Honestly now, what on earth
was
Republican about
Jesus of Nazareth ?
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Listen to what many Christian Republicans in America say about Jesus and the way they depict him in art and music, and you have the image of a sweet, lily white, European, milk-toast sissy, an image that bears little resemblance to the dark-skinned, Jewish, revolutionary, "man's man" that Jesus actually was. Although he was extremely kind to the common man and woman, Jesus was extremely demanding of those who had an abundance or either riches or power, whether political or religious. He forgave and/or played down the sins of publicans, tax-collectors, a prostitutes and adulteresses. He told his followers to value a poor widow's penny more than substantial contributions from the rich. And he told those who wanted to follow his leadership that what they should not do is imitate priests and levites, but instead follow the example of a heretical Samaritan. Where has this idea of Christ as an impeccably polite and diplomatic gentleman come from? Certainly not from Jesus, who instead said of himself :
{ Matthew 10: 34-37 } 
"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
Although the words of Jesus speak of inter-family conflicts, there isn't a single example of such conflict in the gospels. On the other hand, there are dozens of examples of precisely such conflicts between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day! If "actions speak louder than words," then Jesus showed us that the sword he came to bring was the sword of battle with people like today's arrogant, pompous, money-grubbing leaders of the "Religious Right" who are far more like those with whom Jesus fought constantly, than those who embraced Jesus, and dedicated themselves to following his teaching.
Far from being a mild-mannered, diplomatic, "goody-two-shoes", Jesus was such an extraordinary "pain in the ass" to the religious community of his day, that they did everything they could to shut him up, including conspiring to have him nailed to a cross, the equivalent of putting him in today's electric chair. To follow Christ and not experience the animosity and the rejection that Jesus promised his followers would experience, is to follow Jesus from too great a distance! Just try exposing the hypocrisy and the misrepresentations of the Bible of today's equivalent of the fraudulent leaders of his day, and you will see why Jesus predicted:
{ John 16:1-3 }
"I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me."
Jesus and his religious rivals couldn't
have been more different!
{ John 8: 2--11 }
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When pious Religious Leaders demanded
that Jesus follow the Bible's teaching and impose the
death sentence on the woman "caught in the very act
of adultery," instead of condemning the adulteress,
Jesus condemned her conservative prosecutors!
Early in the morning he came again to the temple.
All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them.
The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery;
and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, "Teacher, this woman
was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses
commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"
They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to
bring against him.
What an amazing chapter this is.
It's packed full of worthwhile lessons:
First, if there's one behavior that Jesus couldn't abide, it was sinners
playing down their own sins while playing up someone else's. In this
instance, the sin of one party (the adulteress) was being used
by a second party (the even more sinful religious right hypocrites),
to bring harm on a guilt-free third party (Jesus himself).
Then, there's a point so obvious that Jesus may not have felt
it even necessary to emphasize. But, as the father of seven
daughters, I wish Jesus had asked these sanctimonious male
accusers explicitly, "Was this woman alone at the time of
this adultery?"
And finally, there's the magnificent way in which Jesus turns
the table on the hypocrites doing the accusing, and puts the
judges themselves on trial :
Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.
When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said
to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to
throw a stone at her." And once again he bent down and
wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away,
one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone
with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up
and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one
condemned you?" She said, "No one, sir." And
Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and
from now on do not sin again."
Some people found fault with Larry Flynt's recent effort to expose
the Republican party leadership for its astounding hypocrisy.
Rather than condemn their own friends ( Republican Congressmen
Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, Hellen Chenoweth,
and J.C. Watts, to mention just a few), whose closets are bulging
with a whole brothel full of worse adulterers than Democratic
President Clinton ever dreamed of being, they insist on condemning
the messenger. How interesting that the mainstream media,
after racing to publish everything salacious about the Democratic president that
they could lay their hands on -- including the whole of Kenneth
Starr's pornographic report -- has made no effort to expose
the immorality and hypocrisy of the leaders of the Republican leadership! Could it be that,
just as Jesus published the sins of the hypocrites of his day by writing
them in the dirt at his feet, God has had a hand in publicizing the
sins of today's hypocrites in a "dirty magazine"?
(Actually, this report was no more pornographic than many of the women's magazines in our supermarkets.)
Far from sharing the contempt of the Pharisees
for the despised "publicans" or "tax collectors" of their day,
God -- if we can believe Jesus -- prefers such "sinners" to
"holier than thou" Religious Right types, who are only good at
recognizing the sins of OTHERS:
{ Luke 18 : 9-14 }
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were
were righteous and regarded others with contempt:
"Two men went up to the temple to pray,
one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus,
'God, I thank you that I am not like other people:
thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.'
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even
look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying,
'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'
I tell you, this man went down to his home justified
rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves
will be humbled, but all who humble themselves
will be exalted."
How similar this Pharisee is to all these "Religious Right"
types who think they are God's gift to mankind and imagine they know what is wrong with everyone but themselves!
And how similar the lowly "tax collector" is to so many "Liberals", who may not be saints, but don't claim to be either.
How refreshing it will be on the day when God makes his preferences known, if he chooses those on the left to be with him in
paradise, rather than those on the right!
Can you imagine "Religious Right" types
treating "Prodigal Son" types the way
the father did in Jesus' Parable?
{ Luke 15:11-32 :}
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In this parable, it's not the "Prodigal" son who gets the
tongue lashing, it's the resentful conservative son!
"A man had two sons. When the younger told his father,
'I want my share of your estate now, instead of waiting
until you die!' his father agreed to divide his wealth
between his sons. "A few days later this younger son
packed all his belongings and took a trip to a distant land,
and there wasted all his money on parties and prostitutes.
About the time his money was gone a great famine swept
over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local
farmer to hire him to feed his pigs. The boy became so hungry
that even the pods he was feeding the swine looked good to him.
And no one gave him anything.
"When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself,
'At home even the hired men have food enough and to spare,
and here I am, dying of hunger! I will go home to my
father and say, "Father, I have sinned against both heaven
and you, and am no longer worthy of being called your son.
Please take me on as a hired man.' So he returned home
to his father.
And while he was still a long distance away, his father
saw him coming, and was filled with loving pity and ran
and embraced him and kissed him. "His son said to him, 'Father, I have
sinned against heaven and you, and am not worthy of being called your son.
"But his father said to the slaves, 'Quick! Bring the finest robe in the
house and put it on him, and a jeweled ring for his finger; and shoes!
And kill the calf we have in the fattening pen. We must celebrate with
a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has returned to life. He was
lost and is found.' So the party began.
"Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working; when he returned home,
he heard dance music coming from the house, and he asked one of the servants
what was going on. "'Your brother is back,' he was told, 'and your father
has killed the calf we were fattening and has prepared a great feast to celebrate
his coming home again unharmed.' "The older brother was angry and wouldn't
go in. His father came out and begged him, but he replied,
'All these years I've worked hard for you and never once refused
to do a single thing you told me to; and in all that time you
never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends.
Yet when this son of yours comes back after spending
your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the finest
calf we have on the place.'
"'Look, dear son,' his father said to him, 'you and I are very close,
and everything I have is yours. But it is right to celebrate.
For he is your brother; and he was dead and has come back
to life! He was lost and is found!'"
"Forgive them, Father,
for they know not
what they do." |
When Jesus spoke those words from the cross,
was he praying for the religious leaders who had
been working for months, if not years, for just such
an outcome? Or was he simply praying for the
misinformed "little people" following the orders of
higher ups? When it came to those with whom
he had done battle for most of his public life,
Jesus was anything but forgiving.
"Evangelicals" spend a lot of time and effort
worrying about "Satan". But, if Jesus was
concerned about an invisible evil angel from another
world, he had a strange way of showing it, because
he hardly ever mentioned the devil. Instead,
judging from the four Gospels, which are dedicated
to his life and preaching, there was nobody that
even came close to bothering Jesus as much as the
religious establishment of his day: the Pharisees,
the Sadducees, the priests, the "Scribes" or "experts
in the law" (i.e. the Bible). Click on the Bible
below and you will find some 80 sermons, reprimands to
or warnings about those whom Jesus considered most
threatening to him and to his mission, i.e. not Satan ( whom
he mentioned only a few times), but those who
claimed to represent GOD and the Bible, in other words,
the "Religious Right" of his day. This barrage
of sermons against these supposed "men of God" is
what moved them to have Jesus permanently silenced,
after they managed to persuade enough people to
believe that Jesus was the imposter and they were
God's true representatives.
Anyone who claims to believe the Bible is the inspired
Word of God, and does not want to know what Jesus had
to say about the "Religious Right" of HIS day, DESERVES
to be misled by the "Religious Right" of OUR day
.
Open the Bible
to see for yourself.
To see just how sinister the so-called "Christian Coalition" really is look at it through the eyes of someone who saw it from inside "the inner sanctum", read the outstanding expose of this monstrous fraud : The Hijacking of the Christian Church, published on the Religious Freedom Coalition of the SouthEast web site.
This Book of the Bible
might well to be called:
"The Antidote to
Christian Conservatism."
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{ James 1:27 - 2:9 }
"The Christian who is pure and without fault, from God the Father's
point of view, is the one who takes care of orphans and widows,
and who remains true to the Lord -- not soiled and dirtied by his
contacts with the world. Dear brothers, how can you claim that
you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, if
you show favoritism to rich people and look down on poor people?
If a man comes into your church dressed in expensive clothes and with
valuable gold rings on his fingers, and at the same moment another
man comes in who is poor and dressed in thread-bare clothes, and you
make a lot of fuss over the rich man and give him the best seat in the
house and say to the poor man, "You can stand over there if you
like or else sit on the floor" -- well, judging
a man by his wealth shows that you are guided by wrong motives.
Listen to me, dear brothers: God has chosen poor people to be
rich in faith, and the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs, for that
is the gift God has promised to all those who love him.
And yet, of the two strangers, you have despised the poor man.
Don't you realize that it is usually the rich men who pick on you
and drag you into court? And all too often they are the ones
who laugh at Jesus Christ, whose noble name you bear.
Yes indeed, it is good when you truly obey our Lord's command,
"You must love and help your neighbors just as much as you love
and take care of yourself." But you are breaking this
law of our Lord's when you favor the rich and fawn over them; it is sin."
{ James 2:12-21 & 26}
"You will be judged on whether or not you are doing what
Christ wants you to. So watch what you do and what you
think; for there will be no mercy to those who have shown no mercy.
But if you have been merciful, then God's mercy toward
you will win out over his judgment against you. Dear
brothers, what's the use of saying that you have faith and are
Christians if you aren't proving it by helping others?
Will that kind of faith save anyone?
If you have a friend who is in need of food and clothing, and
you say to him, "Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay
warm and eat hearty," and then don't give him clothes or food,
what good does that do? So you see, it isn't enough
just to have faith. You must also do good to prove
that you have it.
Faith that doesn't show itself by good works is no faith
at all -- it is dead and useless. But
someone may well argue, "You say the way to God is by faith
alone, plus nothing; well, I say that good works
are important too, for without works you can't prove whether
you have faith or not; but anyone can see that I have faith
by the way I act." Are there still some among you
who hold that "only believing" is enough? Believing
in one God? Well, remember that the demons believe
this too -- so strongly that they tremble in terror!
Fool! When will you ever learn that "believing" is
useless without doing what God wants you to?
Faith that does not result in good deeds is not real faith.
Just as the body is dead when there is no spirit in it, so faith
is dead if it is not the kind that results in good deeds."
{ James 5:1-7 }
"Look here, you rich men, now is the time to cry and
groan with anguished grief because of all the terrible troubles
ahead of you. Your wealth is even now rotting away,
and your fine clothes are becoming mere moth-eaten rags .
The value of your gold and silver is dropping fast, yet it will
stand as evidence against you and eat your flesh like fire.
That is what you have stored up for yourselves to receive on that
coming day of judgment. For listen! Hear
the cries of the field workers whom you have cheated of their pay.
Their cries have reached the ears of the Lord of
Hosts. You have spent your years here on earth having
fun, satisfying your every whim, and now your fat hearts are ready
for the slaughter. You have condemned and killed good
men who had no power to defend themselves against you."
Conservatives may love to quote SOME verses from John, but have you ever heard them quote these?
{ 1 John 3:17-29 }
"If someone who is supposed to be a Christian has money enough to live
well, and sees a brother in need and won't help him -- how can God's love
be within him? Little children, let us stop just saying
we love people; let us really love them, and show it by our actions. Then
we will know for sure, by our actions, that we are on God's side, and our
consciences will be clear, even when we stand before the Lord.
But if we have bad consciences and feel that we have done wrong, the Lord
will surely feel it even more, for he knows everything we do. But, dearly
loved friends, if our consciences are clear, we can come to the Lord with
perfect assurance and trust, and get whatever we ask for because we are
obeying him and doing the things that please him. And this is what God
says we must do: Believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love
one another. Those who do what God says -- they are living with God and
he with them. We know this is true because the Holy Spirit
he has given us tells us so."
{ 1 John 4:1 }
"Dearly loved friends, don't always believe everything you hear just because
someone says it is a message from God: test it first to see if it really
is. For there are many false teachers around."
[... as is evident in those who claim that today's
Republican Party represents the teaching of Christ! ]
Don't be fooled by the many times Christian Conservatives mention the name of "Jesus" or "Christ". Pay close attention and you will find that they largely ignore what Christ taught -- which was largely about the necessity of devoting ones life to doing good deeds for the benefit of those in need of them and to thereby please God and achieve eternal life. -- Instead they repeat endlessly what paul taught ( i.e. that Jesus supposedly intended to save us by faith alone ) -- which makes just about everything Jesus or anybody else says about works superfluous or even objectionable. -- This is the heart of the problem with "Christian Conservatism", and so we dedicate an extensive web page to the extremely important issue of Paul's teaching about faith vs. Christ's teaching about works.
"Christian Republicans" insist that "charity" is a private matter, best left to churches, and that it is wrong for any government to tax the rich in order to help the poor. According to them, "market forces"
and the "profit-motive" -- not morality, or religion -- should govern in the public square. That's straight out of the gospel
according to the G.O.P.,
and the very opposite of what the Word of GOD teaches!
Some Interesting Quotes
"The Last Christian died on the cross"
The German philosopher, Nietzsche,
"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."
The English author Jonathan Swift
"Man created God in his image."
John Allen
"If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be � a Christian."
The American author Mark Twain,
(in his "Notebook", prepared for publication by Albert Bigelow Paine (New York: Harper and Row, 1935, p. 328. )
"Hasn't America seen enough of the exclusionary, prejudicial, vote-suppressing, racial profiling, inner city-ignoring, confederate flag-waving, Bob Jones University-loving attitudes of the radical right? "
U.S. Congressman Patrick Kennedy
Had Hitler not persuaded the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran churches to "mind their own (ecclesiastical) business, and to stay out of "secular" matters, the mass murder of 10 million Jews, Jehovah witnesses, handicapped people, Liberals and homosexuals could never have succeeded. See " the role played by Pope Pius XII in the Jewish Holocaust"
Why the Bible
makes demands on "government" .
How many Bible believers know that modern translations, such as the NRSV below, have replaced the term "liberal", which was used in the King James version, with the term "noble" ?
{ Isaiah 32: 1-6 }
"See, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule with justice. . . . Then the eyes of those who have sight will not be closed, and the ears of those who have hearing will listen. The minds of the rash will have good judgment, and the tongues of stammerers will speak readily and distinctly. A fool will no longer be called noble ("liberal"), nor a villain said to be honorable. For fools speak folly, and their minds plot iniquity: to practice ungodliness, to utter error concerning the Lord, to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied, and to deprive the thirsty of drink. The villainies of villains are evil; they devise wicked devices to ruin the poor with lying words, even when the plea of the needy is right. But those who are noble ("liberal") plan noble ("liberal") things, and by noble ("liberal") things they stand."
The triumph of Conservatism in America these days is perhaps most visible in the way we are throwing more of our "sinners" in prison than any other country in the world, civilized or not. And nowhere is the treatment of those in prison nearly as cruel and un-Christian as it is in the "Bible Belt" states. Instead of visiting those in prison, as Jesus taught, Republicans seem intent on making sure that as many families as possible are torn apart, with as many children as possible deprived of fathers and mothers who are behind bars, often far from their families. That is why we devote an entire web page to Prison Abuse in America's "Bible Belt".
I haven't read these books by John Dominic Crossan yet,
but they appear to support what we see in Jesus :The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images,
HarperCollins; (November 1994) ASIN: 0062510444
* Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography
* The Historical Jesus:
The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
* The Birth of Christianity:
Discovering What Happened in the Years
Immediately After the Execution of Jesus
* Who Is Jesus?:
Answers to Your Questions About the
Historical Jesus, (with Richard G. Watts)
*In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus
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