"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'I tell you the truth... 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.'" Matthew 19:23-24
Turn the other cheek? Blessed are the peacemakers? Dick Cheney would attack him for being soft on terrorism and making the U.S. more dangerous.Mary Magdalene? Sarah Palin would mock him for "palling around with prostitutes".The least among us? Michael Steele would freak on him for his "crazy nonsense empathy".Healing the sick? Ron Paul would holler that "health care isn't a right!"Driving the money lenders from the temple? You cannot serve both God and money? The camel/needle bit? Socialist scum! (And Wall Street would have a stroke).Judge not lest ye be judged? Gay lover!Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them? Pray in secret? Well, I think we know what a Mike Huckabee might say about that.And the rabidly anti-tax tea baggers? What do you think they - or any House and Senate Republican for that matter - would make of Jesus telling the voters to "give Caesar what is Caesar's"?
Arch-conservatives would not recognize Jesus if they fell over him and they most certainly would not like him. He despised money and the accumulation of wealth, rejected violence and bloodshed, warned against self-righteousness. He was, in conservative parlance, "un-American". If they met face-to-face, Ted Nugent would probably take a swing at him. Jesus, of course, would turn the other cheek. Ted might then very well blow a hole through it.
Politics indeed makes strange bedfellows and the marriage of conservative Christianity with corporate Republicanism is, well, decidedly strange. I believe this unholy union has knocked these faithful off their spiritual path, led them away from their Christ, the spirit of whom is almost nowhere to be found in their political philosophy. The religious of the far right, in my view, have almost zero understanding of their own supposed savior and ignore most of his core teachings, often with relish.
How has the religious right strayed so far? For this politically active group, the Gospel has, over time, commingled with corporate Republican ideology and has formed what can only be called a GOPspel. This GOPspel is downright schizophrenic from a theological standpoint. But the waters have been so muddied that a new generation of Christian Republicans probably no longer understands the difference. I'm fairly sure there are evangelicals in this country who don't realize that putting an end to the capital gains tax was not one of Christ's primary concerns. Not to mention elevating the right to bear arms above almost all others. And where in the Sermon on the Mount did the Prince of Peace rail in support of federalism and tort reform? Don't they realize that Jesus had his own set of talking points?
I am by no means criticizing all Christians. There are millions of liberal and moderate Christians in this country who absolutely understand that it is difficult to reconcile being "pro-life" and pro-death penalty; millions who don't believe that life is only sacred until the moment of birth and therefore support programs to assist the poor, the needy, the forsaken, the living; millions who are 'yes' on marriage equality and 'no' on waterboarding; in short, there are myriad Christians who take their professed beliefs to their logical conclusion.
Regardless, the single greatest achievement of the modern Republican Party - and it's a truly stunning achievement - has been to convince a certain segment of Christendom that pre-emptive war, torture, supply-side economics, corporate welfare, deregulation of the markets, union bashing, tax cuts for the wealthy, anti-environmentalism/climate change denial, knee-jerk federalism, bearing false witness and leaving those aforementioned least among us to their own devices are actually bedrock Christian values. These folks opt for singing the Nazarene's praises while ignoring his words. They see no irony in their aligning a beatific Jesus with a bombastic Limbaugh, as if Christ chomped a cigar on the capitalistic road to Calvary. See, they don't believe in Jesus, so much as they have appropriated Jesus. Their grotesque, bastardized version of him has become a mascot for their movement, but bears no resemblance to the guy the book they love describes. But this GOPspel, despite its absurd hypocrisy and theological sophistry, is likely here to stay and it has real world repercussions. Without the perverted Word, there could be no perverse Sarah Palin.
Because after all, Jesus was a liberal. In fact, his liberalism was the rock upon which his whole philosophy was built. And he told his followers quite clearly that day upon the Mount, in the Parable of the Two Builders: ignore it at your peril.
