Jesus Christ - "Liberal" or "Conservative" - Using 2015 Definitions

Bob Blaylock said:

Of course, few things anger wrong-wingers more than the suggestion that genuine Christian principles should be applied to politics.

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Well, first Century Christians (and second and Third), held all Things in common, set up the first welfare state (outside of Jewish synagogues), and refused to participate in warfare.

Jesus' mission statement referenced the Jubilee year, i.e. the year of redistribution when all Things became common property.

Also his Brother James, not a big friend of the Rich, neither was Jesus.

RGacky3 said:

Usury is called Theft in the scriptures ... Jesus upheld that.

Usury, is the entire basis of Capitalism.

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Yes, I don't think Jesus would be liberal or conservative, but he certainly wouldn't have been a ****ing capitalist. LOL

A system set up so that groups of individuals can act immorally together and justify it as amoral via markets.

yes - how would Jesus feel about this: BBC News - Richest 1% to own more than rest of world, Oxfam says

On current trends, Oxfam says it expects the wealthiest 1% to own more than 50% of the world's wealth by 2016.

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In a statement ahead of the gathering, Ms Byanyima said the scale of global inequality was "simply staggering".

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And then to hear some people SCREAMING about how raising taxes on the 1% is tantamount to communism/socialism and a sure sign of impending DOOM for the rest of the free world.....

Other = Who cares, big yawn.

CrabCake said:

Jesus sought to inaugurate the Kingdom of God....

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Again, that kind of division between secular and spiritual authority didn't really exist in that era. State and religious authorities were intertwined. Jesus wasn't proposing a socialist utopia, he was criticizing the contemporary leaders for cooperating too much with the Roman occupiers and being too corrupt.

The type of religious pluralism we have today didn't really exist then, certainly not in the same way, and definitely not in Judea. Neither did ideas about citizenship. A Hun couldn't apply for a Green Card, and Jews didn't have a choice about being subjects of Rome.

The idea behind this Kingdom of God appears to be that, rather than rising through power and then using the oppressive force of the state to enforce compliance with the rules of the Kingdom, membership would be voluntary, it would be for those who accept the rule of Christ....

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States at that time were not voluntary, and didn't give two left ****s about citizen consent. If you didn't like Roman rule, and you did something about it, you'd end up on a cross (crucifixion was a common punishment, not an exceptional one) or subjected to an equally gruesome punishment.

You couldn't just pack up and leave, in most cases. Wealth in that era wasn't portable, it was almost entirely tied up with land. Traveling merchants faced substantial risks -- loss of property and life to storms, pirates, brigands and the like. Jews also had very strict ideas about land ownership, and were repeatedly commanded by religious authorities not to sell their land or to treat it like a fungible good.

This is the problem with asking questions like this. It's extremely difficult to put ourselves in the mindset of people at that time, and to mistake what Jesus was saying to his contemporaries with modern interpretations.

Visbek said:

Again, that kind of division between secular and spiritual authority didn't really exist in that era.

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I never claimed it did.

Visbek said:

State and religious authorities were intertwined. Jesus wasn't proposing a socialist utopia, he was criticizing the contemporary leaders for cooperating too much with the Roman occupiers and being too corrupt.

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Not at all, Jesus spoke constantly about the Kingdom of God (or "Kingdom of Heaven" if you read Matthew). That's what his entire ministry was built around, speaking on the coming of the Kingdom of God. Obviously, everyone around him understood that he must be talking about an era in which Israel is once again able to rule itself and continue its role as the people of Yahweh, the one true God. This is why the apostles, upon encountering the risen christ in Acts chapter 1, ask him whether it's finally time to establish that Kingdom and reclaim their land. But as the story of Acts progresses, and after the disciples have had their time of learning from the risen Christ, we see them go out, not looking to establish an independent Israel, but looking to build the church, and not just in Israel but in all of Judea and beyond. As we learn from Acts 2, the way the church looked early on is what we today would call a socialist community, one not defined by physical borders but by membership in the body of Christ. Acts 2:44-45 describes it perfectly.

Visbek said:

The type of religious pluralism we have today didn't really exist then, certainly not in the same way, and definitely not in Judea. Neither did ideas about citizenship. A Hun couldn't apply for a Green Card, and Jews didn't have a choice about being subjects of Rome.


States at that time were not voluntary, and didn't give two left ****s about citizen consent. If you didn't like Roman rule, and you did something about it, you'd end up on a cross (crucifixion was a common punishment, not an exceptional one) or subjected to an equally gruesome punishment.

You couldn't just pack up and leave, in most cases. Wealth in that era wasn't portable, it was almost entirely tied up with land. Traveling merchants faced substantial risks -- loss of property and life to storms, pirates, brigands and the like. Jews also had very strict ideas about land ownership, and were repeatedly commanded by religious authorities not to sell their land or to treat it like a fungible good.

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This is all true. But I don't see what this has to do with anything I said.


*Of course everything I said assumes you believe the biblical narrative to begin with. You could argue that Jesus taught one thing and, once he died, the apostles reimagined Jesus' message. In that case, yes you could claim Jesus was preaching about the liberation of Israel and his disciples turned it into a different message once he died and it was obvious Israel wasn't about to be liberated by him. But what you can't do is pretend that Jesus' message was about anything other than the coming Kingdom of God. In the book of Matthew alone, he uses the phrase 31 times (Kingdom of Heaven in that case), Jesus spoke on that more than any other topic and when asked how to prayer, his sample prayer was about that..