This Is Our City

Rome did not found a socialist state where everyone was equal. There was a great disparity in Roman society. Caesar’s taxes paid for huge standing armies that commited genocide and invaded countries like Israel. Taxes paid for crucifixions. Taxes paid for Nero’s palace, coliseums and other public works projects. Are you saying because Jesus said to pay your taxes that somehow He was advocating an equal distribution of wealth? The poor in Rome and in Israel were taken care of by personal charity and family, not by the government. In Proverbs 31 the perfect wife is a venture capitalist who speculates in real estate and has a retail business.The early church took care of Christian widows only with demonstrable faith who were over 60 and had no living relatives. They did not put the poor of Jerusalem on the dole. I hardly know how to respond you are so confused.

Hermit, how can you say Jesus is “Clear” about re-distribution of wealth in the lazarus parable? You could just as well say Lazarus was spared an eternity in hell by remaining poor. You are attempting to find economic theory in a parable that is about justice for the faith-filled poor and judgement on the impious, extraordinarily selfish rich man. The moral of the story is not that the government needs to confiscate evryone’s income and re-distribute it, but that the Rich man ought to personally, voluntarily share some portion of his goods with a man who had none. That is called charity, a much lauded value in Jewish culture, not Marxism.

Hermit, I think you have me confused with someone else. I said when we reinterpret Jesus parables to mean building a utopian political system on this earth, when we re-cast biblical spiritual revival as a coercive equal re-distribution of wealth, that our faith resembles marxism. Ms Hogeweide has given up on prayer for spiritual revival, as she says, and instead has become a militant, sign-making, sloganeering advocate of coercive re-distribution of wealth and like Strelnikov in Dr. Zhivago or Tom Joad. Jesus told Peter to put down his sword, “my Kingdom is not of this earth”. But there will always be Simon the Zealots among us who disreagrd His words. The 1 percent and the 99% is an arbitrary, destructive fantasy.

Jason, I asked where in the gospels did Jesus fill the hungry with the good things of this world, clothes, money, a supply of free food, transportation and clean drinking water? My point is He is talking about the water of life, the bread of life, The answer you gave me from Matthew 25 is not something Jesus did. Read any commentary on Matthew 25. Jesus is not talking about feeding the world or saying you will go to hell if you do not visit prisons. He is answering a question the disciples asked about the signs of the end times and He is talking about giving aid to persecuted believers “one of the least of these, my brothers”. As He says a few chapters earlier, “my brothers are those who do the will of God”. Matthew 24 and 25 is all about the dire state of the end times, the relentless persecution of believers and His coming. As Jesus said to Paul, "Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?"

Jason, Shane Claiborne and Jim Wallis have co-authored books.