The Irresistible Revolution was a very challenging book for me personally. I would definitely recommend reading the book, but only if you have an open mind and are prepared to ask yourself some tough questions.

In the introduction Shane begins to write of a, “revolution that dances, laughs and loves.” When I hear revolution I immediately think of war and violence. It was refreshing to read the story of someone who believes the world can be changed through nonviolence and evil can be conquered by love and grace.

The Irresistible Revolution is somewhat autobiographical as it follows Shane Claiborne from his high school years as the prom king and a kid who “had it all together,” to his current life as a dreadlock wearing Christian activist.

Shane tells about when he first began to fall in love with the homeless on the streets of Philadelphia and how he learned about faith from them. He says that he began to read about the disciples and the great men and women of faith in the Bible and started wondering if there was anyone like that alive today. He said he was searching for heroes of the faith and every time he found one, they were already dead.

Finally, he learned of Mother Theresa in Calcutta, India. He somehow managed to get a phone number to call her and her response to him was the same as it was to anyone interested in what she was doing, “come and see.”

So Shane went. He says that when he got there, he thought he was crazy. But then he saw people from all over the world that had come to join the work. He says they were, “ordinary radicals just trying to figure out how to love better.” Shane says he felt like he really met God face to face in Calcutta. He says he felt like he met God, “in the face of the dying.”

Later in the book, Shane travels to Baghdad, Iraq in March of 2003. His reason for going? Very simply, “because I believe in a God of scandalous grace.” I love that quote as well as so many others in this book. Shane says at one point, “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.”

Shane Claiborne no doubt believes strongly in the principles of nonviolence, but does not consider himself a pacifist. Shane writes that he sees a Jesus who, “abhors both passivity and violence, who carves out a third way that is neither submission nor assault, neither fight nor flight.” Shane quotes Walter Wink as saying of this third way, “evil can be opposed without being mirrored…oppressors can be resisted without being emulated…enemies can be neutralized without being destroyed.”

Having been a very violent young man in my past, I had still clung to the “myth of redemptive violence” (as Shane calls it) until I read this book for the first time. Now reading it for the second time I am all the more firm that redemptive violence is a myth.

Shane says, “The only thing harder than hatred is love. The only thing harder than war is peace. The only thing that takes more work, tears, and sweat than division is reconciliation.” I could go on and on pulling amazing little quotes from all over this book, but I suggest you read it yourself. But as Rob Bell, author of Velvet Elvis, puts it, “Be warned, my friends: Shane is a poet, a friend, a brother-but underneath it all, he’s a prophet with a fire in his belly and a story to back it up. If you listen-or in this case, read-you will not be the same.”

Shane is careful to temper the hard teachings in this book with love and grace. As I said before, he starts it by calling this a, “revolution that dances, laughs and loves.” No revolution is easy, but who can help but join in a group of people dancing and laughing and loving each other. That’s what makes this revolution irresistible. He wants to see people come together as in the book of Acts. He is a man who has a vision of a better world and refuses to wait on the afterlife to see it. He is focused on bringing heaven to earth and encouraging us to do the same.

Andrew, 24, Alabama