Was Jesus A Liberal?

Toogood Reports ^ | December 26, 2001 | Henry Makow Ph.D.

[Starmaker]

It was dark and snowy late last Friday night. The city was eerily quiet in expectation of Christmas.

My 15-year-old son had hurt his thumb in a basketball tournament and I took him to Emergency.

There was a TV in the waiting room. Bill Maher was doing a Christmas show, about Jesus' message of Christian brotherhood.

"Just as in nature, there is a human ecology," Bill Maher intoned.

"As long as America monopolizes the world's wealth, as long as there is poverty and sickness, there will be terrorists. We have to level the playing field."

The audience applauded and Bill Maher instantly became a moral giant.

"Oh sure, we all respond positively to words," he continued.

"But would you be willing to give 15% of your wealth to people in the Third World? Would you be willing to level the playing field?"

Again, the audience responded dutifully.

My jaw dropped. What is this man saying?

That America is to blame for the attack Sept. 11 because it is so successful? That we have to pay guilt money, or else?

First, "human ecology" doesn't cause terrorism. Ideology does.

The Taliban and Al-Queda were brainwashed by religious schools. Improving their economic conditions would make no difference.

Second, everyone knows that you can't give money away. People have to work in order to feel self respect. Has Bill Maher forgotten about "earning" money?

My father was a Jewish holocaust survivor.

After the war, he took just one year to make up for missing high school. He won an Entrance Scholarship to Albert Einstein's alma mater in Zurich, and became a distinguished physicist. Like millions of immigrants in his day, he didn't ask for affirmative action or "diversity" programs. He asked for an even chance.

He never gave me a cent.

When I was 11-years-old, I told him I wanted to go to university. He told me to start saving for tuition. This inspired me to approach the local newspaper to write an advice-to-parents column.

"Ask Henry" ran weekly in 35 newspapers from 1961-1964, and later paid for my tuition.

If my father had said, "no problem son, your tuition is assured," I would never have acted on my own behalf.

Bill Maher may be a sincere idealist, but surely our focus in the Third World should be on improving economic opportunity, on providing a hand-up NOT a handout. If we turned people into welfare cases, they would hate us more.

Jesus said we should love our neighbor. He didn't say we should support him.

Christ's teaching is NOT about economic equality. It is not about money at all.

Christianity is about wealth of Spirit. Jesus told the rich man to renounce money altogether and follow the gospel. Jesus knew that the experience of God's grace makes money insignificant.

Conversely, the farther we are from God, the more important money becomes.

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

Notions of Christian brotherhood make us vulnerable to manipulation by Liberals and Marxists who accumulate wealth and power by pretending to champion "have-nots". Social workers and charities grow fat. Hollywood stars gain moral stature.

At Christmas, let's be critical of appeals to our higher nature.

For example, what if Bill Maher was being paid to soften us up for "world socialism?" That's what he's talking about, after all.

What if the real aim was a world government designed to perpetuate unsustainable inequities, not alleviate them.

"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion," said Edmund Burke in 1784.

I know this sounds paranoid but we live in strange times.

Let's be discerning when proffering the hand of Christian brotherhood.

"Be simple as a dove and lay snares for no man: but be cunning as a serpent and let no man lay snares for you."

Jesus wasn't a liberal.

[ProudGenXLibertarian]

Again calling a person evil, on the basis of their political ideolgy seems a little harsh. Conservatives wish the media would stop trying to pigeon hole them into neat little groups, but yet some of us believe that a liberal is evil, simply because they are liberal. Its kind of like "everyone who is for gun rights is a white supremcist or seperatist."

[constitutiongirl]

Which verse and in what context?

[gmon11]

ACTUALLY, the bible does NOT say that. What The Apostle Paul ACTUALLY said was, if a MAN is not willing to work, you SHOULD not FEED him. That is a very different statement from what you are saying that he said. But for children this is not the case. They are to be taken care of by their parents as well as all the adults and elders in their community.