Following Jesus

"I would just love to see Christians following Jesus. He was not an easy guy to follow, especially when he started talking about loving neighbors and loving enemies and going beyond tolerance to live your life with people who are nothing like you and disagree with you. I really want to hammer on some of these points, because I think they are the hallmarks of following Jesus.

I don't think that Christianity, Jesus or the Bible have failed; I think that Christians have failed to believe it and to do it. If Christians would just look at the life and the words, and pursue Jesus, I think they would suddenly find that it's incongruent with a lot of cultural Christianity and Christian practice. I would love to see Jesus lead all of us out of this ghetto of Christian subculture. Even if that happened, we'd still be diverse members of one body, so it doesn't mean we'd suddenly become homogenized. We'd all still have our particular personalities and gifts. Those differences are good. But the most primary and basic ethics that compel us as followers of Jesus should change, and it would change everything and reorient us back to what it actually means to be a Christian: to love." -Derek Webb, in an interview with Chris Stedman.