Posted on 02/15/2014 8:05:22 AM PST by OneVike
It has been the aim of the Democrat party since they lost the Presidential election in 2004 to subvert the Christian doctrine with the claim that Jesus was a Socialist. Their goal is to convince Christians that their Social agenda is morally equivalent with the teachings and life of Jesus Christ. They even went so far as to create handbooks to be distributing to pastors of churches that will show them how to use various Bible verses to promote what they call "Christian Socialism." Taking this into consideration, it shouldn't surprise anyone that many Christians across America were fooled into voting for Obama in 2008.
Add that to the vast amount of Americans who have a limited knowledge of history and hardly no Biblical knowledge, it is not surprising that many have fallen for the misinformation on what Jesus taught (and for whom the teachings were given). These Biblical revisionists have become especially adept at cherry picking Scripture to suit their agenda. Hence, many have come to misunderstand the gospel of Christ by equating it with modern day Socialism.
My first point of contention with the idea that Christ was a socialist, is His teachings and the example of His life. Throughout the time that Christ lived with His disciples, He never worked. Instead he was dependent upon the charity and good hearts of those who surrounded Him. Now that is not to say Jesus was lazy or a bum either. Jesus was always about His Fathers business, and that business was the salvation of mankind.You will find nowhere in the Scriptures, Jesus telling His followers to rely upon those who are not willing to hear the gospel or share what they have. If the people refused to hear
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Sure.
To start with, the reason I seemed to have changed coarse on you, is because if you reread my comment you will see it actually explains the difference between one and the other.
Follow me here, if you need to kill a rat, you put out rat poison. In order to get the rat to eat the poison, you need to disguise it, and the best way to do that is to use 99% of good food that will lure the rat into eating the poison.
Now the good food is not what kills the rat, it is the 1% of poison that did the job.
So too are authoritarian style government systems that the people voluntarily vote for. To make it attractive, they offer what you consider is the good, and who would say taking care of those in need is bad. After all, for the vast majority of humans it is the moral thing to do.
However, when you already have a system in place to do you must find a way to do that system one better. One way to do so is to put obsolesces in the way for the system in place to keep it from working. So, new laws come into place to make it more difficult for Christian organizations to properly do what they have been doing for 2000 years. remember, all Socialist are against Christianity to begin with, but as the article states, they now need those Christians to think they are doing what Christ wants them to do.
The trick is to make the people think Christ approves, thus the 99%, then they add their poison which is the 1%. People think Socialism is giving what Christ tells them they should do, but with their rules and regulations.
Under Christ, we should do as He tells us, but the truth be told if all did as he says, we would all be better off, whereas if we all do what the Socialist government tells us to do, we are all worse off.
So now the coercion part you ask about. Yes, they both seem to coerce you into accepting them, but truth be told, it is like offering a child a poisoned muffin as apposed to a muffin that will help them continue living a good life.
The end result is the difference. One is honest about the result, the other is not.
ne tells you you will die and forever be lost in a burning hell where the worm doesn’t die and the fire is never quenched. The second death. The other promises that your cradle to grave needs will be met and you never have to worry. Ever see that work as they advertise?
The difference being Christ doesn’t promise you wealth and good health on this planet, he is honest when he tells you you will die, but follow me and you can live, the other say you will have wealth and health, but you will eventually die and there is nothing else so ignore the guy carrying the cross because one day you will be just another carcass pushing up daisies.
I hope that helps. Trust me, it is more convoluted but the gist is one is coercion, the other if the truth. You decide who is honest.
Big difference.
Good point.
I was just trying to be short and to the point, which inevitably the more I respond, the longer my comments get.
So you are agreeing with me that both use coercion. The question of the benefits is a separate issue. Both use coercion to get you to sacrifice your self for the good of others, the state in the case of Socialism and God in the case of Christianity. Even though they are different in the concrete, they are identical in principle.
The people who the writer is taking on though, are more likely to make the claim that Jesus wouldn't support modern day capitalism and that socialism is the alternative. It's like that with politics -- people are always more definite about what they oppose than about what they're for. If you want to argue with their point of view you have to start at the other end -- with what Jesus would think of today's capitalism.
FWIW: This is a tough topic because it starts with the always difficult (impossible?) question of what some historical figure would think of things that happened long after his or her death and adds all the complications of theology.
I just figured out an even better way to answer your question.
Lets say a ship is sinking due to someone eases negligence, in this case Adam and Eve caused sin to enter the world and thus death is the punishment.
You can follow the guy who promises you safety or the one offering a false sense of security until the ship inevitably sinks with you on it.
They both give you rules to follow. One admits the road will be tough, but promises you life. The other cannot give you life, but promises an easy road, which even that they cannot promise.
Eventually the ship sinks, you either followed the one who was honest and led you to life, or go down with the one who lied to you about everything.
No, the article tries to warn Christians that the left has been leading them astray to get them to vote for Socialists by claiming Jesus was a Socialist.
The writer is trying to educate them so they will not fall for the lie being propagated by the left.
When it comes to Jesus, He is not just an historical figure. He is GOD, and yes we can know what he thinks because he gave us a book to learn what he thinks about everything.
The difference is one is using coercion to get you to follow them. The other is just telling you the truth of what to expect.
It’s not God’s fault Adam and eve sinned and thrust the whole universe onto a coarse that will lead to death and destruction. God made them to live forever and they chose to be their own God, we now must suffer for their mistake, not God’s.
Do not blame God for sin, he is just giving us a way out of it.
I need to go for now, but I will get back and carry this conversation on when i get back.
May I chime in here? I suspect you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick because a lot of us are providing you with answers while assuming that you know something that perhaps you don’t.
It sounds as though you are wondering if God is trying to force humans to obey a lot of senseless, inhibiting laws by threatening us with punishment when we don’t comply. If this were indeed the case, we would just be a lot of miserable slaves, obeying a cruel God out of fear.
If the Lord had wanted mindless robots who would simply do His bidding, He could presumably have made them. It’s not clear why God would have wanted helpless slaves like this, but a Being Who made the galaxies could certainly have had slaves if He wanted them.
But that is not what He wanted, or what He created. He Who made the vast beauties of the Universe out of an outpouring of love wanted creatures who would love Him back and rejoice with Him. He wanted loving sons and daughters, not prisoners. And—this is the important thing—real love, honest love, cannot be coerced. Think about it: if someone holds a gun to your head and says, “You must love me or I’ll kill you,” can you feel genuine love for him or her? You might be able to pretend love for awhile, but it wouldn’t be the real thing. Real love originates in freedom. It is a choice.
So the Lord gave us free will. We are free to do as we choose. Logically, this necessitates the opportunity to reject His love and goodness as well as the chance to accept them. (And that, by the way, is exactly why there is evil in the world: because we do have this free will, and freedom permits us to do evil as well as good.) We can decide to love and follow Him, or we can choose to distance ourselves from Him.
Of course, talk is cheap; to say that we love God while engaging in a lot of actions that create evil, sorrow, suffering is hypocrisy, not love. It’s not really any different than if you say you love your wife, but you ignore her, hurt her, lie to her, undo her good and helpful works, and generally reject her. It’s easy to say that you love her, but your actions toward her say otherwise, and a man who loves his wife doesn’t act this way. In the same manner, if you really love God you don’t behave in ways that harm his other creatures and distance yourself from Him. If you love Him, you want to take steps to draw closer to Him.
So all the apparently capricious rules and regulations are not set up to compel mindless, rote obedience as a way of avoiding punishment. Those rules—do not lie, cheat, steal, commit murder, screw around before marriage, commit adultery, envy and covet what others have, obsessionally love money, etc.—are founded in a very deep understanding of basic human psychology. They order our relationships, organize a godly society, and orient us toward God. Adherence to these rules strengthens us to deal with evil in the way that going to the gym strengthens us to deal with the physical demands of life. They are steps or exercises that gradually draw us closer and closer to the Lord until we are fully embracing Him. As we love Him more, we feel a desire not just to obey the simple rules, but to act more and more as Christ did, in self-sacrificial altruism to create good and combat evil.
Again, it is your choice to take the steps that will bring you closer to God, or not. It’s the consequences of “or not” that are disturbing. If hell is an infinite distance from God, it’s rather terrifying to contemplate an existence without His goodness—without light, love, hope, peace, beauty, kindness, happiness of any sort; without anything we want, only its opposite. This is not something a selfish God banishes us to out of sullen, demanding caprice, but something we deliberately choose ourselves. If we sniff suspiciously at the love of the Supreme Author of the Universe and turn away saying “Nah, there has to be a catch, I want to do what I want to do,” that’s not coercion on His part. That’s a childish selfishness on our own part.
You might want to look at albionin’s posting history, he is a full time troll.
Thanks OneVike. I have to go as well but I would like to pick this discussion back up as well. There are a couple more questions I have. I thank you for discussing it with me.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. Isaiah 55:8
Giving comes down to choice and liberty vs. forced confiscation.
What about such ‘religious’ leaders and organizations like Mike Huckabee, other Protestant leaders who back socialist candidates and amnesty, Popes and bishops who back socialist candidates and amnesty.
Yes when it comes to fighting Islam we need the Christian and Jewish leaders to back us, but we need to distance ourselves from a large group of them where socialism and amnesty is involved
You have it backwards. If you look at who makes up the right and the left, the conservative right is made up mostly of Christians, the left owns the vast majority of the anti-Christians, and the non-Christians.
The VAST majority of people who feel like you, vote democrat.
Right. Jesus is a king and so are the leaders in a Socialist government. No?
NO. They’re not “a king.”
You have it backwards my friend
Just because someone is Christian and Conservative does not mean that there are not very powerful Christian and RC leaders that are both socialist and in favor of amnesty.
I’ve been here a lot longer than you and your insult about my voting proclivities are not worth more than a brief note that your ignorance has led to your using personal attacks to make a point.
Personally, when it comes to the Pope, Mike Huckabee and those Protestant leaders who back Socialists, I have no use for them. They are but fools doing Satan’s bidding even if they think otherwise.
These men need to spend more time studying God’s desires in the Old Testament books of Wisdom and poetry like Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.
It doesn’t really take much to recognize fools when one spends time learning of God’s wisdom.
I’m not trolling. I am simply asking questions. I have not been rude to anyone. I have not attacked anyone personally. I am willing to admit I don’t know everything and I’m willing to change my mind. I am simply asking how could Jesus be opposed to Socialism when he agrees with and supports the fundamental principle that justifies it; self sacrifice for the good of others. That is all I am discussing. I have not discussed politics. I have not discussed the existence of God. I want to know how Jesus can oppose Socialism or the control of people by the threat of physical coercion when he advocates the moral premise which underlies it and justifies it. Every dictatorship in history has relied on this moral premise to justify its actions. People seem to be saying that it’s OK for God to do it because he knows best. Well that is exactly what every tyrant says, that he knows best. People keep trying to shift the discussion to the benefits offered and I want to know how the two systems are different IN PRINCIPAL. So far no one has done that.
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