, brought the message of Christianity to the doorstep of the people instead of waiting for them to come to a church building. He influenced people in Cambodia by setting up a mentoring program for the younger children who were often without at least one parent and in Vancouver by helping feed the homeless and give addicts a place to start detoxing before treatment center spots opened up.
I was compelled by how transparent Greenfield was with his joy and his struggles in the book. There is no sense of him trying to tell people they should be doing what he is doing. He definitely creates a case for living with the poor, but makes several key points: you must love your family first before showing love to others, we are each called in different ways and should follow that calling, sometimes you have to take care of yourself to take care of others and no work done for Christ is small.
“If you are seeking the work God has made you to do, search for the deepest inclination of your heart and follow it to where it meets the suffering of the world. Or in the words of Mother Teresa, ‘Find your own Calcutta.’ If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed the one God places in front of you. You must resist the temptation to do nothing because you can do only a little or because you can’t be like someone else who seems more radical. It takes many tiny candles to overcome the darkness.”
I highly recommend this book to any Christian. This, along with 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) have challenged me very much in the past few months to look at how I am living my life and how I can help people where I am. Read this book and then let me know if it changed your view of your life’s purpose.