Why Jesus was NOT a Liberal (or a conservative)!

Saturday Jacinda and I both went to get a haircut at a local mall. After we walked around some of the shops, including a Barnes and Noble. I always tend to gravitate towards two sections: Christian Books and sports. Go figure. The one thing that continues to amaze me whenever I go near the Christian book section is how many useless books there are on Christianity. I remember hearing once that Christian books (outside of the Bible) were fairly rare, or at least the bad ones were filtered out and never really saw the light of day. In the last fifty years or so, though, Christian books is a massive money making industry and people who should not be writing, let alone about Christianity, pump out books it seems either to boost their egos or make money.

What I am trying to get at more specifically was that while browsing through Barnes and Noble I spotted a book called "Jesus Was a Liberal."

I know what is going on right away, but let me explain. Many Christians who find themselves politically liberal feel that their voice has been taken away by the "Silent Majority" or the Christian Right that really took off back during the Reagan years. Now they are trying to distance themselves from the Christian Right and maintain their Christian identity. I do not judge them for this, neither do I think they are wrong in doing this. The problem lies in the way they go about this.

I want to be clear that I am specifically at odds with the author of the book I mentioned above. I have two immediate reasons for this. First, the book makes a theological claim about Jesus right in the title, "Jesus WAS a Liberal." I am assuming that the author did not even realize this or if he did he did not mean it this way, but it still says that Jesus WAS. The Christian understanding of Jesus Christ, however, says that Jesus IS. Jesus IS still alive and he rose from the dead to establish His kingdom forever. I am not trying to overplay this in case it was mere oversight, but this is a fundamental teaching of the Christian church.

The second problem lies in the word "liberal." I do not care if many of Jesus teaching fit into a modern liberal worldview, the real issue is that the term liberal, especially the way we use it today, is loaded with political and social implications of our current period in history. Nowhere in the Bible is the term Liberal used and this must be acknowledged. This is the problem of reading into the text our own culture and worldview, instead of actually reading what it says. In truth, most of what Jesus said in the Bible is far from any political position i have seen held by anyone in public office. Not only does Jesus reach out to the poor and condemn the unjust and prideful, but he speaks of hell and judgment frequently. Not too many liberal churches that I know of preach on hell that often, let alone of it being a real place. Though I only read the front and back cover, the intent of the book seems to argue for a Christian POLITICAL shift back to the left, instead of back to the actual Bible.

If you read the Gospels and try hard not to bring to the text your personal assumptions, which is impossible, but if you try you will see that Jesus has no time for politics. He has no time for government officials and their agendas. Jesus would not be anywhere near the White House dinner, whether with Obama or Bush in the Oval Office. When Jesus is tempted by the Devil while fasting in the wilderness He rejects the Satan's offer of political power for the agenda of His Father. When the religious leaders try to get Him in trouble with the Roman Government by using the issue of taxes, Jesus seems to affirm the political reality of the day. "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's." But what is more important is that in comparing the image of Caesar on a coin and the image of God that is imprinted upon humanity, Jesus is saying, "Give Caesar his worthless pieces of metal and give to God your whole life."

If you want to break the Bible free from the confines of the political Right in America, fine by me. Just make sure that what you are preaching is the Gospel and not your politics. I think this is just as big a problem, if not more so, for the Right, since it takes the political reality for granted. This is not easy and anyone who knows me knows that I am politically conservative. Does this make what I have to say loaded? Probably yes. But I think that we on the right should hold ourselves to just as high of a standard when it comes to seeing with a Biblical worldview and not seeing the Bible with a worldly, politicized world view.