Subversive Jesus by Craig Greenfield

Subversive Jesus by Craig Greenfield ISBN-13: 9780310346234 Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Zondervan Released: April 26, 2016

Source: Review copy from the publisher through Booklook.

Book Description, Modified from Back Cover:
Subversive Jesus is the story of one family's experiment in putting the most countercultural teachings of Christ into practice. When Jesus says invite the poor for a meal, Craig and his family welcome homeless friends, local crack addicts, and women from the street corner over for dinner. When Jesus teaches love for enemies, they make homemade cookies and lemonade for the local drug dealers, and none of them show up! This adventure takes Craig's family from the slums of Cambodia to inner-city Canada and back again.


My Review:
Subversive Jesus is part biography and part Christian living. The author described some of what they did in the slums of Cambodia and in downtown Canada. In Cambodia, they helped start a movement of poor, older kids mentoring poor, younger kids. I would have liked to know more about this, but more time was spent on the radical hospitality concept that they developed in Vancouver. His family lived in Downtown Eastside in an area with open drug dealing. They opened their house to those struggling with addictions and to the homeless.

There was enough information that one could probably replicate some of it in a poor, inner city neighborhood. But only the overall attitude toward the poor (which I already have) would apply to my poor, rural area. Yet I got more out of seeing him learn various lessons about working with the poor than I did from the sections where he preached at the reader about their attitudes toward the poor.

The author had the tendency to read his interpretation into the verses he brought up. For example, he stated "that Jesus walked from Galilee to Jerusalem on what could be seen as a nonviolent protest march" (page 136) which ended with his cleansing of the temple. Except this was when he was traveling to Jerusalem for the Passover. It had nothing to due with marching in protest.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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