Since the money came from God, it’s even more imperative that some be used to provide for the poor.
You’d think God would cut out the middleman and just give some money to the poor directly.
Preaching to the choir, dude, and I’m an atheist! What I am trying to tell you is that, for the most part, you can’t use one part of the Bible to argue people out of a position they got from another part of the Bible, especially if the part of the Bible they are following tells them what they want to hear.
And even when the writings don’t tell them what they want to hear, they’ll just twist and mangle the meaning of the words until it supports their ideology.
Right. As linked by GreysonCarlisle, when the gospels cast JC Himself speaking of the Day of Judgement, the criteria for entering reward are
For I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
Nothing about political postures or being strong or rich or smart.
As for how to treat immigrants and foreign residents, it’s not even Christian alone, it goes even farther back: "You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”(Ex.22:20). “The stranger who resides within you shall be to you as one of your own; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Lev.19:34)
" If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor," Matthew 19:21
(Also at Luke 18:18 and Mark 10:21
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”" Matthew 19:24
Luke 10:25 for the Good Samaritan (though Margaret Thatcher pointed out to the Church of Scotland Assembly that the Good Samaritan needed to have made money first).
And just about the entire Sermon on the Mount.
(The more I hear about the Evangelical right wing, not to mention “Prosperity Gospel” types, the more I think, what that’s got to do with Jesus, well, Jesus only knows)
Also did not believe in paying the church ‘the sons are exempt from the temple tax’.
It was more that he was willing to die to prevent the remarriage to Herodias than the divorce. In any case, the whole thing kicked off a moderately significant war.
When marital spats involve martial actions, it certainly makes sense to be against them.
But yes, in most cases in biblical times, divorcing a woman usually meant leaving her (and likely her children) impoverished. There was a pragmatic reason to try to prevent men from abandoning their responsibilities.
Modern day, where women are more than capable of being self sufficient without a man to support them, it has far less need.
The bible is full of rules and laws that functioned to try to hold that society, at that time, together. Some of those still have merit, the human condition itself hasn’t changed all that much. Some of them no longer are applicable, as technology, the economy, the government, food handling, and sanitary and medical practices have changed dramatically.
I long ago read some sermon purporting to explain that when Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven, he was talking about a narrow gateway in Jerusalem called The Eye Of The Needle, which a camel could just barely squeeze through with difficulty.
See, it’s really advice for the wealthy to invest in slim camels.
This gate has never been shown to have existed, however …
Which progressive ideals AREN’T essentially what Christ preached, or would have preached?
I mean, caring for the poor, treating people equally/equitably, caring for the environment, toleration, not standing in judgement, etc… are ALL things that are in the red text in the Bible somewhere.
And probably most important of all when combatting those Evangelical heretics, the idea that most, if not all of the old Mosaic law doesn’t apply to anyone but the Jews, now that Jesus is here, is probably the most telling. And that they don’t get to pick and choose for political and social reasons- if they want to crow about how homosexuality is forbidden in the Bible, then they don’t get to have a cheeseburger or shrimp either. Or cut their hair, or wear linen and wool together, or any number of other Old Testament provisions.
The New Testament is pretty progressive stuff, which is why historically, a lot of it has been ignored, or more harsh Old Testament stuff has been used to justify various injustices.
You would need to demonstrate:
- That pragmatism was a large component of Jesus’ religious outlook.
- That Jesus felt that poverty was bad and to be avoided.
- We should ignore Jesus’ stated reason in order to best arrive at Jesus’ true motives.
There’s also Mark 12:18-27:
Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) also came to him and asked him, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us: ‘If a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, that man must marry the widow and father children for his brother.’ There were seven brothers. The first one married, and when he died he had no children. The second married her and died without any children, and likewise the third. None of the seven had children. Finally, the woman died too. In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For all seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Aren’t you deceived for this reason, because you don’t know the scriptures or the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. Now as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”
Which makes clear that marriage is a policy for managing dependents and wealth, but not an eternal arrangement.
(Let me be clear that I don’t necessarily disagree with you. I have argued in favor of your position in the past. I am undecided, but I want to show that those within Christian fellowship do disagree on divorce.)
[aside]
That, however, will be argued by the Quote Boys to be covered by Acts 15, where when the Apostles are deciding which parts of the Old Law should still apply to new converts (the big argument being about some, ahem, outpatient surgery), their ruling is:
28 For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things;
29 That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well.
So they claim the “fornication” means the sex-related rules stay on.
I say to them, hey, you do you, but don’t drag me along.
[/aside]
The conservative answer to all of this, of course, is that Jesus was instructing how to live one’s personal life, not advocating that the Romans or any other government should behave by those rules.
Oddly enough, that was the theology of the “old” evangelical movement, which put much more emphasis on doing good things for each other, and much less on telling the government on what it should do. Unfortunately, that era ended in the 1970s. Somehow its successors ended up with a philosophy of “Jesus tells the government to do the things I agree with, not necessarily the things in the Bible.”
I would certainly agree that the Old Testament laws are principally pro-pragmatism. But first let’s note that it’s the Sadducees who brought this up, not Jesus. Secondly, let’s consider what this conversation is about.
Effectively, the Sadducees have come up with a “gotcha” in Jesus’ teachings.
In no-Heaven Judaism, pragmatism is completely sufficient to explain God’s laws against divorce. Once you introduce an after-life you have to contend with how multiple marriages get resolved when everyone comes back to life. And, especially, if Jesus is specifically teaching that there’s a special magical construct created by merging the souls of a man and woman under holy matrimony, then this really causes some problems.
If Jesus is not teaching anything about a social bond and we assume that pragmatism was His and God’s principal interest then it would be pretty clear that there is no “gotcha”. When you need to eat, you need to concern yourself with ensuring that people are getting fed. In a mystical afterlife, pragmatic rules go away.
To be fair, Jesus’ answer is effectively to say, “In the afterlife the rules are different, yo.” But I feel like the whole exchange and the specific thrust of his response make more sense if we assume that he was teaching that two spirits make a greater, magical whole. If people can achieve that multiple times then, once they die and are reborn in the afterlife, which partnership is the “magical” one out of all of them?
This is a much greater “gotcha” and the sort of thing that a person who wanted to prove that Jesus is just an idiot who came up with a bunch of BS that makes no sense would try to bring in to make their case.
My understanding of Jesus’ response is that he’s not just saying, “The rules are different because they’re dead.” He’s specifically saying that we all become angels. We no longer need the special magical pairing to become a whole because we’ve been transformed into something even more great and mystical.
That level of ramping things up just doesn’t seem necessary to resolve the issue if we’re simply talking about the pragmatics of “people got to eat”.
Kinda playing on this theme, today, on Twitter:
‘Christian Race Theory’ - White Europeans handling of indigenous peoples from 1492-2021 has been so horrible that their descendants, people who profess to believe in the concept of Original Sin, refuse to acknowledge this original sin.
&
“I am dying for your sins.”
“I believe you, Lord.”
“The sins you commit in the future, I’m punished for in the past.”
“I understand.”
“The sin of my death becomes your sin. This sin travels forward. You hold this guilt.”
“I believe.”
“Critical Race Theory.”
“Fuck You, Jesus!”
It pretty much writes itself. Open the bible to random page and you are far far more likely to come across a verse demanding helping the poor, good treatment of immigrants, and berating the rich and powerful for mistreating the poor and downtrodden (when Sodom is used in the bible as a lesson its has nothing to do with homosexuality, instead its a warning about what happens to oppressive states and their rulers, who mistreat foreigners in their realm), than any of the “culture war” issues the American right has somehow made the be-all and end-all of “christian” politics in the US in recent years,
Making a Christian argument for conservative ideals is a much much harder thing to do, and is really a recent American invention. Prior to the the 1980s the assumption would be that if someone considers themselves an “evangelical” or “fundamentalist” Christian they would generally support the progressive side of the political spectrum.
From someone on the Christian-left, she’s doing it wrong. That’s an ill-conceived idea for a sermon and if that’s where she is, she really needs to spend some time in prayer and reflection. (I also think that the people in the article that ThelmaLou linked are also doing it wrong. But a) they didn’t ask me/she did and b) just because they’re wrong doesn’t mean that she should follow them in their wrongness.)
IMHO, the question instead should be what part of the Bible is she preaching on and what does it say rather than starting from the conclusion and finding a verse to support it.
But James. All of it. In parts, as a whole, and in context with the rest of the Bible (esp. the Sermon on the Mount). James.
(Also, she could do reading into liberation theology. And I’m also wondering what she learned in seminary?)
I am sorry, but I was under the impression that the minister herself is a parable, that this is a thought experiment aimed at seeing if the Bible itself could be used to support doctrines and policies other than the ones the right wing and specifically the Republican Party is using it to support.
If the preacher exists or not is almost secondary. The question as I read it was: “How does the Bible, in all of its Infallible and Inerrant Glory, support policies that are mostly embraced by the left?” I apologize if I misread the intention, but many of us have embraced more progressive and liberal policies and we (many of us- but I suppose I will speak only for myself here) believe we are moral individuals who were raised with a strong foundation of Bible learning.
I believe with all of my being that the Bible more strongly supports liberal politics than it does conservative politics, and I saw this thread as an opportunity to list a few of the ways in which that is true.
Yes, this is a thought experiment for Dopers, not a genuine request.
I am also on the record as a big fan of the Epistle of James and even as an atheist I consider it the most significant book of the New Testament excluding the Gospels. I love all the action verbs and calls to action! I love the calls to live a viewable faith, the very idea that your actions will reveal your value system!
Even when I was a true believer I would recommend that epistle to other believers-- and I would always recommend they try to imagine the voice of Jackie Mason being the narrator of the scripture. To this day I subconsciously start imitating his voice when I read it aloud and I ALWAYS hear his voice when I read it to myself.
I was delighted to learn (after I had developed this habit) that like his brothers, father, grandfather, and great grandfather Jackie was a Rabbi. But long before then I always had this voice introducing the reading this:
Oy! You kids today . . . you have no idea! Do you know what G-d loves?? When you care for widows and orphans that is a pleasant aroma in His nose. And boy, what a nose HE has! It is no accident that so many of His chosen people have a schnoz like this!
To seriously address the intent of the thread I would say that a comprehensive view of the Deity is what is called for. I would start MY sermon with Jesus staying in the Temple when his family was returning after the feast. Like a typical preteen he caused quite a bit of concern, and also like a preteen he had a simplistic answer that he believed to be SOOOO obvious.
He answered that He HAD to be there in the Temple, He had to study and prepare. He knew the value of knowledge, of wisdom, of studying both the creator and His creation. He knew to drink in all that the world had to teach Him and it served Him well because once He started His ministry - the Sadducees and the Pharisees were not able to trip Him up as they tried so often to do. He did not deny Earthly wisdom, He studied the scriptures but He also knew lessons learned from observing nature. When He told the scribes that the Sabbath was made for Man, not man for the Sabbath, that was not a lesson He learned from reading scrolls but one He learned from using reason and logic. He had traveled to Egypt as a child and possibly to Greece before He started His public ministry at thirty years of age. One thing is for sure, He spent way more time preparing to be a minister than He spent being a preacher (which is not to say He didn’t do a lot of good in the world before being baptized by John).
Jesus started His life by studying, by preparing, by observing. Not by being judgmental and exclusive but rather by being open to knowledge and wisdom from all sources. Fortunately, He was also very well versed in the Law and the Prophets. He could measure NEW information from a position of knowledge, He understood the existing wisdom but could see beyond that which was common. He could judge a righteous judgement because He was well versed in the scriptures AND as what would have been called a natural philosopher. He was well rounded – complete. Able to understand all that priests could teach Him, but also what the engineer and farmer and fisherman could teach Him.
Second point: He was not exclusive. He did not just hang around with “common” uneducated men, He associated with those who were criminal, sinful, and betrayers of the occupied people. Tax collectors and hookers along with some course fishermen. It was not just that these people came from humble households, it was that they were the antithesis of what was seen as piety. Jesus was never looking for favor from those in power. He was always on the side of the disenfranchised; He spent His time and His love on those who had two strikes against them.
Point Three, despite being nonexclusive- He had His limits. When people made a profit off of those who were sincerely worshiping, Jesus went full Billy Jack on them! He loved the simple, humble efforts of the sincere, of the downtrodden, of those who sought peace and not wealth. But to those who USED the faith of others to enrich themselves, well I believe one way to paraphrase that exchange would be to say Jesus whipped their asses and threw their money in the dirt.
Without question Jesus was kind and patient and forgiving and accepting, He saved His wrath for only two groups of people. Jesus saved His wrath for those who prayed on sincere believers – and the religious right (of His day). Jesus criticized the religious right saying they knew “the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the Law.” He did not imply- He flat out said “You do not even understand basic earthly matters, how can you grasp the secrets of eternal matters?!?”
So, what did this open minded, nonjudgmental, studious, well prepared, inclusive, forgiving, powerful (but humble) man do with His life? He stood up for what was right. He defended the condemned, He forgave them and included them-- accepted them despite their imperfections and their policy differences. He judged them by their intentions and what they could contribute, not by who their parents were, not by the color of their skin or their dialect.
He accepted reality and He was only scornful of those who abused their power and victimized those whom they were meant to care for. He was calm because He had a wide and full breadth of knowledge and understanding. He was calm because He would rather do that which was right than to please others to make Himself more comfortable. He would go along with those who needed Him-- but He would stand up to those who would victimize those who needed Him.
He was calm because He could see the world as it truly was. Not because He was a divine being (well, probably that too). He was calm because He was well informed, well prepared, well versed in the human condition. He was calm because He genuinely cared for others, He wanted them to have a full and meaningful life.
He was calm because He knew He could not be made to be as cruel and abusive as the Roman occupiers or the Jewish clerics who ruled over the land. He was calm because He was setting an example that was good and true and righteous and would lead to a better world where EVERYONE had enough and no one had too much.
Upon reflection, it seems maybe the world has problems simply because some have too much – and those some want even more. Perhaps if the uberwealthy treated the world more like a benevolent father would treat his household we would be better off. But until that happens, maybe we could make the world slightly better by passing a more equitable tax plan and treating other humans as our fellows and not as our enemies.
(Sorry, I lost the thread of thought I had going on right after the Money Changers in the Temple Courts. I had a really clever closer that I was going to pivot to-- but I just forgot what it was. Instead I thought of what I disliked about our previous administration and I was able to pick from a variety of options to contrast and compare. Hope the ending made some sense. I also hope my mind recovers the original concept in the future.)