You know when the Left is in trouble: They start praying to Jesus. Well, not exactly praying the way we Christians understand it. The leftist’s prayer is rather trying to recruit Jesus to their agenda and goals, not really ask Jesus what He wishes.
This is what Mehdi Hasan has done in his article, “What Would Jesus Do?” in the New Statesman. Hasan is the senior politics editor of the New Statesman; and the New Statesman is a British left-wing magazine founded by members of the Fabian Society back in 1913. Yes, the same Fabian Society that has adopted for its emblem a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Socialists seem quite eager these days to embrace Jesus. It seems like some religion might not hurt socialism after all.
If the Fabian Society has any superior logical or intellectual capabilities, Hasan is not really passionate to exhibit them in this article. The piece is a mess of logical fallacies, ignorance about the facts of the Bible, and unwarranted logical leaps from one argument to another. When summoning his witnesses, for example, Hasan relies on Gorbachev and Hugo Chavez, and “even Quentin Letts” (Who’s Quentin Letts anyway?), as if there aren’t better theologians in the world to tell us about Jesus’ political views. Because radical leftist movements were inspired by Jesus, Hasan claims, Jesus must be a leftie. Meanwhile, he admits that these days it is the right that is inspired by Jesus too. He doesn’t seem to make the same logical conclusion that maybe Jesus was a right-wing conservative.
The use of descriptions is atrocious, logically and factually speaking: Jesus is “the unemployed son of two asylum-seekers.” Well, Jesus was a toddler when Joseph and Mary were “asylum-seekers.” What an unemployed toddler has to do with leftist ideologies, Hasan doesn’t tell us. Then of course comes the typical leftist profiling: “the Jesus of the Gospels is a bearded, sandal-wearing, unmarried rabbi from Nazareth with all the personal traits of a modern revolutionary.” What does Jesus’ clothing, religion, or marital preferences have to do with the “personal traits of a modern revolutionary” is not mentioned. If I said, “the bearded Mehdi Hasan living in Britain, with his religiously significant name (the Good Prophet of God), has all the personal traits of a modern Muslim suicide bomber, and therefore he is a suicide bomber,” I would have committed a logical fallacy, and yet it won’t be as bad as Hasan’s fallacy. And even the very idea that Jesus imitated leftist movements that appeared hundreds of years later is preposterous to an extent that can’t be expected of a “political analyst” of such significant magazine like the New Scientist.
The five “reasons” why Jesus would act like a leftie today are even more preposterous. First, Jesus didn’t advocate “class war”: He didn’t work up the crowds to expropriate the riches of the rich man. He advised him to share voluntarily – the sort of free market “voluntarism” so deeply despised by socialist revolutionaries in the last two centuries.
Second, Jesus didn’t bash the “bankers” but the money-changers. The two groups were different, and even today in Britain a bank and an exchange office are different entities. And Jesus actually advised people to leave their money with the bankers if they have no idea what business to apply them to (Matt. 25:27).
Third, in Matthew 20:1-6 Jesus doesn’t advocate “fair daily living wage” but the right of the employer to decide what wage to pay to whom. Would a leftie today advocate such a thing?
Fourth, Jesus’ miracles have nothing to do with a national centralized healthcare. Not a single one of His miracles was paid by taxpayers robbed of their money by force. (Now, if Hasan can recommend national healthcare that performs perfect miracles at no cost whatsoever, I will sign up immediately.)
Fifth, Jesus the “anti-war activist” was the one who said to the disciples to carry swords with them (Luke 22:26-28). Peter wouldn’t have had a sword in the first place if Jesus didn’t tell him to.
Contrary to what Jim Wallis says (as quoted by Hasan), the politics of Jesus constitutes no problem whatsoever for the religious right. Wallis and Hasan wish it did. But it doesn’t, and no verbal equilibristics[1] on the Left can change this fact. Hasan, with all his effort, didn’t prove his case; he only succeeded in creating the suspicion that the New Statesman has very low intellectual standards for their editors.
The bigger question is this: Why is the Left so eager to appropriate Jesus Christ for their agenda these days? After two centuries of open disdain, ridicule, denouncements of the Christian faith by socialists, what is the reason for this “religious revival” among them? We have heard leftist “prophecies” before of the imminent death of Christianity. Why is it so dear to them now?
The answer is: Socialism is morally bankrupt. It has spent whatever moral capital it had, and now socialists are desperately looking for some new meaning to inject in their system to keep it alive.
The left has a history of ideological compromises. Anytime it went bankrupt, it was eager to adopt the elements of the system the socialists hated so much, in order to make their system survive.
A Capitalist economy was Lenin’s way to save Russia from economic collapse. The greatest ideologist of Communism after Marx and Engels couldn’t think of a way to save Communism from economic bankruptcy except by letting back on the market private initiative, profits, and a free system of prices. Russia recovered almost miraculously. Lenin’s “New Economic Policy” was in fact the centuries-old economic policy of the Christian world of free market, capitalist mode of profits and production, decentralized pricing. Stalin eventually abolished the policy in 1928. The next year Russia, whose most serious economic problem before WWI was how to dispose of the excess grain, had its worst famine in its history. Later, in the 1960s and then in the 1980s, the Soviet leadership again adopted semi-capitalist measures when the Soviet economy was about to collapse. Capitalist nations were the solution again when it came to purchasing the necessary machinery, or technology; apparently, since socialism actually produced backwardness in science and technology, there was nothing wrong with the superior capitalist advances.
The Chinese experiment in capitalist economy is well known, of course, to any student of the recent history of China. Chinese communists eventually discovered that Communism produces famine, and the only solution they could find is to slaughter the sacred cow of their ideology: Public ownership of the means of production. One could argue how much of the Marxist ideology has remained in China these days. The dictatorship is certainly still there – but only to support an essentially capitalist economy, which is farther away from the orthodoxy of Marxism than even the United States or Europe today. China increasingly resembles the Chile of Pinochet rather than the ideal of the Communist Manifesto. Capitalism works, you know.
Even European socialists – who seldom learn from history – in the last ten years talk about the “role of entrepreneurship” in Europe. The Lisbon strategy adopted in 2000 was supposed to encourage that entrepreneurship and restore Europe economically. It never happened, largely because the socialist leaders of Europe left it to the bureaucrats to revive European entrepreneurship. But at least, the willingness for ideological compromise was there.
Economic bankruptcy makes socialists willing to forget their economic ideology. Political bankruptcy has the same effect on them. When in the 1980s Communism in Eastern Europe had spent all the political capital it had, the leaders of the Eastern European dictatorships eventually tried to find a solution by relinquishing one of the central tenets of Marxism – the one-party system. “Liberal democracies” were ridiculed before by orthodox Communists; then “liberal democracy” suddenly became the fad of the day, and the perestroika was supposed to restore it in the Communist countries as a “step to a better Communism.”
Those were economic and political bankruptcy. Socialism could survive those, as long as its moral sway over its followers remained strong. As long as the voters believed in the cherished socialist ideals of redistributing wealth, government control, political dictatorship by an “enlightened elite,” socialists were willing to sacrifice ideological orthodoxy in the political and economic area to remain in power.
But these days socialism is facing a bankruptcy from which it may never recover: Moral bankruptcy. It lacks moral legitimacy. It has no new appealing message to the masses. It has no attractiveness anymore beyond a small circle of elitist intellectuals. It sounds pathetically old-fashioned. The enthusiasm is lost, and, as Mehdi Hasan rightly points out, in the US the “Christian right is in ascendancy.” (He knows whatever is in ascendancy in the US today, will be so in Europe in a decade. It’s a proven historical trend.)
President Obama’s rise and fall is the most alarming indicator of it. No socialist has ever won such a victory before. And no politician in history has experienced such a sharp fall in popularity after his victory – all because of his socialist policies. What was supposed to be the ultimate victory of socialism in the US turned out to be its defeat, and apparently its final defeat, judging from the lack of vision and ideas. The Left is in the awkward position of still wielding the political power in both the United States and Europe, and not knowing what to do with it. Anything they do is interpreted against them. The old comfortable conditions of passing laws without public scrutiny are gone.
And what is even more disturbing to the socialist elites, the Christian right is not silent anymore. It has a moral indictment against every socialist policy and against every tenet of the socialist philosophy. And socialism has no answer. It is bankrupt. It is running out of moral legitimacy. And because of that, socialism is running out of manpower. And apparently, from the quality of Hasan’s article, it is running out of brainpower.
Hasan is forced to write such a stupid and illogical article about Jesus. Of course he doesn’t believe a word of what he himself says. For someone who marches under the banner of a wolf in sheep’s clothes, we know what he really believes about Christianity and Christ. (Seriously, Mehdi, do you expect many Christians to believe you?) Any concession to Christianity and Christ is an ideological compromise, just like Lenin’s New Economic Policy and the Gorbachev’s perestroika. But Hasan has no other option.
His rationale is this: religion proved to survive much better than expected. It apparently not only survived the “age of reason” but even managed to increase in popularity. Well, it certainly worked well as a tool for the conservative right in gaining popularity and moral legitimacy. Why not use it as a tool for the left? Why not use Jesus as a tool, too?
But he has a problem there: Jesus is not a fiction. He is real. And He is no one’s tool. And He is not “unemployed.” He is in the business of throwing socialism on the dustbin of history. Hasan better make peace with Him and repent, before it’s too late.
Endnotes:- Equilibristics is a blanket term for a number of circus skills which involve balancing or maintaining equilibrium. The term applies equally to acts in which the performer balances on a prop, and acts in which the performer balances or spins a prop. [↩]
A Reformed missionary to his native Bulgaria for over 10 years, Bojidar preaches and teaches doctrines of the Reformation and a comprehensive Biblical worldview. Having founded Bulgarian Reformation Ministries in 2001, he and his team have translated over 30,000 pages of Christian literature about the application of the Law of God in every area of man’s life and society, and published those translations online for free. He has been active in the formation of the Libertarian movement in Bulgaria, a co-founder of the Bulgarian Society for Individual Liberty and its first chairman. If you would like Bojidar to speak to your church, homeschool group or other organization, contact him through his website: http://www.bulgarianreformation.org/
For the most part, the left really doesn’t have a problem with religion, unless it’s biblical Christianity (as opposed to some perversion of it).
But it has gotten tiring how often some atheist, in a discussion, tries to rebuke my side by asking “WWJD?”–as if they really cared. Their only reason for invoking His name is to somehow use it against those for whom His name really means something.
They think that they’re somehow “safe” in proposing the kind of Jesus-caricature that most of the secular world pictures Him as: the Jesus who preached tolerance, who never insulted people, who focused on the positive and dismissed talk of “sin,” who affirmed the ecumenical “brotherhood” of all men, who was loving but never holy, and who was the merciful side of God as opposed to “the dark side of the Force” that God is portrayed in the Old Testament (forgetting that Jesus expressly proclaimed Himself to be God in the flesh and that He agreed with the Father and taught only what He would have Him teach). It’s the same as when they (the left) try to use the Founding Fathers as people who would agree with them that all religion or religious expression of any kind should be kept out of the public square (thinking, or often only *pretending*, that the Founding Fathers wouldn’t actually be completely oppposed to such an idea).
In their assumption that this Jesus would fool any real Christian familiar with the biblical portrayal of Christ, they reveal their contempt for Him *and* His followers, even when they don’t realize the futility of their caricature.
As I said to someone once (the day before she “unfriended” me), “Do you know why I don’t have an opinion on whether priests should marry? Because I’m not Catholic.” Of course, I could have used any illustration (not just that of Catholics or Catholic priests), but I think I made it clear enough what I think of the use of Jesus by the secular left–who despises Him, if they believe in Him at all–in trying to gain the upper hand in a debate. (In the rare cases that they don’t actually *despise* Him, it’s usually because they actually believe their own caricature of Jesus, rather than the biblical portrayal of Him.)
Much of their picture of Jesus (though not all of it, necessarily) could probably be summed up in the idea that Jesus stood for many of the things He actually *did* stand for in Scripture–*except through government means*: i.e., “fairness” (by the government imposition of a minimum wage), “generosity” (by the government redistribution of wealth), healing of the sick (by government healthcare), etc.
Great article and comments (meaning Marinov’s).
I’m not really encouraged by this at all because what I see among conservatives, including Christians, when they see stuff like this on the left, is they are all too ready to jump in their direction and compromise to reach out to what they think is moving in their direction by the left. It’s all pragmatics, as you noted. Trying to use Jesus to baptize their humanism. If you can’t beat them, join them. Dialectic. In the pages of Canada’s “conservative” paper, the National Post, there were articles seemingly showing respect for Christmas, but they were about how a secular Jew showed the Christmas or Christian spirit, about the streak of goodness you can find in many people regardless of Christian faith, etc. Then I get a Facebook post from a Reformed teacher commending a post by Carl Trueman of Westminster who used an atheist to rebuke Evangelicals for getting mushy on key doctrine about Christ. There is still a huge spirit of juvenile capitulation among Christian conservatives that reflects a cowardice and weakness of spirit. Most Christian conservatives seem to be dedicated pragmatists, not principled Christians who understand orthodox Christianity and the spirit of spiritual conquest. Most Christians are still running away from the shrill and desperate humanists, or more accurately are willing to run away from Christian truth, compromising with the humanists, because they don’t perceive the humanist aggression as weakness. I don’t think these humanistic references to Jesus as an encouraging sign at all. It’s just more of the same. If Christians stop being conned by such deceptive tactics, then I’ll be encouraged. Conditions may be worse in Canada in this regard, but I’m a fairly close observer of US politics too and I’d say it’s much too early to be optimistic about the limited signs of encouragement in the US. Many are looking at the Tea Party and the recent election. I’d rather look elsewhere because when we use elections and politics as key signs, then we’re becoming operational humanists, putting undue weight on the place of the civil gov’t in society as the centre of reform. Besides, in the world of politics, one election means nothing.
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thank you very much for your help
Oh, and before you say something like, ” Well, the first child should not be angry about the ‘generousity’ of her father toward the second child”. You must be willing to say you would do this to your own children. If that is the case, then I have no ground to stand on. Only to say I could not do this to my children. I have a friend which said this very thing.
There was a commercial on TV, do not remember which, where a man sat with his two daughters. He asks the first, “Would you like a pony?”. Yes, she says. He gives her a stuffed pony. She is very happy, what a great gift from her father. The father then asks his other daughter, “Would you like a pony?” Yes she says. And the father produces a real live pony. Caption: Even kids know when they’re getting a bad deal. You can say all day that the landowner was generous, he was not. He was doing the same thing “landowners” do today. Controlling the working poor. It may have been “lawful” for him to do this, but it was wrong. That is what Jesus was saying. This is the only thing the poor Jesus was talking to would have understood. Do you really believe Jesus was telling the poor, “quit crying and take what this landowner so lovingly gives you.” He was talking to the poor. Does not seem to fit with other sayings of Jesus.
What other sayings of Jesus? Jesus doesn’t claim to be “fair” according to the standards of lazy envious socialist bums. He has His own standards of righteousness, thank you very much, and The Communist Manifesto is not among them. In fact, Jesus does say about Himself in a parable the following:
Nope, no justification for socialism in the Bible.
Please Mr Marinov, I am responding to get a reasoned reponse from you. I am not trying to be rude. I am truly interested in what you have to say. Parables need to be interpreted. Other passages seem straight forward. In this parable you believe the master is Jesus. When Jesus says ” “I tell you that to everyone who has,(Rich) more shall be given, but from the one who does not have,(Poor) even what he does have shall be taken away.” seems strange. Jesus, more than not, talked about how the rich would be turned away and the poor exlaulted. Would it not be better to interpret this parable another way. The “nobleman” really is someone who reaps where he does not sow. Tells his “slaves” to go and exploit the poor for money and one of them in effect says “No, I will not do this any more.” And gets executed for his efforts. Would not Jesus’ audience have understood this better?
Ultimately one must ask, how much vision can you possibly extole from the corpse of humanistic dogma that can only claim it will regurgitate the same dead-pan pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric that propelled it to the bone yard of history to begin with? If the liberal statists would quit trying to resurrect it every four years, it might finally gasp its last breath. Unfortunately, there seems to be a continued repackaging of this ransid decaying meat, and the media keeps pushing it at the market. It is only after we get the package home and the heat from the light of day causes it to burst open, that we smell the familiar stench of deja vu.
Comparing the Butchers of Beijiing with Pinochet’s Chile? Forced abortions, slave labor camps; you’re spending too much time around your Libertarian friends Bojidar.
Oh, please, shut up. Everyone can see that the comparison is relative, no absolute. Of course I don’t claim China is exactly like Pinochet’s Chile. Go play your games of verbal perfectionism somewhere else.
I have written enough criticism against secular libertarians to make it clear I do not hang around my libertarian friends that much. And one of my lectures at the Worldview Super Conference was criticism against Mises’ view on property and defense of property. Even if I wanted to hang around them, I doubt they would have enjoyed my company anyway.
Go focus on something constructive.
Thanks for the article. I think that you are correct in identifying that Hasan doesn’t believe what he’s saying. You have also demonstrated the many theological flaws in the argument but perhaps its not surprising that his exegesis is full of holes. It seems he isn’t serious about convincing people of his politics from the Bible, instead he’s seeking to write a controversial articles and point out problems in the link between right-wing politics and Christianity. As seems to be the case in quite a few NS articles Hasan weakens his case by over-reaching in his argument and making ridiculous claims such as Jesus s specifically endorsing his political preferences such as the NHS. The argument would be stronger if it focused solely on how Christ’s moral principles have been contravened by those who claim to act in His Name. Bush’s approval of torture, to use Hasan’s strongest example, creates a huge moral problem which your response doesn’t acknowledge. The subtitle of Wallis’ book quoted in the NS is “Why the right is wrong and the left doesn’t get it”. The NS article is a clear example of the left not getting it but it appears to me that both modern right and left are political philosphies tainted by sin. Which of course is to be expected in the politics of our flawed humanity.
It creates a huge moral problem . . . for whom? Not for me. I disagree with Bush’s approval of torture. So why should I be defensive about it and “acknowledge” it, if it is someone’s else’s moral problem? Why should I give response for any false accusation the Left throws against Christians, or against the conservative right.
And who said that because Bush approved of something, it necessarily is a “politics of the right”? The leftists just love to turn Bush into an icon of right-wing, and then ascribe to the right every real or imaginary evil Bush has committed. But torture for the last 200 years has been exclusively an instrument of the Left, not of the conservatives. The French revolutionaries used it extensively, Russian and Chinese Communists used it extensively (on millions of people), Hitler’s National SOCIALIST party used it extensively, current leftist regimes in Africa use it, ANC leaders in South Africa have been found using it even against their own party members, leftist guerrillas in the Philippines, South America, and many other places use it. Even here in the States leftist organizations like the Black Panthers have been known to use torture against “renegades.” Hundreds of millions of people were tortured in the 20th century by leftists, for no other reason but pure terror and intimidation. And now the Left is horrified by Bush’s approval of torture of a few proven terrorists who themselves have tortured many and killed many? Give me a break!
In the face of such shameful hypocrisy on the Left, I must respond to a “huge moral problem” that is neither that huge – compared to the Left’s moral problem – nor mine? No way.
Again, I disagree with Bush on torture. But I also reject the claims that whatever Bush approves of is by default “right-wing.” If that’s “Hasan’s strongest example,” then the Left’s moral case is pathetically weak.
Mr. Marinov,
Please check your notes, I suspect you may have read from the wrong set of notes when referrencing
Luke 22:26-28. This does not describe an attributing of Jesus to warrant the use or carrying of swords. It describes the paradox principle of leadership, wherein Jesus compares how leaders in the secular world desire to lord over others, while instructing His disciples that he who would be great amongst them must be their servant, even as He the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve; and resembles Matthew 20:25-28.
This of course is one of the most significant concepts of leadership, where secular humanism departs entirely from any biblical model, and aspires to the notion of godhood via totalitarianism, under the guise of helping us to death!
Regards!
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. – C. S. Lewis
Oops, you are right: Luke 22:36-38. My bad.
Great article! I enjoy your writings on Europe, since I live there.
When you write “…of such significant magazine like the New Scientist”, you probably mean “…like the New Statesman”.
Yup. I made too many typos in this article, didn’t I?
“Matthew 20:1-6 Jesus doesn’t advocate “fair daily living wage” but the right of the employer to decide what wage to pay to whom. ”
Actually, this chapter has NOTHING to do with advocating the employer’s or employee’s rights. This is exactly happens when you interpret the Scriptures from a presupposition of a political philosophy. It’s an analogy and it’s meant to advocate an understanding of the Kingdom of God, a place, fortunately, that will have neither conservative or liberal garbage to line the street or mind.
Matthew 20:15: “Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?”
It seems to me with these words the employer is establishing his right to do what he wishes with his own. So obvious, we don’t even need interpretation, we just need to reed the plain text. Sounds quite capitalistic to me, whether you want to take it or not.
While it is true that the whole parable is an analogy, could it be an analogy based on incorrect real-life examples? If Jesus based His analogies on unreal examples, how meaningful would His analogies be?
“Of course he doesn’t believe a word of what he himself says.”
You are so correct is this assessment. It’s such a thin article and really appears as if he’s looking to be persuasive to a naive audience. He doesn’t believe it for a minute. Given the publication he’s writing for, I don’t know who he’s trying to convince.