It’s always worth remembering that there is a religious left too. Amongst its prominenti are the ‘social justice’ Christians of Jim Wallis’ Sojourners group, a public nuisance for years. Contemplating the nation’s budgetary woes, the Sojourners are now asking “What Would Jesus Cut?”
In a splendid piece for the Boston Globe Jeff Jacoby responds. Here’s a key extract:
Wallis fumed in an interview that Congress should be cutting defense spending instead of health or nutrition programs. “House Republicans want to beat our ploughshares into more swords,’’ he said. “These priorities that they’re offering are not just wrong or unfair, they’re unbiblical.’’ Unbiblical! Does Wallis really believe that no one advocating budget cuts he opposes can have serious ethical grounds for doing so? It must be wonderful to be so certain that what Wallis wants is precisely what God wants. Not all of us are as confident that our religious faith translates as readily into a detailed partisan agenda.
A more fundamental problem with the “What Would Jesus Cut?’’ campaign is its planted axiom that Jesus would want Congress to do anything at all. Yes, we are emphatically commanded by Scripture to help the poor, to comfort the afflicted, and to love the stranger. But those obligations are personal, not political. It requires a considerable leap of both faith and logic to read the Bible as mandating elaborate government assistance programs, to be funded by a vast apparatus of compulsory taxation. I admit that I am no New Testament scholar, but I cannot recall Jesus ever saying that the way to enter Heaven is to dole out money extracted from your neighbors’ pockets.
On the other hand, He did hang out with tax collectors….
” Yes, we are emphatically commanded by Scripture to help the poor, to comfort the afflicted, and to love the stranger. But those obligations are personal, not political.”
Yes, that’s true as soon as the entire anti-abortion political machine goes *poof!* and becomes composed entirely of people simply not getting abortions.
Yeah, whether you agree with Christianity itself I think the idea that everything is personal and not community is a bit hard to make. Lots of Christian communities make that distinction but it seems to be more decided by their pre-existing political inclinations than any real theology. And, as others note, such communities pick and choose what is or isn’t a personal choice. (i.e. abortion but not global warming)
What do these leftists have to say about Jesus’ answer to the Syro-Phonecian woman in Mark (IIRC): “It is wrong to take bread from the children and give it to the dogs.”