Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Was Jesus a Community-Organizer?

This is a very strange claim. Since the context was in a Facebook post that was a not too subtle attempt to point out hypocrisy of Christians holding positions that Jesus Himself didn't (read original post here), I am trying to figure out what anti-community organizer stance Christians have. To the best of my understanding, the role of a community organizer is to rally the community around a cause which may or may not actually be a current concern of the community.
While volumes could be said about the practices of community organizers, the question here is whether or not Jesus was one.
I really don't see the connection. While a loose parallel could possibly be drawn with the Church as a community, I'm not buying it. Jesus was not involved in, or interested during His ministry in, social or political activism. While He did a lot to help the poor and the sick and the outcast, He was not trying to create a social movement to solve those problems. If those things were of concern at all, He was teaching individuals how to care for one another in the face of those problems.
Primarily though, Jesus was proclaiming The Kingdom of Heaven and the need for sinners to repent. Any activism entailed would have been spiritual, not social. When asked about taxes, He basically blew it off as a non-issue (Matthew 22:15-22) and used it as a chance to turn people's minds toward God instead. When someone expressed dismay at an expensive perfume being poured on Jesus that could have been sold to help the poor, He claims that the woman's act of worship was a better thing (Mark 14:3-9). When asked by Pilate about His being a king, Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting" (John 18:36).
Jesus is not attempting to bring about social change by organizing movements and lobbying Rome. His cause is the changing of hearts and minds to reconcile sinful men to their righteous Creator.

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