First, forgive me for the claim in the title of which I cannot prove. I mean, I probably come really close in what you’re about to read, but I really try to not be like those people that go around with their sacred spaghetti necks judging people with proclamations about what Jesus would say about them or what Jesus would do if he were here today.
I just imagine Jesus sitting up in heaven like that Willa Wonka meme with his hands up under his chin saying, “Oh, please, don’t mind me. Tell me again what I would do.”
But it’s pretty easy to determine based on what our political parties look like now (and ever, really) that there is no way he would have been affiliated with either. Let’s look at a few platform issues of both parties and dive into the Bible a little to find out which one Jesus would have supported. I’ll save you some time if you want to just stop after three paragraphs. He never would have joined a political party. Ever. If so, the Bible is wrong.
Anyway, here we go.
Platform Position #1: Economic Policies
The Republican position is basically “every man for himself” which really doesn’t bother me too badly if we had enough decent people to fill the role of provider for all the people who cannot – for whatever reason – support themselves.
Republicans think you keep corporate taxes low and that makes companies hire more people and if somebody makes a hundred billion dollars, oh well. Good for them. Somebody should have thrown some competition at them.
The problem tends to be that the really wealthy are also really greedy and all the money pools at the top and they keep all the little minions who work for them just above the poverty line so they’ll thank them for the job and curse them silently because the most elaborate vacation they’ll ever take involves a campground and a cane pole.
The Democratic position is financial kumbaya where the government intervenes to make sure the poor are taken care of and they make sure the companies aren’t making too much money and they tax the extremely wealthy a lot and basically the whole thing revolves around the government controlling the flow of money rather than allowing the people to do it.
In the Democrats dream world, the middle class rises up, the uber-wealthy drop back to just wealthy, and the government makes sure nobody can sell a cancer pill for a hundred grand. It sounds very safe and comfy, but you’re stunting creativity, the uber-wealthy are evading profits by shipping funds offshore, and there becomes a mess in the lower class because they can’t ever get out.
Based on Jesus’s teachings – and no, I will not quote a hundred Bible verses – what are his issues with each platform? Well, let’s start with his insistence that people not make or worship idols. That’s a problem for the Republican greedies at the top. He’d also have an issue with the corporate nature of our world today and all the businesses open on the Sabbath in search of that idyllic dollar. All hail Chick-fil-A, amirite?
Really, the only problems that Jesus seems to have with the Republican economic plan is focused on the rich people at the top. Jesus didn’t want people to store up their riches on Earth; only in heaven. He told people to make God their highest priority. And to rest on the Sabbath. But they make a lot of money on the Sabbath, so we’ll ignore that part of the Bible.
Jesus’s problems with the Democratic economic platform – I think – would be the one most Democrats claim is their most Christlike. You know, that whole “Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless….” You see, in my opinion, Democrats want to feel like they are doing all of these things. But are they? For most, not really. They’re expecting the government to do it for them, which kinda gets them off the hook from having to do it themselves. And some people see the democratic ideals as theft from the rich, and you know how Jesus felt about theft.
All in all, you just can’t expect that Jesus would have committed to either party’s economic platform because he would have made quite a few suggestions for both. And you know where that would have left him? In the political middle, of course.
Platform Position #2: Immigration
“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25: 35)
So while y’all partisans are over there yelling about cages and walls and refugee congresswomen and whether blue, black, orange, green, or silver lives matter most, us unaffiliateds will be welcoming other humans and helping them get their paperwork right so they can stay legally, because Jesus also said, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.” (Romans 13:1)
Once again, the middle wins because we have no interest in winning, just being decent freaking people and understanding that the US is still a pretty good place to live and some places in the world are not.
Also, Jesus wasn’t white.
Platform Position #3: Abortion
One could claim he would side with the pro-life crowd because, hello, that’s what we’ve been told by this crowd for at least a generation. But you could also go to the whole “Do not murder” thing and the “Love little children; do not despise them” stuff, but he’d then have to answer for why his father ordered the killing of women and children in the Old Testament way before Jesus’s time. In fact, if you research the number a little bit, you’ll find that God personally killed (or ordered killed) somewhere between 370,000 and 25,000,000 people. For various reasons, he even condoned smashing children against rocks and tearing open pregnant women. Eek.
There’s also the issue of pro-birth versus pro-life. Do you honestly think Jesus would have fought for the birth of every pregnancy and then left them homeless with no fit parents and just said, “Well, best of luck, kid. You’re born now. The rest is up to you. And foster care is booked solid, champ.”
And then there’s the issue of the Bible itself. That pesky Bible. If you listened only to political Christians, you’d think there were only about seven verses in the whole thing because those are the only ones that matter.
But it mentions menstruation 13 times (at least,) childbirth 19 times (at least,) adultery 30+ times, and once it explains how a woman should have her hand cut off if her husband and another man are in a fight and she tries to break it up by grabbing the other man’s testicles.
So it covers THAT crazy hypothetical and completely fair punishment (sarcasm,) but it NEVER mentions abortion. And that leads us to the biggest issue with Jesus’s partisanship. Abortion was legal in Jesus’s time, but yet he never fought against it? I have never seen that point addressed, but it is a HUGE point.
Abortion was legal in Jesus’s time, but he never said anything about it?
God didn’t come crashing his son’s earthly party like “What the heck are you doing, dude? You have to ban the abortions!!” If it was legal in his time and he didn’t like it, I cannot imagine he (and God) would have been completely silent about it.
And now we have tens of millions of single issue voters in this country who claim this to be the reason that only Republicans can be Christian? Really? Please read this section of this blog again and go do some apolitical research if you believe that. Or go out there and verify what I’m saying. The actual Bible would be a good place to start. And I’m talking about the WHOLE Bible, not cherry-picked verses.
So that means he can’t be Republican, and he can’t be Democrat because the Republicans said so, so I guess that means he’s unaffiliated again.
And FYI, forgive the all caps that are coming your way, but if you’re one of those people that shares memes that say stuff like, “Random Democratic Candidate wants to kill babies seven months AFTER birth and pay every woman $1,000 to get an abortion,” please learn to embrace a wonderful tool they teach in all the un–indoctrinated schools called TRUTH. And here’s the all caps:
EVERYBODY IS PRO-LIFE, YOU HATEFUL AGITATOR. Nobody wants to see abortions happen and I would damn sure rather my tax dollars go to adoption agencies and reducing the need for abortions than to abortion clinics, but stop with the shit that makes it sound like people are lining up with knife blocks because they want to kill babies for sport. It’s really effin’ stupid and it does absolutely nothing to advance your cause.
Platform Position #4: Gay Marriage
This is probably the issue that is the closest to showing American partisanship, but please remember that the dude was NOT American. Many proponents of traditional marriage point to that famous marriage scripture from Matthew 19, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife….”
But my issue is the same issue that opponents of abortion use in their opposition to it. Just because he never outright approved of same sex marriage doesn’t mean he condemned it either. You’ve heard that before on the abortion side. Just because he didn’t outright condemn abortion doesn’t mean he approved of it either. You can’t use that argument for one thing and not the other. If you do, that’s called hypocrisy. It’s also using cherry-picked pieces of the Bible to fit what YOUR narrative is, not the narrative of Jesus Christ.
In other words, we have a hung jury. Unaffiliated again.
Platform Position #5: Second Amendment
They didn’t have guns in the Bible. Jesus was unaffiliated.
Conclusion
First, you need to consider something. Jesus was an Israeli. We live in America. The Republican and Democratic parties do not exist in Israel. In fact, since Jesus was the savior of the entire world, I doubt he would agree to join United States political parties that each represent about 1.3% of the world’s population. And that means Jesus isn’t unaffiliated either. It simply means he’s Israeli. But if God made him come to America and pick a party, he would almost assuredly pick unaffiliated.
Secondly, I fear that at least part of this blog post could be deemed blasphemous by some people. For that, I’m both sorry and not sorry. I went to the Bible (and my upbringing) for all my information. Perhaps I analyzed it differently than you would have, but if you call my analysis wrong, then I am free to call YOUR analysis wrong, and then we’re simply two people with opinions neither of us can prove.
And for people that think it WAS blasphemous, I hope you are also unaffiliated like Jesus, because “judge not lest ye be judged” does not stick well in either party these days. You could have come out of a twenty year coma and never even heard of social media, but all you’d have to do is spend about an hour on my Facebook newsfeed to see that both parties have long since been judged by the other, and it’s UGLY.
And what does that mean? It means that if you agree with all the stereotypes about the other party, you’re guilty of judging a hundred million Americans because you already have a preconceived idea of who each and every one of them are. Once you have that “oh shit, he’s right” internal light bulb moment, I’d like to welcome you to the unaffiliated middle of American politics.
It should say UNA beside my name on November 3rd. Fill in that bubble. I like to think Jesus would, too.
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