[Previous entry: "Feel That Nose?"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "How to Talk to a Dittohead (If You Must) about Social Services and Government"]

12/07/2004: "What Would Jesus Do?"

Let’s say for the sake of argument that one of Jesus’ concerns for His Church was that it stay out of politics. He knew exactly what would happen to him personally, that religious authorities would enlist civil authorities to have him put to a tortuous death. Those events themselves would be a powerful message to the Church, to not do the same. Just to be sure, Jesus devoted a substantial proportion of his final words to the need to keep faith and political spheres separate, when for example He said “my kingdom is not of this world.” But if He judged that this was not enough to prevent the entanglement of His Church with the affairs of civil power, what more could He do? One option would be to devote some parables to the topic, but the problem with parables is that they require interpretation. No, He needed the equivalent of the nuclear option to make it absolutely clear to his followers how he felt about them using His name to advance political causes. So what did he do? He put the words directly into the mouth of Satan! How could He possibly make it any more clear? Here are Satan’s words from the gospel of Luke, Chapter 4: And the devil took him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, "To you I will give all this authority and their glory; for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it shall all be yours." Did Jesus leave any wriggle room in these scriptures? I sure don’t see it! He spelled out that he was talking about power rather than wealth by calling out the words “authority” and “glory.” Also, he dealt with wealth separately, via parables. He made it very clear that all civil power was owned by Satan. How much more explicit can you be? And He put it in the form of temptation, knowing that his followers would be tempted by opportunities to use civil power as a short-cut to force compliance to His teachings rather than by using the approach that Jesus Himself used – teaching and convincing rather than physically threatening. Mao was right about one thing – power comes from the barrel of a gun. All civil power is based on the principle that law must have the final fallback of physical coercion when all other measures of enforcement fail. Small wonder that Jesus wanted no part of this kind of power, particularly when spiritual power, power that comes from belief rather than physical coercion, is so much powerful!