Radically Left
Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it
--Dave Barry
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--Dave Barry
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[Ranger will not be re-wallowing (to quote Dick Cavett) in the sorrow-porn of the day, each agency vying for the new angle, like the "Children of 9-11". Not today.]
Today we return to our homey Sunday homily form --
Sunday Homily: Was Jesus the world's biggest bleeding heart liberal, or, Would Glen Beck call Jesus a Bum?
This entry was inspired by Paul Longgrear's recent letter to the editor of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer sent to Ranger by a sleeper agent. Col. Longgrear, a minister and a brother-in-arms, objects to the idea of a "fair share plan" which he implies led to the socialization of this Great Nation and an endlessly raised debt ceiling.
Both Lisa and Ranger have conservative friends with strong notions of how to keep Old Glory flying high. It seems they are often emotional reactions which involve keeping certain people (= parasites) away from the pot of goodies that they have not earned, or alternately, which keep them parasitzed.
The parasites are people who need some assistance to make ends meet, and the fear is that they will keep the rest of us on a hamster wheel working for their salvation, or at least their existence. This is an adversarial relationship which presupposes that life would be better if the parasites could be separated from their host.
Many of these conservative thinkers also hold a strong Christian religious stance. Still, they also accept the rectitude of the use of torture in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), whose 10th birthday we commemorate today.
This all brought Ranger back to the founder of their religion, Jesus -- an unprivileged man conceived by an unwed mother and born in a stable. He was dedicated to the concept of uplifting the non-productive parasites in his society, i.e. the early Christians before they developed mega-churches with big screens, cheerleaders and quad sound systems.
Jesus was a thorn in the side of the Roman status quo who had consolidated power amongst the elite. Instead of genuflecting to authority, Jesus provided free wine and loaves and fishes on a socialist basis (= commodities). He also performed healing miracles for the most unsavory amongst his society (= free health care). Jesus was better than an EBT card.
These miracles tried to give the masses their "fair share" of the largesse of a newly sent Godson. "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). He was not speaking to the bankers.
As for the issue of illegals, wasn't the unverified journey to Bethlehem by a future mother of God an attempt by the Romans to deal with illegal immigration? And how did that end up for the Roman Empire?
Jesus's message formed the basis of a new religion which appealed to the hoi polloi of the times, and is now the predominant religion of the developed Western nations. But somehow, the founder's method was warped into something called prosperity gospel, and many Christians think that God somehow holds those in lower socio-economic rungs in disdain.
However, the words of their founder belie this notion:
"Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor ..." (Luke 18:22; Matthew 19:21);
"But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you?" (James 2:7)
"And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: [yea, though he be] a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee" (Leviticus 25:35)
"I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak" (Acts 20:34)
"He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty" (Luke 1:53). "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt" (Exodus 22:21).
Of course, there is nothing that should link the fantasies of a nomadic desert people with the workings of our society or governing policies. The Bible ain't the Constitution and we are already a socialist nation. Since Christianity is a socialist dogma, Ranger concludes that religion is the problem and not the solution.
We seem to be led by the mish-mash that is the Old Testament meets the New: An eye for an eye, yet turn the other cheek -- "forgive up to seventy times seven". Do we/should we follow Christian values when dealing with religious enemies? Should "values" issues (homosexual rights; abortion rights) even be a part of national political discourse?
If someone would turn some water into wine, Ranger says he'll drink to the elimination of biblical dogma from the halls of Congress.
--Ranger and Lisa
Labels: christianity, democracy and religion, jesus was big liberal, message of jesus ignored, paul longgrear
posted by Lisa at 8:55 PM
8 Comments:
Lisa,
As for keeping "Old Glory flying high," both the laws of physics and finance suggest the whole unfixable mess will crash and burn, Texas lawn dart fashion. But I do love Jesus and wonder what he would do to solve the deficit.
About what Jesus' Daddy would do, there is little doubt:
"Come up, ye horses; and rage, ye chariots; and let the mighty men come forth; the Ethiopians and the Lydians, that handle and bend the bow. For this is the day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance, that he may avenge him of his adversaries; and the sword shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their blood … in vain shalt thou use many medicines, for thou shalt not be cured."
Looks like the acorn fell quite some distance from the oak. But I'm squarely with Jesus on compassion for the poor, even though I've spent most of my life trying like hell not to become one of them. (Carpenter is not an unfeeling scoundrel, in spite of ex-wife's opinion.)
In a kinder and gentler world, shouldn't friends and family care for their own, instead of relying on the systematic robbery of strangers (taxpayers)? Do the needy really have more right to money than the people that earned it? And is the wringing of hands over the homeless and hungry just a smokescreen for a giant bureaucratic job machine?
Here's my take on the situation:
Welfare=bad
Government=bad
Religion=bad
war=bad
war on any noun=really bad
torture=bad(except when used on people that advocate torture)
politicians, lawyers, po-lice, judges(especially "hearing masters")=bad
free market fairy=good
carpenters=good (salt of the earth folks)
All else is debatable.
Dave
Ah, always good :) --
"carpenters=good (salt of the earth folks)"
The point in writing this was to suggest that the religion's leader was quite a radical dude [I orig. left off the "e" by mistake] who did, acco. to the writings, favoring the earth-inheritors, the meek and needy; there are many rooms in His father's house.
This is in contradiction to the religious letter-writer/friend mentioned who resents said assistance. So we're merely pointing out inconsistencies here.
Thank you for pointing out the separation of entities: Jesus is not God, despite the efforts of one popular strain to conflate them.
An interesting observation:
Looks like the acorn fell quite some distance from the oak
It does seem that way, making His parentage all the more suspect. As I've told Jim, if I were a young woman in Mary's predicament, her explanation does seem a real ass-saver (though I think it would require a trip with peyote in order to come up with it.)
"In a kinder and gentler world, shouldn't friends and family care for their own, instead of relying on the systematic robbery of strangers (taxpayers)?"
If I may... Amen!
I have no objection to helping those in need. My objection is to the use of force to do so. So my personal objection to welfare is not a cold-hearted desire for those in need to die hungry and cold, it's the fact that if I don't want to help them the way the people in charge say, I get my door kicked down and hauled off to jail.
The initiation of the use of force, man. That's some bad stuff.
Hi Lisa,
Howard Stern would have gotten to the bottom of the parentage question thusly: "So, Mary, who ya' bangin' these days?" Alas, Howard was born 2000 years too late.
Grant,
I was hoping you'd weigh in.
One of my favorite lines in the movie Transformers was when Sam was wheedling his teacher for a better grade: "Sir, just ask yourself... What would Jesus do?"
Jesus used rational argument, not bellyfeel, to win people over to his ideas, and he never clubbed anyone over the head to "knock sense" into them. Jesus probably would have been the first to point out the contradiction in forcing his gentle ways on people through a government. In every one of our wars there is the constant undertone of bringing "Christian" Democracy to The People Standing In The Dark, by military persuasion.
I just shake my head whenever someone says that our government is based on Christianity. The shame of dragging Jesus' good name into either religion or government!
Dave
Well, I can say one thing for certain, Jesus hated Bankers (the money-changers). If its one group that has impoverish millions of people (both here in the US and all over the world), its the Banksters. We dance to their stupid tune, pay them their tribute (Income Tax) and work for money that decreases in value every time they decide to pay off their buddies (Inflation). I agree with Underground Carpenter, unless something occurs soon, we're going to nosedive spectacularly.
BRL, et. al.,
For a rundown of where our economy is headed and when, I'd refer you to the economist Dark Wraith in our sidebar.
An excerpt fr. his response @ his latest post:
This economic circumstance cannot be fixed, certainly not with some new, brilliant "jobs program" so much loved as the solution of choice by the liberals, and it most decidedly cannot be fixed with another round of those ingeniously debilitating tax cuts so favored by the conservatives, serving as they always have and always will as the boy-toy sluts of corporations and the filthy rich (the latter group, by the way, includes such dalliances of the Left as Al Gore, Warren Buffett, and George Soros).
This is not some death spiral of the American economy: that story is down the road. (Read my allegory, The End of Time.) What's happening now is the visible long-run of a process that's been going on since the 1990s, a process that could have had an incredibly better, alternate long-run outcome for the United States had it not been for seemingly small but catastrophic foreign policy, trade, and domestic economic errors during the Clinton years (due in large part to a combination of neoconservative influences just beyond the White House and failed neo-Keynesian industrial policy follies inside the White House), preceding stunningly bad, more deliberate errors made in the early years of the subsequent Bush Administration.
Truth be told, the seeds of this gruesome outcome were planted more than a generation ago, but that's another story and one that need not have been a predicate to the dark time into which we are now headed.
I think that one thing one ought to take away from reading the Bible is the message that all life is a gift and that none of us has earned or deserve anything. None of us has made the earth on which we stand or the air we breathe. We are all on the same level, and any one of us may find ourselves bleeding in the ditch begging for help before we know it. It therefore is the wisest course to be kind, generous and forgiving to everyone who, for all we know, might be the next one coming down the road.
I'm told there is no record of Jesus in Roman historical records. Did he exist? Some think a Jesus like character did exist but is not the one given to us by current Christainity. Historical religious scholarship indicates Jesus would have been appalled to have people deify him.
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