utbagpiper
Banned
I read a scholarly treatment to the effect that Jesus's "render unto Caesar" comment was an adroit side-step when questioned by someone trying to trap Him into saying something that could be used against Him. I read this some years ago; couldn't even begin to tell you who or where. Made a lot of sense, though.
That is certainly part of it. Other similar accounts of the same type of thing was when the woman taken in adultery was brought to Him and He was asked whether to stone her or not.
No doubt His answer was a very well played side-step there, but it was not dishonest. Nor in context can the total interaction be taken as Him excusing sexual immorality as the record concludes with His admonition, "go thy way and sin no more."
In like fashion, His counsel to "render unto Caesar" and His miraculous payment of taxes (for two persons, presumably Him and His Father in Heaven) must be taken if full context if one wants to gain the full meaning. Most scriptures can be wrested to whatever meaning one wants, if one is merely looking to try to use scripture to prove a point. If one is attempting to learn what the scriptures are teaching, however, one must put aside pre-conceived notions and look at full context. This is why I did not rely on any single passage of scripture to make my argument that Jesus was not an anarchist.
Liberals who tend to be non- or even anti-religious have long attempted to hijack Christ's teachings to advance their own political and social agenda. "We have an obligation to care for the poor. Even Jesus says so," is not an uncommon theme used to justify massive welfare benefits.
On the flip side, some conservatives have used the scriptures to justify mistreating homosexuals, blacks, or others. Some--including yours truly in my younger days--have asserted that His teachings all but demand a libertarian view of the world so as to provide maximum choice for individuals to either freely accept or freely reject His teachings and invitation.
Go back far enough and kings used explicit divine authority to justify their absolute rule, and even after dropping that claim, churches were long so intertwined with governments as to be effective means of helping enforce government rules.
And now we have a few folks--some of whom don't much seem to be Christian--trying to paint Jesus as an anarchist. They do so without even attempting to cite scriptures where Jesus taught anarchy, or railed against government operating within its proper limits. He kept the law (of Moses) perfectly. Upwards of ten different times in the New Testament the phrase "tell no man" is used by Jesus or His disciples relative to His working of miracles. Yet he instructed the 10 lepers to show themselves unto the priests, the rightful authority to declare a person clean or unclean relative to leprosy. The man capable of calling down legions of angles to His defense submitted Himself to false charges and the ultimate punishment. If one accepts that Jesus is God embodied, then one must consider that the God of the Old Testament who gave laws and regulations in abundance is that same Jesus that some would attempt to hijack as an anarchist? The King of Kings and Lord of Lord, He upon whose shoulders the government will rest, cannot credibly be called an anarchist, except by the grossly Biblically ignorant.
Jesus Christ and His teachings transcend social and political categorization. For 2000 years men have struggled just to explain and understand the physical nature of Jesus and His relationship with God the Father and the Holy Ghost. The complexities and apparent contradictions in the Trinitarian view of God is but an example. Yet some callow posters blithely assert that Jesus was an anarchist? And then act as if tangential discussions of my examples demonstrating the contrary actually constitute a defense of their own, unsupported emphatic assertion?
Jesus Christ was not liberal, nor conservative. He was not libertarian, anarchist, nor statist.
To the extent that any of these social or political philosophies contain some eternal truth, we might expect that Christ embodied and exemplified such truths. But wherever these philosophies contain error, true believers would have to accept that Jesus rejected such falsehoods.
But it seems that while I've been away from the thread, some have made clear they came into it not to have an informed discussion of what Christian beliefs may require or prohibit or inform relative to personal self defense, but rather that some have come simply to mock, attack, or belittle Christian believers themselves.
So much for that polite thing we like to trumpet about ourselves.
And in case anyone is wondering the answer to the stupid question of the bumper sticker, "What would Jesus drive?" I've figured there are only two scripturally supported answers:
1-A flaming chariot. We'll leave the PETA folks and eco-nuts to worry about how the horses react to that fire behind them and whether the fire is giving off any carbon.
2-A contractor with a 12 man crew probably drives a couple of crew-cab dually pickups like a Ford F-350.
Now, is it too much to ask that threads like this be left in peace to those who have a sincere desire to discuss the topic, without having the anti-religious show up just to mock and run things off topic?
Charles