If Jesus were alive today, what would he be like, and perhaps more importantly would the average Christian even agree with him? I'm thinking probably not. Let’s look at what the Bible tells us about Jesus. 1. He was Jewish 2. He was a refugee in his childhood 3. He was kind and compassionate 4. He respected children and called out other adults for trying to control children’s behaviour (the time when the kids wanted to hug him and the adults were like, ‘no leave him alone” and Jesus said “brigh the children to me”) 5. He was friends with a woman who was labeled as a prostitute 6. He regularly went around to the places where Lepers were and offered help, and gave them compassion, he wasn’t afraid to touch them 7. He fed the poor 8. He washed people’s feet 9. He was humble 10. He was an activist, leading rallies and collecting people to his cause (disciples) 11. The government hated him 12. He was prepared to die for his convictions 13. He was a pacifist So you know what this suggests to me? If Jesus were alive today he would be a “bleeding heart lefty” A Social Justice Warrior An Activist Maybe a teacher or a human rights lawyer or working for Doctors Without Borders or volunteering with the UNSCHR, but at the very least signing petitions and writing blog posts, and writing to MP’s and attending rallies. Most likely he would be a Bernie Sander’s voter. Pro Socialism. Democratic Socialism. You can not convince me that someone whose entire adult life was dedicated to helping the poor and chronically ill would not be in favour of universal health care and affordable education. You might find him organising a Rally against Trump’s Muslim Ban, or abseiling down the front of Parliament House and interrupting Question Time in protest of Australia’s offshore detention camps. You certainly wouldn’t hear him saying that refugees and Green Card/Passport holders are a terror threat whilst insisting that no one makes any changes to gun laws. Jesus would have been anti-guns from the get go. (See point 13) We would regularly see him on news interviews calling for gun-laws, and well before Sandy Hook. He wouldn’t vote One Nation or Family First. He wouldn’t vote Trump or Republican. Granted he wouldn’t have voted Hillary either, or supported a lot of Obabma's polices. Nor would he vote Labor in Aus. He would vote Greens. The only party that shares his humanitarian values, and has policies that put people (and the environment) first. He wouldn’t be throwing refugees under the bus because of “the homeless and the veterans” he’d be finding ways to help both. He wouldn’t support cuts to the ACA or pensions, he’d be fucking pissed off that politicians and corporations are cutting programs that help the poor whilst they sit on their cushy retirement funds and travel entitlements. He’d be a unionist, fighting for penalty rates and parental leave in Australia, an end to Zero hour contracts in the UK, or you know a the basic human right of a mandatory living minimum wage in the US. He wouldn't be telling you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and that welfare is “bloody commie nonsense” and for “bludgers” As a parent, or a role model for parents, he would be unashamedly, a Peaceful Parent. Do you really think that Jesus, the epitome of all things compassionate and peaceful and caring would have advocated for smacking a child? Even “just” on the back of the hand or a squashy diaper clad bottom? (if your answer is yes, I suggest that you do some introspective prayer asking yourself why you think that, because it really doesn’t line up with Jesus, and then go read this) Do you really believe that he would advocate for treating children like inconveniences, and tell you that their crying is manipulation? And yet “christian” ministers throughout the US encourage their parishioners to hit their children with weapons! To train ‘blanket train” their children, to ignore their cries. “Christians” everywhere claim that a child must be smacked in order to learn to follow God and Christ. Spare the Rod, they cry. Well here’s another thing we know about Jesus. He’s a metaphorical shepard. How many shepherds beat their flock with that staff? They don’t they use it to guide. As for homosexuality and abortion, he may not be “pro” those things. He may see homoseuality as a sin, I don’t know, no one ever expressly asked him. He was constantly surrounded by 12 men, one or more of them might have been gay. We don’t know. But he certainly wouldn’t be advocating for his followers to spread hate and lies, and to attack people for being gay or even to be upset that Disney put a gay character in a kids movie. Because none of that is helpful to anyone, it’s just bigotry. He wouldn’t have supported Prop 6in the 70’s, but he would have supported civil rights action guaranteeing gay people equal rights, because no matter if you were a leper or a prostitute Jesus cared about your wellbeing and the way you were treated by other people. He might hate abortion, but as a sensible guy (and he’s always been promoted as being sensible) I think he would look at the statistics and the realities of a situation first before moralising it. Again, if Mary M was a prostitute, then clearly he can recoginse that sometimes women are put into positions where they have to make difficult decisions about their bodies. So I don’t think he would call for the defunding of Planned Parenthood or support the refusal of QLD pollies to overturn the hundred+ year old abortion laws, or tell women they are selfish murderers and should just give the baby up for adoption. I think he would be fighting for better foster and adoption services, because the ones we have are abysmal and cause endless amounts of trauma and suffering for children. He wouldn’t be calling for restrictions on birth control, he’d be saying, "one, it lowers the number of abortions by preventing them, and two how can we reasonably expect to lower the abortion rate, lower the rate of child suffering and keep our planet healthy if we ban birth control? Go forth and populate was all well and good in 1 AD, but with a population of 7 Billion?! Be serious people. He’d be fighting for more Planned Parenting services, and actual sex education because those things are proven to lower teen and unwanted pregnancy rates. He’d be anti-porn, sure. But not because sex is sinful. Because the porn and stripping industries are complicit in far far too much human trafficking and slavery. And he certainly wouldn’t tell women they can’t breastfeed in private because “children might see” or they should “respect themselves and others”. He might not support rioting, but he would support the spirit of BLM and lament the fact that there is a need for it still 50 years after the Civil Rights movement. He’d be on the front line at Standing Rock, helping the Indigenous people peacefully fight for their land and the safety of the water that everyone drinks, and he’d be calling the government (both Trump and Obama) to task for the atrocious way they have treated the protesters. He’d probably have an Anonymus mask somewhere in his house, and would have been at Occupy Wall Street, protesting against neo-liberalism and capitalist greed’s destruction of society. And if he ever got arrested for his activism, you know what he’d do? He’d sacrifice himself so that others might have freedom. So that other might have better lives.
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