"Jesus was a socialist" -- rebuttal

  • Thread starter Thread starter DaveBj
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
D

DaveBj

Guest
A FB friend recently hit me with the old saw that “Jesus was a socialist,” and in the process of answering him, I came up with the following. If any of my fellow CAF denizens have similar friends, this may help in answering that old lie.

In part, socialism is the central government’s taking away a significant portion of what people have or earn and then giving part of what was seized to those in need, while lining other people’s pockets with the rest. If Jesus had actually been a socialist, he would have agitated for the Roman government to take care of Jerusalem’s poor – housing projects, welfare payments, and all that. But he didn’t, because he wasn’t.

What Jesus preached was charity, which is those who have possessions voluntarily giving part (maybe even most) of what they have to those in need. There is a BI-I-IG difference between this and socialism. In fact, neither socialism nor capitalism were gleams in anybody’s eye in 30 A.D.

(Besides charity, Jesus also preached other concepts, like repentance from sin, conversion of life, holiness, righteousness, morality, etc., but these concepts get completely overlooked by those who are trying to use Him to make a political point that would have been completely foreign to Him.)

D
 
I would say that a little of socialist ideas have come from Jesus’ teachings but not the other way around.
 
Make him define his terms and explain how he sees Jesus fitting those terms. Unfortunately, “socialism” has become a vague buzzword. Historically, socialism meant the denial of private property or at least ownership of the mean’s of production, which would all be owned by the state, and the promotion of an enmity between the social classes.

Jesus said to give to Caesar what was Caesar’s–He didn’t say everything was Caesar’s to administer. He never told fishermen to turn over their boats and nets to Caesar. Even the commandment “thou shalt not steal” which He repeated, implies the right to private ownership. In fact, much of his teaching about the use of material goods is about prudent, just, and charitable ownership and stewardship of property by its private owners.

Just because someone doesn’t make the accumulation of profit the fundamental principle of human society doesn’t make that person a socialist.
 
Last edited:
If Jesus was a socialist, wouldn’t the man who ended up with 10 talents at the end of the parable be made to share them with the man who had one and did absolutely nothing with it in the end?
 
Two things. First, Christ most explicitly says to obey the commandments for salvation (cf Lk 18:18-20), one of which is not to steal, which implies that property is not common by way of right. He also commends Zacchaeus for being willing to return stolen property.

Secondly, I would make an analogy with celibacy/virginity. It is indeed better and holier, objectively speaking, to remain unmarried and observe total abstinence from sexual pleasure (something that is not popular to say today, but strictly of faith), but this does not mean that marriage and sexual relations and pleasure are evil; it is heresy to say this. Likewise, it is indeed better and holier, objectively speaking, to live without property and wealth, but this does not mean that one can condemn those who own property.

Benedicat Deus,
Latinitas
 
Neither existed as forms of government at the time, but I think it is easily safer to say his teachings were much more socialist than capitalist.
 
laylow said:
Neither existed as forms of government at the time, but I think it is easily safer to say his teachings were much more socialist than capitalist.
Click to expand...
@DaveBj

No, this is a very dangerous statement.

Jesus Christ was NOT a socialist.

Now, one can easily argue that Jesus may have been a distributist. However, Jesus was NOT a socialist.

God Bless

 
Last edited:
phil19034 said:
No, this is a very dangerous statement.

Jesus Christ was NOT a socialist.

Now, one can easily argue that Jesus may have been a distributist. However, Jesus was NOT a socialist.

God Bless
Click to expand...
I clearly said he wasn’t, because the term didn’t exist. Socialism has such an unwarranted negative connotation. No system is truly socialist, just as no system is truly capitalist.

Jesus said to give ALL of your possessions away, not just some.
 
Last edited:
Jesus wasn’t a socialist. Neither was he a Communist or a Capitalist or a commune dwelling hippy. He was God in the flesh. He came to call us back from the fall from grace and to become the way back to the original harmony God intended for humanity before the fall.

The inequities of life, financial and otherwise, are due to our separation from God and from one another. But God did not come to earth to make us financial equals. Indeed, that is nowhere to be found in the Gospels. Jesus came to show us the way to the Kingdom. He was not the sociopolitical figure that some would make him out to be.

All systems of governance and financial exchange involve inequity. Some are even based upon such inequity. This is the tragic reality of a fallen world, that we need money to live. Some will be rich and some will be poor. Some will be gifted and some will be unskilled. Some will be outcast and some will be elites. Socialism is not spared this brutal fact of life. Indeed, only look to history and one will see that socialism has never once achieve what it claims to accomplish: fairness. Its promises are quickly made, hastily accepted but never fulfilled.

So, anyone who thinks for a moment that Jesus came as a Socialist who was more concerned with our material well-being than our spiritual well-being, greatly misunderstands His mission.

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm."

John 18:36

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
Last edited:
This type of confusion seems to mostly happen in the United States where anything to the left of pure free market no holds barred capitalism is considered “socialist”. I swear I get this from Protestants every day when it comes to this issue. Those churches have been thoroughly infected with Americanism, and free market libertarianism.

There are people that go so far as to say that if you don’t subscribe to free market fundamentalism, that you’re then against liberty, and thus against God. Private think tank groups have done a bang up job of infiltrating evangelical churches with this nonsense.

Look at the Discovery Institute as an example. It’s an evangelical organization that promotes Intelligent Design but weirdly also free market economics. How odd, eh? They mostly promote the idea of atheists and non-Christians too.


One of the promoters of this Institute is Jay Richards, a famous Catholic ‘conservative’ type who also works for the Acton Institute. The Acton Institute is the infiltration of the same free market fundamentalist nonsense that infected evangelical churches. They’re trying to undermine Catholic Social Teaching and restructure Catholic dogma to fit their confined narrative.

https://www.discovery.org/store/a/authors/jrichards/

Understand the networks people!
 
Last edited:
The early Church’s sharing of all their common goods was a lay movement. Not imposed by the Apostles. And it was voluntary, without coercion or government interference.
 
Oh, and Jesus wasn’t a hippie, either.

Lots of folks had long hair and beards and sandals in those days.
 
Like someone once said, “the problem with socialism is that sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.” Like someone said above, Jesus held up charity and concern for others as his standard, not taking other people’s possessions and redistributing them according to some enforced “charity.” The socialist practices his pity and charity with the contents of someone else’s wallet. The Christian practices charity with the contents of his own.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
The early Church’s sharing of all their common goods was a lay movement. Not imposed by the Apostles. And it was voluntary, without coercion or government interference.
Click to expand...
And it led to the total impoverishment of the Jerusalem church, to the point that they were receiving charity from other churches decades later. Sort of like some countries under the various forms of socialism in the 20th and 21st centuries.

D
 
The short answer is “no”. Jesus as well as the others in the New Testament were all subjects of the Roman Empire- a government which didn’t control health care, didn’t control commerce, didn’t provide welfare payments to the people.

He never advocated for greater government control in any of these areas, so I don’t think so.
 
The people making claims like this typically mean to say communist, but use socialist because it’s little more socially acceptable, and I’m not convinced that Jesus was communist as His Church rejects it as a totalitarian ideology.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top