The Weekly Screed (#576)

Which Christian would Jesus vote for?
by David Benjamin

BROOKLYN — The more I watch cable news about the Republican primaries, the more irrelevant it seems that Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are affiliated with a political party.

Because, really! Isn’t this campaign all about Jesus? Newt, for example, denounces, on a daily basis, President Obama’s “war on religion.” Ron Paul has proposed the redefinition of the U.S.A. as a “Christian nation.” Santorum, who gags at the mention of church/state separation, is the first person to bring Satan into a presidential campaign since the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1980. Mitt agrees with all of the above but sneers at the other guys for being too wishy-washy and openminded.

The longer the campaign drags on, and the louder this Pharisee foursome spouts medieval dogma, the more I wonder: Who would Jesus vote for? Any of ‘em?

To answer this, we luckily have the advice of a previous Catholic candidate, Al Smith, who said: “Let’s take a look at the record.”

In this case, the record is the New Testament, although it doesn’t seem to offer much outright political guidance beyond “Render unto Caesar.” However, at second glance, Jesus’ three cryptic words reveal the big non-religious theme that distinguishes this primary season clearly from all its forebears: Money. Big money!

At least three of these dudes are bonafide millionaires — Romney 250 times over and Gingrich the proud patron of a charge account at Tiffany’s. This much affluence would’ve made Jesus squirm — as he indicated in Luke 18:24: “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the Kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Of course, our candidates have argued that reaping and spending obscene sums of money is the only way to stay in the race, and that these obscenities are perfectly decent in politics, even when spent on broadcast slander. But this is sophistry that wouldn’t likely pass inspection with Jesus, whose attack on the moneychangers in the Temple was his bluntest political act. It made clear his outrage over money in politics.

In first-century Jerusalem, the moneychangers were the canary in the corruption mine, and Jesus knew what they stood for. The Temple was the center of Jewish political power. In return for keeping poor, restless Jews from rising up against the vastly outnumbered Roman garrison, the Temple priests collected graft from Pontius Pilate. They levied fees — from the poor — for religious ceremonies. They shaved kickbacks from the moneychangers who for a fee exchanged those Caesar-faced Roman coins for shekels (the only currency legal within the Temple). The Temple at Jerusalem brought politics, religion and greed together with the sort of gusto that, nowadays, would render the Church of Scientology (not to mention the Vatican) nauseous with envy.

This is why Jesus charged in and (briefly) scattered the moneychangers.

Not that it did any good. The grifters were back the next day. But Jesus’ message was clear. He delivered it elsewhere and often: Wealth corrupts everyone who seeks it; the rich are damned; and if you don’t help the poor, well, damn you, too.

“Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus says in Luke 6:20, “for yours is the kingdom of God… “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.”
This attitude is a New Testament theme. James (2:5) writes, “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?… Is it not the rich who oppress you?… who drag you into court?… who blaspheme that honorable name by which you are called?”

I like to quote James, because James was Jesus’ (possibly smarter) kid brother. After the Crucifixion and until A.D. 62 — when the Temple priests ordered him killed — James led Jerusalem’s pious Jews. He didn’t have enough in the bank to leave a will.

“Go, sell what you possess,” Jesus suggests (well, it’s more of an order) in Matthew 19:21. “Give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”
And if it still isn’t clear just what Jesus expects of the Romneys and Santora of the world, he issues a “love-it-or-leave-it” ultimatum in Luke 14:33: “So, therefore, whoever of you does not denounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

Easy if you’re a barefoot fisherman. Tougher if your wife drives two Cadillacs.

In a casual stroll through the Gospel of A.D. 33, one begins to sense that Jesus foresaw some of the rhetoric that would be popping up in the primaries of 2012. For example, the GOP’s stridently Christian candidates have all condemned the president for extending unemployment checks, for “bailing out” the U.S. auto industry and its millions of workers. But in Matthew 5:42, Jesus backed the Obama approach: “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

Another eerie parallel pops up a few pages later. Foreshadowing Occupy Wall Street’s concerns about unfairness — which Romney calls “the politics of envy” — Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (8:13-14) says: “Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there may be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality.”

OK, Al. That’s the record. Now, who would Jesus vote for?

Most of us wouldn’t presume to speak for Christ, especially in worldly matters. But you might spot a clue as you listen to the Republicans trying to out-Jesus one another. In Matthew 6:1, it says: “Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”

He adds: “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men… But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret…”

Surprisingly, there is a Christian in the campaign with the good taste to shut the door before he prays. The secret is, he won’t be on the ballot ‘til November.