Bible Study
See other Bible Study Articles
Title: ‘Jesus was a socialist’
Source:
Raw Story
URL Source: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/jes ... ly-unmotivated-alabama-voters/
Published: Jul 18, 2015
Author: Travis Gettys
Post Date: 2015-07-18 10:01:55 by Willie Green
Keywords: None
Views: 1339
Comments: 7
A rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) drew about 300 supporters in deeply conservative Alabama – including one woman who has never voted in 22 years of eligibility.
The event for the Vermont independent, who is running for president as a Democrat, happened Sunday at the Good People Brewing Company in Birmingham, reported AL.com.
One of the those supporters was 40-year-old Elizabeth Hewitt, of Blount County, who said she has never felt like her vote mattered because she never heard a candidate’s message that resonated with her until Sanders.
“I didn’t like either candidate,” she told the newspaper. “I didn’t care who won because I felt it didn’t matter.”
Another voter, 56-year-old Peter Stuart, of Lincoln, said the liberal senator had gotten him excited in politics again.
“He’s not just in it for the money or his own career,” Stuart said. “To me, he’s what politicians should be.”
Stuart plans to continue his monthly donations to the Sanders campaign because the senator’s democratic socialist views match his own Christian beliefs better than Republican’s lip service on family values.
“I think Jesus was a socialist,” Stuart said.
The rally was organized by three Sanders supporters from Alabama who found one another through Facebook – and who expected about 30 people when they began planning the event.
The candidate has drawn packed crowds at rallies in the Midwest and New Hampshire, surprising many political observers.
Sanders appeared Sunday morning on “Face the Nation,” where he promised that his campaign would visit states traditionally written off by Democratic candidates.
“We’re going to go to Alabama, we’re going to go to Mississippi, we’re going to go to conservative states,” Sanders said.
Supporters said they were excited by the turnout.
“For a state that’s so red, it’s exciting to see [hundreds] of people for this,” Marty Colbert, a 27-year-old from Pelham, told the newspaper. “It sticks to the grassroots theme.”
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
Jesus was not a socialist, he was a theocratic monarchist. He taught that there was one God: his Father, and that his Father can become our spiritual Father, and we each can inherit our place in the Kingdom of God.
Jesus' economics are not socialistic. Socialists believe that the means of production should be owned and operated by the State. Jesus taught that everything is God's, and that individual people who have things have been given stewardship over those things by God, to use them as God directed.
Now then, Jesus taught that was God directed as that nothing was to be used for the purposes of sin, nothing was to be served for its own sake, and that as long as there were people suffering in poverty, that wealth was to be mobilized, without calculation, to raise them up out of it. Jesus did not promote good bookkeeping - quite the opposite, really. He said that one should not let his right hand know what his left was doing, when it came to giving. He also said that one should give without expecting to be repaid.
This is not socialism, for socialism is very concerned with ownership and control, and meting out scarce resources. Socialism wants collective control, not individual control. But Jesus teaches individual stewardship. Also, Jesus teaches that the world is fat and resources are not scare. Give, and God will give more, even out of thin air.
Socialists trust in a world that is mechanical, that has scarce resources, and that can be made to produce more through careful control. Jesus teaches trust in God alone, who will provide everything to those who obey and follow.
To the Socialist, the material dialectic IS the foundational centerpiece of philosophy: we are material beings bound to a material world, and control and development of the resources of this world for the collective benefit is the purpose of human existence. That is what socialists believe.
But Jesus taught that service to God, by obeying his commandments, is the foundational centerpiece of philosophy: we are spirits temporarily having a body. from which we shall pass. We do not have to die, but can live, forever, with God if he listen to him.
Jesus was not a materialist. Socialists are the quintessential materialists.
#2. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
John 18:36
#3. To: Willie Green (#0)
Was Jesus a Socialist or a Capitalist?
First, Jesus encouraged his followers to exclusively practice voluntary, personal charity. At no point—either in Jesus’ ministry or in the ministry of the early church—were Christians forced to surrender their money so that elders might distribute it to others. On the contrary, they were encouraged (even in Acts 4:32-35) to give voluntarily, and they did so.
Secondly, in two awfully capitalistic moments, Jesus once stated outright that “a worker deserves his wages (Luke 10:7),” and delivered an entire parable praising the profitable, investment strategy of some workers while condemning the single man who didn’t make a profit as “wicked and lazy.” Jesus even says, when the servant returns with no profit, “you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. (Matthew 25:14-27)” Jesus liked bankers.
Thirdly, Jesus didn’t see the government as the answer to society’s greatest moral and social ills. In fact, up until the very end of his life, he fought against his own disciples who were imagining a revolution that would end in Jesus being set up as an earthly king. He once said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight… (John 18:36)”
Jesus’ first followers also had a similar view of the role of money and of government. In fact, almost immediately we find other examples of property rights, the apostles condemning people who expected to eat without working, and proclaiming that Christians should give willingly, not out of coercion.
Jesus, for sure, believed that the government had an important (and limited) role in society, and that’s why he said, “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” (notice he didn’t say “render unto Caesar what is yours”). Jesus also believed in and taught the most generous kind of lifestyle.
But, in so doing, he diminished the importance of the “public sector” and emphasized the role of the “private sector.” He believed that it was the role of God’s children to take care of those who were also God’s children who were struggling through life. He taught the primacy of personal charity.
Modern research backs Jesus up on this. Studies have shown time and again that the vast expansion of government always “crowds out” personal charity (there was, for instance, a 30% decline in charitable church activity in the immediate aftermath of the New Deal), and private charities are far more efficient and effective than public programs.
So, when big-government liberals use Jesus’s name to make government our de facto God-on-earth, they are, in effect, creating systems that make it more difficult for regular people to give more help to others.
Suffice it to say, if Jesus dropped in on our 21st Century like he did in the first, chances are he wouldn’t be a card-carrying socialist. To the contrary: Jesus was, is and would be a capitalist.
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul#4. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
Jesus was not a socialist, he was a theocratic monarchist.
Yes. But only in HIS Kingdom.
David -- direct descendent of Jesus -- was a rich man, no?
Otherwise, I enjoyed reading your usual informative and thought-provoking essay.
#5. To: Willie Green, Vicomte13 (#2) (Edited)
John 18:36
You know Willie -- for once you're right.
EDIT: That said, Jesus was NO "socialist." That's crazy talk. Vic provide an overwhelming rebuttal.
#6. To: hondo68 (#3)
Another good essay, Hondo...thanks.
#7. To: Liberator (#5)
Luke 18:24~26
Luke 6:20
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]