posted on October 1, 2005 08:47:09 AM new
Most in the religious and political left don’t seem to know enough about Jesus to ask what he said or would do. And those in the religious right don’t dare ask, because they know they and their ministers aren’t serving the teachings of Jesus at all, and he would hate what they’ve done in his name. So they just talk about their God, and who he would bomb, hate or want killed.
But Jesus was not a Christian, and he didn’t quote the Bible. He didn’t even think it was particularly authoritative. Jesus was a liberal Jew. He has become the most famous religious liberal of the first century.
But even though conservatives are people who worship dead liberals, you don’t hear them asking WWJD because Jesus was a liberal, and Jesus would hate the religion they’ve constructed around his name but not around his teachings.
The religion of Jesus has always been the enemy of the religions about Jesus: the supernatural religion of the baby and the cross; the religion of the gagged and crucified savior who is not allowed to speak. But when he was alive, Jesus the liberal Jew did speak. Here are some of the things he said:
Start with the list of beatitudes we read together earlier (Reading 640). These read like a translation by the scholars of the Jesus Seminar:
Blessed are you poor. The realm of God is yours.
Blessed are you who hunger today. You shall be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep today. You shall laugh.
Blessed are the humble. They will inherit the earth.
Blessed are the merciful. They will find mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers. They will be ranked as children of God….
Think of the direction America has been taking for the past quarter century. Think of our illegal invasion of Iraq, where we have killed over 100,000 people who look a lot more like Jesus than they look like most of us. Think of the fact that we have a higher percentage of our citizens without health care than any other developed nation besides Africa. Or that about 18,000 Americans die each year because of inadequate health care, or of a dozen other things from the news of the past years, and ask whose side you think Jesus would be on.
Jesus said a tree is known by its fruits. What kind of a tree do you think he would say America has become?
He said “What good does it do if you love those who love you? Even the worst of people do that. No, you should love even your enemies.” Is this Jesus on the side of the religious right, or the religious and secular left?
He told a rich lawyer to sell all he had and give it to the poor. What do you think Jesus would say about the economic priorities of the Christian right, when men like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson preach that there should be no taxation of the rich, no welfare, no social security, no medicare, and no public education? And that’s not even counting Falwell’s proclamation that we should “hunt down terrorists and blow them away in the name of the Lord,” or Robertson’s that we should send assassins into Venezuala to murder their president Hugo Chavez because Chavez, unlike American preachers or politicians, has had the courage to stand up the bullying imperialism of the US.
And when a group of self-righteous people asked him how the quality of their faith was to be judged, he said it would be judged by what they had done to “the least of these” among the people around them.
We live in a time when official Christianity has become the mortal enemy of everything Jesus held to be sacred. We live in a time, and in a state, where the governor can go to the Cavalry Christian Academy in Ft. Worth to sign a bill prohibiting the marriage of homosexuals who love each other: a time when he and the leaders of that Christian academy can wrap these bigoted and hateful actions in the mantle of popular politics and religion. It is a time when those who make their living by pandering to the worst among us have hijacked the name of the man Jesus who lived and died serving the least among us.
Unlike the Christian moralists of today, Jesus ate and drank, was called a glutton and a drunkard. He associated with prostitutes and tax collectors - whom those who wrote the gospels seemed to feel belonged lumped together. He constantly disagreed with the priests of his time, as he would disagree with the priests of all times.
For these are the things that prophets do, and Jesus was a prophet. The religion of the prophets is as far above the religion of the priests as the religion of Jesus is above the religion about him.
No, he wasn’t in our camp either. He was not a feminist, though some liberals have tried to make him into one. He would have given women fewer rights to divorce than they already had, and would certainly have considered abortion to be murder. And even though feminists often make much of the fact that Martha and Mary - or at least Mary - were his students, they sat at his feet, not up with him as his male followers did. Jesus would not vote a Democratic ticket today - or a Republican ticket. He was a prophet, and they are a scary bunch.
What’s that mean? A prophet is someone trying to speak to the issues of their times from what you could call a God’s-eye view.
What’s that mean? It means from the highest moral and ethical perspective we know how to see and say, nothing less. It means speaking on behalf of ultimate values, to confront those who would enslave us in the name of greedy, bigoted, imperialistic or hateful values.
As the scholars of the Jesus Seminar and many Jewish scholars have said, Jesus belongs in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets. He sounds like them. He feels like them. Centuries earlier, the Hebrew prophet Amos, a shepherd, came into town to rail at the politicians for selling the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, and to rail against the priests for sanctioning it. Sound political? Prophets are political.
Jesus was political. He turned over the tables of the money-changers in the big temple in Jerusalem. These were the people converting the foreign currencies of those who came from out of the area, so they could buy animals for the sacrifices done in the temple. The temple made a lot of money from the poor in this way, and the priests profited, as did the politicians. That isn’t what God is about, Jesus said. It isn’t what God wants. Jesus was attacking the habits of exalting profits over people, and the superstitious religion used to keep people frightened and obedient.
In the first century Jerusalem, Jesus was the most famous liberal alive. Today’s religious conservatives, and the political conservatives they serve, are not being true to either the letter or the spirit of the teachings of Jesus. Not by a mile.
posted on October 1, 2005 10:07:41 AM new
They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore
(Kinky Friedman)
Well, a redneck nerd in a bowling shirt was a-guzzlin' Lone Star beer
Talking religion and-uh politics for all the world to hear.
They oughta send you back to Russia, boy, or New York City one,
You just want to doodle a Christian girl and you killed God's only son.
I said, "Has it occurred to you, you nerd, that that's not very nice,
We Jews believe it was Santa Claus that killed Jesus Christ!
"You know, you don't look Jewish, he said," near as I could figger
I had you lamped for a slightly anemic, well-dressed country ni@###
cho: No, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore,
They don't turn the other cheek the way they done before.
He started in to shoutin' and spittin' on the floor,
Lord, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore.
He says, "I ain't a racist but Aristitle Onassis is one Greek we don't need,
And them nig@@@s, Jews and Sigma Nus, all they ever do is breed.
And wops and micks and slopes and spics and spooks are on my list
And there's one little hebe from the heart of Texas-- is there anyone
I missed ?
Well, I hits him with everything I had right square between the eyes.
I says, "I'm gonna gitcha, you son of a #*!@ ya, for spoutin' that pack of
lies.
If there's one thing I can't abide, it's an ethnocentric racist;
Now you take back that thing you said 'bout Aristitle Onassis.
No, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore,
We don't turn the other cheek the way we done before.
You could hear that honky holler as he hit that hardwood floor,
Lord, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore.
No, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore,
They ain't making carpenters who know what nails are for.
Well, the whole damn place was singin' as I strolled right out the door
Lord ... they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore.
posted on October 1, 2005 10:49:59 AM new
The phoney Christian CON-servatives on this board have more then one God. They have their number one God called money, then they have their second Christian God.
A rich CON-servative says "I've GOT".
A rich Liberal says "I've GOT SO I CAN GIVE".
I HAVE NOT HEARD ONE CON-SERVATIVE LAW MAKER TALK ABOUT CUTTING BACK ON TAX BREAKS TO THE RICH TO HELP PAY FOR HURRICANE DAMAGE.
posted on October 1, 2005 11:23:46 AM new
Clapping! Thank-you Mingotree for that great article. That's something I think about all the time, and many here have expressed the same wonderment at how many of these people have the nerve to call themselves "children of God" or Christians. Especially when most of their actions go totally against what's written in the Bible. But isn't there something in Bible that says only a select few will actually get it and the rest will be deemed to follow their false prophets?
