Was Jesus Christ a lefty? Philosophers, politicians, theologians and lay members of the various Christian churches have long been divided on the subject. The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev once declared: “Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.” The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, went further, describing Christ as “the greatest socialist in history”. But it’s not just Russian ex-communists and Bolivarian socialists who consider Jesus to be a fellow-traveller. Even the Daily Mail sketch-writer Quentin Letts once confessed: “Jesus preached fairness – you could almost call him a lefty.”
That conservatives have succeeded in claiming Christ as one of their own in recent years – especially in the US, where the Christian right is in the ascendancy – is a tragedy for the modern left. Throughout history, Jesus’s teachings have inspired radical social and political movements: Christian pacifism (think the Quakers, Martin Luther King or Bruce Kent in CND), Christian socialism (Keir Hardie or Tony Benn), liberation theology (in South America) and even “Christian communism”. In the words of the 19th-century French utopian philosopher Étienne Cabet, “Communism is Christianity . . . it is pure Christianity, before it was corrupted by Catholicism.”
These days, however, the so-called God-botherers tend to be on the right. In his book God’s Politics, the US Evangelical pastor Jim Wallis, spiritual adviser to President Obama and Gordon Brown before him, laments the manner in which Jesus’s message has been misinterpreted by the warring political tribes, writing of how the right gets Christ wrong, while the left doesn’t get him at all.
Jesus didn’t associate with Students for a Democratic Society like Jim Wallis did. Jesus told the woman caught in adultery to “sin no more”. Planned Parenthood aggressively markets the advantages of birh control and abortions to teens and above in any quantity they want, likely Jesus would not do that. Kevin Jennings advocates the homosexual agenda in public schools, probably Jesus would not have done that. The Federal Government set up massive income redistribution schemes to break up lower income families, likely Jesus would not have done that. State governments and Federal judges advocate for homosexual marriage, Jesus likely would not have done that. And not to leave out Wallis’ precious concern for racial discrimination, one should recall it was democrats from the 1860’s through the 1960’s who worked to maintain slavery and who worked against civil rights laws.
In spite of that, Wallis (to quote him directly), “laments the manner in which Jesus’s message has been misinterpreted by the warring political tribes, writing of how the right gets Christ wrong”.
Sure the right gets Jesus wrong, we all do because only He can save us from ourselves, but at least a lot of those on the “right” make an effort to understand what Jesus in particular and Scripture in general has to say about God and the relationship we need to strive toward with Him.
Pretty hackneyed stuff. Jesus is a Second Temple period Jewish Rabbi preaching, teaching, dying and rising in and ascending from first century Judea and Galilee (there was no such thing as Palestine until after the Bar Kokba revolt in the second century). He is not – and never will be – a twelfth century Scholastic, an eighteenth century Rationalist, or a 20th century Civil Rights Worker. As a first century Jewish Rabbi, He has no interest whatever in America’s tax rate. Or her border policy. Or the justification for her wars. As the ascended Ruler of the Universe, of course, He may well wish [i]us[/i] to take an appropriate interest in a number of these things. But Jesus Himself, the sin-fearing, Torah-observant Hasidim – like many of the sort in His day, He has a high moral view of the Torah, easy relations with women, and is not particularly strict with respect to the ritual purity laws, though He never eats with or even touches a Gentile – has no position on the secular laws of the modern United States of America. He sides with one tradition against others with respect to the divorce laws of His day and takes the side of the less biblically rigorist Pharisees with respect to the Resurrection vs. the more literalist Sadducees. Like any Jew of His day, He finds the sexual mores of the Gentiles – including, particularly, their willingness to indulge in homosexual imitations of copulation – too disgusting to bother outright opposing. The matter is too obvious.
The question, “What would Jesus do?” has always been fundamentally flawed. Without Jesus, there would be no modern nation state, no scientific revolution, no modern democracy, no – well, point made. There is simply no way to imagine Jesus gracing modern America with His incarnate presence. Had He not so graced first century Judea and Galilee, there is simply no reason to believe that there could possibly be such a thing as modern America. The question is simply not answerable.
What would He have [i]us[/i] do? That’s certainly a plausible and indeed essential question. Part, of course, of answering it is that we travel via scripture to Jesus’ time and place and sit at His Jewish, rabbinic feet as if we were first century Jews ourselves. After hearing what He has to say, we travel back to our world and, in the power of the Spirit, live it out as best we can, relying on His grace, patience and mercy. Whether we should then vote Democrat I’ll leave for others to discuss.
Well, Cpn Deacon, he may have associated with far worse. Paul was a murderer.
More likely either right wing or left wing people trying to contain Jesus will be left with nothing. He would have disapproved of the right’s easy tolerance of the foibles of the rich, while challenging the left’s utopianism. Jesus wasn’t an individualist; nor would have have run a modern nation state. He could have been a cooperative ist; but he wasn’t a tyrant. If we’re too comfortable, we’re probably thinking he’s more like us than challenging us.
I’m a little less optimistic than Deacon Warren about the right’s self-description as closer to God. cCearly anyone who says such thinks of himself a little less of a sinner than others. And that is an example of pride. From which arises all sorts of mischief.
I confess I have a difficult time reconciling the Social Darwinism of the Tea Party and Republican Christians with the Gospels and the prophets. I have as difficult a time reconciling the anti-life gospel of Democratic Christians who claim they love the poor but are perfectly willing to fund the eugenics campaign of Margaret Sanger’s organizations. Christians who follow Christ do not believe the Messiah and His gospel is to be found in the machinations of any political party. Christians who are disciples ought to be the most persistent critics of both parties and of any attempt to cover political power agendas with the overlay of a sold-out Christian “faith”.
Amen, Dan Crawford! Jesus did not become involved in the secular politics of the day, even though some of the Jewish leaders tried to draw Him into it.
I personally have a huge problem with any politician or political group trying to hijack Jesus’ message for their own benefit. Jesus’ kingdom isn’t/wasn’t a politial realm.
I know my first post was a little lengthy, but had you soldiered on you would have read, [i]Sure the right gets Jesus wrong, we all do because only He can save us from ourselves[/i].
I am always a little amused when a parishioner complains about politics being intermixed with religion because “certainly Jesus shied away from politics”. Jesus’ whole life on earth was connected with the Temple of His heavenly Father. And the Temple was the nexus of Jewish religous life and political life. When the New Covenant threatened the old order, the responses of the old Order were political rather than religous, otherwise the old Order would have recognized the Messiah in their midst.
On this Blessed Eve of the Nativity, a Blessed Christmas to all! May our Eucharistic Celebration of the Divine gift graft deeper within us the divine reality of true reconcilliation which the Father grants to us through His one and only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
6, as you allude, 1st Century Israel was a theocracy under Roman rule (whose Emperor claimed to be a God). To meddle with the Temple as Jesus did was to meddle in the heart of 1st Century Jewish politics. To claim to be a King was, in Roman eyes, sedition. You can’t get more political than that.
Definition of a neo-socialist–someone who is offended when you say “Merry Christmas” but then asks WWJD about tax policy.
Literally LOL, David Keller!
Deacon and Brother, I think we may have different ideas about what “political” means in this context. Jesus’ very mission put Him at odds with the political establishments but His answer was not to side with one set of politicians over another, engage in fomenting political opposition, or use either system to further His aims/ministry.
What did he tell Pilate? “It’s YOU who say that I am a King; my Kingdom is not of this world.”
I too have the deepest trouble with pols oif any stripe who try to co op Jesus and his message for their own political gain. Remember what the Ghost of Christmas Present said to Scrooge. “…. and abide the result.” There is no bedrock to our vanity, our egotism, our willingness to deceive ourselves. Alas for us all.
And yet, a merry Christmas to you all and a happy and healthy new year. On Epiphany (is it Jan 6?) the sun rises a minute earlier at last, and God keeps yet again his oldest promise to mankind, that the year has truly turned and that the cold will not last forever. Larry