A radical social agenda

I used to love Easter. It brought a breath of Spring, a new beginning, a spiritual reawakening each year. And as I drifted leftward in both my spiritual belief and my politics, Easter always helped me to gain renewed insight on economic justice and personal liberation.

I didn’t think about it then, but in my rapid movement from supporting Goldwater for President, to supporting Hubert Humphrey four years later, I still believed that the social values I learned in Baptist Sunday School were what we as a society should follow.

But there was a growing menace on our right. Crawling out from under rocks came people who wrapped themselves in the cloak of Christianity, but who clearly had learned nothing of sharing God’s love. Now I have to say, most of the Christians that I know are liberal ones, of the UCC variety, some Unitarians, and also a lot of atheists who subscribe to the example of Jesus, but not the divinity part.

But this pack of jackals masquerading as followers of Jesus is bringing our whole society down around our ears. So this is my Easter lesson to our fellow citizens, who think they are Christians, but aren’t.

When asked, “What is the greatest commandment in the Law,” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind….’ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.”

In virtually the same passage, in another Gospel, a lawyer goes on to ask “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan. To refresh your memory, a man was robbed and beaten. Two men, a priest and an official of the government, passed him by without helping. Then a Samaritan (Jews for whatever reason did not care much for Samaritans) came by. He tended the man’s wounds, then put him on his donkey, and took him to an inn. He paid the innkeeper to care for the man, and promised to return to settle accounts later.

Jesus asks, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” And the lawyer replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

These ‘Christians’ that annoy me, ignore the fact that their neighbors include the poor, the immigrant, black and brown people, and LGBT people. Jesus tells them to love their neighbors, and yet they seem to spend all their time trying to figure out how to oppress people, to disenfranchise them, and to make LGBT folk second-class citizens, or worse.

They seem to forget that it is predominantly people of color who do the crummy jobs in our society, at low pay. The poor are often holding two, or even three of these kinds of jobs to feed their families and keep a roof over their head. Their teachers, their pastors, their doctors, nurses, and care-givers include gay people.

We serve them food, teach their children, argue their cases in court, and often are the judges, or jurors deciding those cases. But they care nothing for that. They, and the preachers and politicians who feed them a line of hate instead of love, are mired in the Bronze Age ‘laws’ of thousands of years ago, rather than the redeeming love expressed by Jesus, and the revolutionary social action to which the New Testament calls all believers. And they think nothing of trying to impose those ancient laws on us.

They refuse to extend healthcare to the poor. They try to take away their voices at the polls. They think that the poor are to blame for their lot, and that gay people are nothing but evil. They pass laws to ensure economic inequality.

I know Pope Francis has a ways to go on issues like same-sex marriage, a woman’s control over her own body, and women priests. But about the poor, he has it nailed: “Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.”

So, when I look at the dawn of Easter this year, I think I’ll tune in to hear the Pope speak about the revolutionary concepts at the core of Jesus’ teachings. And then give a Bible to the Congress members, the Billionaires, and the bigots who think they know Jesus, so they can learn for themselves what Jesus really has to say. Jesus commands you to love your neighbor as yourself. By extension, that means start following Jesus’ radical agenda, and knock it off on all these oppressive laws. Shocking, I know. But there it is.

by Rob Howard, Political Columnist

The Gayly – April 15, 2014 @ 2:35pm