duck0987

Grant it this bridges into politics, but since it is a question of what Jesus's philosophical views would lead him to I think it belongs here. Mod's feel free to move if you disagree.

If one were to sum up the teachings of Jesus what political party would he join/form of government would he favor?

After getting into may arguments with friends I am still convinced that Jesus would be a socialist. His teachings show that we have a personal responsibility to each other and should share our wealth with others. Case in point the story of "The Rich Man and Lazarus" Luke 16 19:31. Based on this story alone I can rule out republican since the Reagan era "trickle down economics” is pretty much like eating scraps from a table.

Just curious what others think, why aren't more Christians Socialists?

__________________
"I've got a lot of friends who don't know how to cook, which I could never understand because not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to fuck." --Robert Rodriguez

Willravel

I don't think he'd vote. He might run, though.

There aren't more Christian socialists in the US because most socialists in the US are agnostic or atheists, so they've become somewhat synonymous.

asaris

I tend to like C. S. Lewis's comment; there are parts of Christ's thought that sound very socialist, but there are also bits that sound almost reactionary. So anyone trying to use Jesus as a prop for their party, whatever that party may be, is probably misusing him.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Willravel

On this we can whole-heartedly agree.

DaveOrion

I don't believe that Jesus would be a member of any modern day political party, he was more concerned with other matters. If He was made to choose, the fairest system would seem to be socialism, unfortunately you still have people in positions of power which can be abused. A perfect system hasn't been found....“Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”.

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Syriana...have you ever tried liquid MDMA?....Liquid MDMA? No....Arash, when you wanna do this?.....After prayer...

Jinn

I think he would be an independent. Jesus was WAY too arrogant to be a follower, he had to be a leader. There's no way he would have followed someone else's doctrine.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

loganmule

It seems to me that submitting to crucifixion could be viewed as political, although the conservative view would be that this was actually an act of atonement. Either way, there is no current party affiliation which incorporates all of the teachings of Jesus, much as the two current prevailing ones would like for you to believe that. And respectfully, JinnKai, Jesus was no more arrogant that a hot summer day is warmer than a winter storm. There was an ABSENCE of arrogance to his actions...I think you're confusing the term with the concept of fulfilled purpose.

Ourcrazymodern?

Communism would work if people were better Xians.

More to the point, why would Jesus join a party, being one?

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BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

Willravel

I'm not sure what citizens residing in Xian, Shaanxi province in China have to do with anything.

ratbastid

Interesting notion, loganmule.

JinnKai, a self-professedly arrogant person, sees Jesus as arrogant. Conservatives see Jesus' actions as consistent with their beliefs. Liberals, I can say from personal experience, see themselves as christ-like in their devotion to social issues at the expense of their own comfort.

Perhaps in Jesus we have the ultimate Rorschach blot? Perhaps one's individual view of Jesus reveals more about the individual than about Jesus?

roachboy

i was thinking along the same lines as the other rb.

the only version of jesus that i find to be interesting is the one developed by liberation theologians----the one whose primary message concerns the dignity of the poor--the political implications of that message extended to the development of base communities, which were autonomous patterns of economic and social organization.
so that jesus would have probably been something on the order of an anarcho-syndicalist.

and we cant have that.

when john paul 2 came into being, among his first actions was to dispatch his ideological hatchetman cardinal ratzinger--who is now the this character called benedict---to silence the liberation theologians and erase the work that they had done.

so i dont think that jesus would have had anything to do with conventional politics, which are affairs of socio-economic elites.

you should read the brazillian writer da cunha's "rebellion in the backlands"

http://faculty.fullerton.edu/nfitch/...b/amnesia.html

which outlines a probable scenario: that jesus would have been portrayed as a nutcase or worse and would have been hunted down like a dog and murdered. the big difference between the details of that scenario and what would happen now the americans would have trained and armed the rightwing paramilitary that would kill him---in the name of christianity of course..

nietzsche was right.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Jinn

Woo woo, look at me.. I'm Jesus.. I'm so cool.. I'm so important that if I die, you all have to worship me. I'm so cool I can die and take away all your sins, including Adam and Eve's. Oh look, see that water? Wine? Wassup now, bitches?

He was definitely arrogant.

And a showoff.

Hey guys.. watch this trick.. I can come back to life after gettin speared in the gut.. wish you could do this huh..

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

abaya

Re: roachboy's post... two people come to mind:

Archbishop Romero

Che Guevara

Would Jesus have hung out with these blokes....? (I think so, but feel free to disagree.)

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

DaveOrion

Nobody has to worship Jesus, freewill still applies. Confessing your sins, is simply a way to alleviate Guilt & Shame. Unless you'd prefer to go into therapy and pay a psychiatrist $500 an hour. I fail to see how performing miracles, such as healing the sick, is showing off. I suppose all those silly peace lovers like Jesus, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi were just show offs....insert sarcasm as needed....

__________________
Syriana...have you ever tried liquid MDMA?....Liquid MDMA? No....Arash, when you wanna do this?.....After prayer...

Willravel

All deities that require or ask or worship are inherently arrogant.
Jesus, through his miracles/tricks, depending on how one might see them, tried to make evident that he was one with god, and he always said to worship and praise god.

DaveOrion

Freewill still applies, nobody is being forced to worship, period. You can worship a picture of George Bush if thats whats gets you off. From your quote all I can see is that Jesus was saying that the Holy Spirit was in Him, which has nothing to do with forced worship.

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Syriana...have you ever tried liquid MDMA?....Liquid MDMA? No....Arash, when you wanna do this?.....After prayer...

Ourcrazymodern?

Xmas?

Jesus obviously liked this politics shit.

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BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

roachboy

abaya:

romero definitely. the third link below includes a brief mention of how romero was mudered in 1980, while saying mass, by a rightwing paramilitarywhich was trained, armed and supported politically by the reagan administration.

here's a nice page full of links:

http://www.liberationtheology.org/

and a paper with some information about the actions, including base communities:

http://www.socinian.org/liberty.html

a bit of information on john paul 2 and the crushing of liberation theology in the name of retrograde politics, with the direct collusion of america's favorite reactionary, ronald reagan:

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2005/621/35060

it is a sad story.

if there is a bottom to my contempt for conservative christianity, i sure haven't found it yet.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

abaya

roachboy:

Thanks for the post. What about Che? Perhaps I've been thinking too much about the Motorcycle Diaries...

Incidentally, since my last post here, I've been reading some of those same pages on Romero and liberation theology. Going back to when I was first exposed to it in college, I think it began some of the unraveling of my faith and hope in American evangelicalism. Liberation theology made perfect sense to my understanding of the Bible and Jesus... but the American church did not fit in at all (except the Mennonites, perhaps). I could not see how anyone could profess to follow Jesus and while maintaining a trajectory of wealth. There is NO ROOM in the gospels for being wealthy, or even middle-class. Christianity is about the poor... no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

If Christ was going to be part of politics in any way, he would have sided with the poor/oppressed/marginalized, no matter what the party was called. I have never understood how the Church could be stand by anything OTHER than liberation theology, if it was worth its salt. Christ would vomit all over evangelical America and its politics and money right now, as well as the actions of most of the Church throughout history, if you ask me.

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

Willravel

Who said anything about FORCED worship? Certainly not me. I said Jesus said to worship or praise. He didn't hold a gun to anyone's head.

roachboy

abaya: actually i was going to write something about che but folk were coming for dinner and i didnt have time to make it work, so i didn't.
the image of che floats about in the backstory of liberation theology, but it's hard to say whether the relation is more about that image than about che guevara himself. problem is that i haven't really thought about him for a while and dont remember how his positions shifted in the period after he left cuba and was involved in central africa then latin america. i dont know where we was in relation to, say, classical leninist notions of the party near the end of his life. that sort of thing would matter. but the image of che, as martyr, sure.

this chris marker film is quite remarkable--grin without a cat--and has alot about che in it--i saw it over the summer and it kind of overloaded my brain with stuff, all kinds of stuff...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076042/

see it if you can track down a copy--it is really something.
i agree with your

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Brightwater

I don't think that you can say that Jesus would join any mainline political party. Basically, Jesus's teachings were about people helping each other and people loving God. Some have argued that Jesus preached a form of communism. Well, sure, liberals believe in re-distribution of wealth via the government, but in theory at least, conservatives believe in helping other people without the interference of the government- although this doesn't always play out in practice.

FoolThemAll

I can understand it, because that 'If' in your first sentence is a HUGE 'if'. I'm far from convinced that Jesus had ANYTHING to say about politics, aside from the tangentially-linked "give to Caesar what is Caesar's" and, of course, freedom of religion. Just as Jesus can be interpreted as NOT advocating the criminalization of Christian taboos, he can also be seen as NOT advocating the enforcement of Christian virtues.

I must admit ignorance on roachboy's talk of suppression under John Paul II - and it's a shame whenever open debate is stifled - but I, myself, would not favor a theology that necessitated anarcho-syndicalist political views.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

loganmule

Good point, rb, and one which follows logically from the subjective nature of each person's interpretation of Jesus. I fall into the "love God and love one another" group, and in doing so I admittedly take some liberties with what it means to "love God". There is enough inconsistency in scripture to latch on to whatever resonates with a person, and so, as you point out, that person is revealed by his or her view of Jesus.

ProfessorMayhem

Jesus would have been an obvious theocrat.

asaris

What about "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's?"

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

hrandani

Jesus worked outside the political system of his day. It was far beyond petty politics. You don't see him walking around in the New Testament going Vote for Jesus, Rabbanic Council District 5. Furthermore, he lost the only election he was in to an established crook aka Barabbas (ooo irony). Why would he decide to be any different today?

The_Jazz

Yeah, there was no Rabbanic Council that stood for election. And I don't think that the "election" that you're referring to really applies here. If anything, that was only a jury vote.

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"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
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duck0987

We are really not debating if Jesus is the son of god sent to earth to die for sin, the real question is what political movement follows the teaches of jesus, and why are not more people following said political movement.

__________________
"I've got a lot of friends who don't know how to cook, which I could never understand because not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to fuck." --Robert Rodriguez

LazyBoy

One has to think, if Jesus truly is the all powerful being he's proclaimed to be, there would be no need for him to bother with politics....

But if he were a simple person, running for election on the morals he lived by, I'm not sure if he'd be socialist or Republican....all have their flaws....but one could even make the arguement that he'd have tendencies towards being a Democrat.....but we all know Jesus is smarter than that

-Will

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