Posted on 08/17/2004 4:23:06 PM PDT by COEXERJ145
AUSTIN - Just a few miles from George W. Bush's former office at the state Capitol, a panel of religious experts Tuesday weighed a question with relevance to many people of faith: How would Jesus vote?
It's a complex question that can't be boiled down to simple political terms, say religious leaders who attended a Texas Faith Network conference in Austin.
But at least one conference speaker - James C. Moore, co-author of "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George Bush Presidential" - said he knew exactly how Jesus would vote.
"If ever there were a bleeding-heart liberal, it was Jesus Christ," Moore said. "I think the carpenter from Galilee was the original Democrat."
Moore drew laughter and applause from a moderate to left-leaning crowd of about 250 clergy and lay leaders who met at Congregation Agudas Achim synagogue.
Many at the conference voiced concerns that the religious right dominates discussions of faith and morality in politics. They complained that issues such as abortion and gay marriage seem to take priority over hunger, corporate crime and even the war in Iraq.
Some research has found that white Christians who attend worship services at least once a week are far more likely to vote Republican, while less frequent worshippers and those who are not religious tend to lean Democratic. Many analysts have criticized Democrats for failing to more effectively reach religious voters.
"The sound bites and the headlines have co-opted people of faith," said the Rev. Tom Heger, pastor of St. John's Presbyterian Church in Manchaca, south of Austin. "It would be a surprise to a lot of folks to discover that there are some very faithful, regular church attendees who aren't going to vote for Bush."
(Excerpt) Read more at thestate.com ...
Ping. Abortion? Well, that does it. Vote Bush.
It was the pagan Greeks (and who we should thank) that considered abortion immoral and their doctors had to swear (oaths are a Greek pagan religious invention - the Jews did not swear oaths) to the Hippocratic Oath vowing not to euthanize or carry out an abortion.
Nor did the Bible ban slavery. The pagan Greeks were the first to consider slavery wrong and ban it - but only for fellow Greeks.
JESUS WOULD HAVE USED HIS BRAIN AND VOTED FOR THE MAN WHO WAS SUBMITTED TO GOD .. NOT FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS.
He was the only One who ever submitted to God.
For the truth.
Really ..?? Don't you think a person today can be submitted to GOD .. and don't you think President Bush is ..?? Curious?
2 Cor. 5:21: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
Well .. I don't just think, I believe President Bush has submitted his life to GOD's direction. Of course he has to die daily, Jesus told us to pick up our cross and follow Him (daily).
"None are righteous" .. but then you write the scripture which opposes that statement and says, "so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God". So .. if we're in Him, we are a partaker of that righteousness. We are no longer sinners. If we're still sinners then we didn't get saved.
We are saved through His finished work, not ours. Of course, we still sin (though, not as a habit of life) and deal with the effects of a fallen world, until we shed this tent and are glorified with Him. We wear His robe of righteousness (hence, partakers), not ours. It's all about Him.
But to answer your original question, yes, I think Bush looks to the LORD for his direction. Is he (Bush) perfect? Nah....and he would admit that.
Actually, the OT also says that capital punishment should be inflicted for intentional murder of a fetus, although the exact meaning of the passage is rather vague as it is difficult to translate.
It is also only fair to point out that the ancient Greeks may have been opposed to abortion, but they had no trouble at all with infanticide. Letters have been found written by Greeks from around the time of Christ instructing the wife to "expose" the child if female, but keep it if male. Greek (and Roman) writers of the day were astounded that Jews raised all the children they gave birth to, as infanticide was extremely common in their societies.
You might call it post-partum abortion.
It is likely that the reason (some) Greeks objected to abortion was that it interfered with the right of the man to decide whether to keep his child or not. Women in Greek (and again, Roman) society were, if anything, less recognized as fully human than among the Jews. As a remarkably egregious example, Roman women weren't even given names! Roman daughters were numbered: first, second, third and so forth.
The Greeks had nothing at all against slavery, only against Greeks being enslaved, which didn't stop them from doing a great deal of it. The surviving Athenian soldiers from the invasion of Sicily were sold into slavery, for instance.
The Athenians (those wonderful democrats) killed all the men and sold all the women and children from at least one of the island states that had the temerity to rebel against their oppression.
The Jews allowed slavery for Jews, but only for a limited term, a maximum of 7 years. This made it more a type of indentured servitude than true slavery. And it was a capital crime to sell a Jewish slave to foreigners.
The balance between the morality of Jewish and Greek institutions is not nearly as one-sided as you portray.
The same way as Juan and Hector.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
How would Jesus vote? Exactly the opposite of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
It does not say that. My statement was "The Old Testament says that if you cause a miscarriage by accident you have to pay a fine. That is as specific as the OT gets on the subject." is accurate. For such a thing as murder of a fetus you want to say that the OT passage was vague?
The Greeks considered all infanticide a sin (no evil in Pagan Greek theology just correct and incorrect behavior towards the gods) when an infant was exposed it was done so because to kill out right was a sin (if that is the term for it). Exposing an unwanted infant meant nature was the killer not the parent and in exposures a slave was made to do it because their taint would not matter.
Secondly, the Greeks only exposed the deformed early on in the city state period - not healthy males and the poor exposed females healthy or unhealthy (later on in the post Alexander world and Rome where huge city slums developed some thing healthy male infants were sometimes also exposed but no proof exists).
I know very well of the passage you speak and the father is writting a letter to his wife instructing her to expose the infant if it was a female in Alexandria. In actuality "garbage scavangers" would patrol the city's garbage dumps were exposure was practiced and if the infant was a healthy girl (but unwanted by the poor parents) the infant would be sold to slavers who would raise most likely to be sold off as a prostitute. Female infants who were crippled would be allowed to die. Male cripled infants if salvagable would also be saved by the scavangers and sold to slavery because even if lame it was still a male child.
But in any case my statement is true - that the ancient Pagan Greeks not the Jews were the first to SPECIFICALLY condemn eutenasia and abortions and even some forms of slavery. The OT and NT NEVER touch on the subject and the reason the Christian church is against abortion and euthanasia has more to do with the Greek fathers of the Church incorporating their Greek philosophy within the teachings of Jesus. The Fathers considered many aspects of Greek philosophy to have been pre-Christian (such as Platonic love) and inspired by God for the Greeks to prepare the way for Jesus salvation spreading into the gentiles.
But in any case as shocking as it sounds anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia and anti-slavery are Pagan Greek concepts not Jewish either in the Old or New Testament.
PS: To clarify - When the poor would expose a child - or more accuratly pay a slave a fee to do it their was an unspoken understanding that the child if healthy would be sold off into slavery and not really exposed.
My memory with regard to the verse in Exodus played me false. Mea culpa. Although if accidental inducement of an abortion was punished with a fine, presumably intentional abortion would have been punished more severely.
Good luck with claiming that putting your child out with the garbage means you aren't personally responsible. "The weather did it, not me." LOL
Western civilization is the only one that has ever existed that is a true hybrid, between Greek and Hebrew (Biblical). As such, some like to emphasize one "parent" over the other, claiming that all good comes from one and all bad from the other. Like hybrids in general, this combined heritage is what has made western civilization so incredibly hardy and durable.
Christians (and conservatives in general) tend to emphasize the Hebraic and Biblical roots of our culture, secularists and libertarians the Greek ones.
The truth, of course, is that they are so intertwined that they are extraordinarily difficult to separate. Just as removing either half of the genetic material of a living hybrid will kill it, so would removing either half of the cultural material of western civilization.
Most of the indigenous anti-western movements of the last 200 years (socialism, Marxism, fascism, liberalism, etc.) are in a very real sense a rebellion against the Hebraic component of our culture.
Since I speak with Jesus every day.... I am pretty sure where He stands on Life!
I also know that we are to pray for those who despise us, and I do that daily. We are all sinners, only perfect One out there is Jesus.....
But I think Jesus would vote for the Godly Choice. I do know He loves John Kerry just as much as he does the killer on death row, but we have a choice in this life to Live and Honor Him... and those that do are Blessed beyond what any of us deserve.
Good luck with claiming that putting your child out with the garbage means you aren't personally responsible. "The weather did it, not me." LOL
Excuse me - were we having a scholarly discussion on the subject and I was discussing how the act was viewed by pagan Greeks of that time not what my view was. I thought you were of mind to understand that. I don't know why you assumed that view was my own.
I agree with your last statements about the hybrid aspects of our great culture.
Bump for a very enlightening reply.
Sorry. I wasn't trying to imply that you personally held that view.
I guess it seemed to me that you were being excessively hard on the Hebrews, applying today's standards to them, while simultaneously letting the Greeks off the hook with relativism.
The fact remains that infanticide was extremely widespread among the Greeks, Romans and other ancient peoples, while being unknown among the Jews of the time. It may have been considered a sin or taint by the Greeks, but it certainly wasn't a crime punishable by the state. Infanticide among the Jews was a capital crime, viewed as murder exactly as it is today.
(Unless you can kill the kid when he's not quite fully born yet.)
Although for some obscure reason baby or child killers tend to get lighter sentences than those who kill adults.
BTW, there is a movement afoot today, popularized by Professor Singer, to return us to essentially the Greek attitude towards infanticide.
One reason I believe that the 2000 election was so unique was that God wanted people to pray out for the election of George W. Bush...but God was testing His people to see if anyone really cared one way or another who was elected President. I'm sure that had believers not interceded for Bush's election in 2000, God would have been pleased to have let Gore steal the election, and our nation would have continued its downward slide. I think the same applies this year as well: I believe that God would prefer to have someone in the Oval Office, directing the policies and priorities of this nation, who diligent seeks Him in the job he is doing. We have such an executive in George W. Bush. But if believers don't care enough to diligently pray that a man of God serve in the presidency, God is willing to allow Kerry to win, and to pursue policies based upon his radical secularism.
God is sovereign, but He partners with believers who will do the work of intercession to know the heart and mind of God to pray it into existence.
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