Also, like Shane, I see the atrocities done in this world. I feel terribly for the people who lose their lives everyday, whether it is from poverty, hunger, AIDS, or falling bombs. I sincerely wish that there was something more that I could do. I have spoken out at my school, to friends and to family (even the die-hard Catholic grandparents who love the military). I was in the Invisible Children's Club at my high school. My senior year, we won a national contest by raising over $25,000 for the campaign. Taylor Thompson (currently at Vanderbilt) got to go to Africa this summer and help watch the building of a school, which our money funded.
I am also deeply confused with our sense of "justice", a main topic in our course. "Ironically, most violence comes from a deep desire for justice," Shane says on page 247. We put people on death row for murder. We bomb other countries "in the name of freedom."
Shane gives an altar call to close his book. "It is an altar call to the world, an invitation to see a new kind of Christianity and to hear the confession of a church on its knees asking your forgiveness for the mess we have helped create," (357). Will we hear this altar call? And do we even want to? Shane also says: "We want a God who is at a safe distance," (321). I see this more often than I see the Shane's in the world. I think that we all do, though we may not want to admit it.
I would imagine that most of us would be afraid to give up all that we have. To protest against the world's injustices. To put ourselves, literally, in the face of death (as Shane did in Iraq). I know that I would be.
It is beautiful to see people filled with such love as Shane. But how many of us could, and would, honestly, do the same?
