The religious right loves to complain that we’ve taken the Christ out of Christmas. Well, maybe. But if the left has taken Christ out of Christmas, then you, Bill O’Reillys and Rush Limbaughs of the world, are guilty of a far worse crime: taking the Christ out of Christianity.
As a lifelong Christian, it’s always perplexed me how successfully the religious right has constructed such a conservative political agenda around so profoundly liberal a figure as Jesus. How has a visionary who cared for the poor been employed in the service of an ideology that so blatantly favors the rich? A man who comforted and cured the sick, the leprous and the lame used to derail the possibility of universal health care? The Prince of Peace remembered as the Lord of War? A champion of the outcast, the unwanted and the different converted into a mouthpiece for the exclusion of the spurned and the scorned? It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again: if Jesus were alive today, he’d vote Democrat.
Jesus was no trickle-down economist, no free-marketeer; he harbored no sympathy with or allegiance to the wealthy. “It is easier,” he said, “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). The Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke tell us of the rich man who fell on his knees before the Lord, asking what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. “‘One thing you lack,’ Jesus said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ When the man went away in sorrow, Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!’” (Mark 10:21-23).
Jesus didn’t count himself among the wealthy moneylenders, his society’s 1 percent; he overturned their tables in the Temple in a holy rage. “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ bellowed the Savior, ‘but you are making it a den of robbers’” (Matthew 21:13). Elsewhere, he put it yet more bluntly: “You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24). It’s easy to see Jesus waving a “We are the 99 percent” sign at an Occupy rally; it’s a bit harder to see him engineering new derivatives for Goldman Sachs or holding out on a debt deal to demand more tax breaks for the wealthy. After all, Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors (tax collectors!); he didn’t waste his time fulminating against oppressive slingshot-control laws or complaining about the unfair taxes levied on the richest 0.1 percent of Pharisees. The only invisible hand Jesus followed was that of the Holy Spirit.
When talking about the proper response to injustice, Jesus did not speak of retaliation or preemptive strikes, bombing campaigns or drone missions, hanging or firing squads. He spoke of forgiveness. “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well” (Matthew 5:38-42).
He was skeptical of pompous, public, ornamental religiosity: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others…But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen” (Matthew 6:5-6). No televised National Prayer Days here, Governor Perry; prayer for Jesus was intensely, deeply personal, a means through which to better understand one’s direct relationship with God — not showily trumpet one’s faith to the masses.
So go ahead and justify your tax cuts for the rich, your attacks on Obamacare and your wars. Justify them on economic grounds, or tell me that missiles and bombs are strategically necessary to advance our long-term interests in the region or explain how screwing the poor will help everyone in the long run. You know what, you may even be right — Jesus was no economist and no general, and heaven knows we should render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Just know that when you do, you’ll be worshipping at the altar of Adam Smith, not the feet of God. And know that there are a lot of Christians out there who wish you’d stop preaching the virtues of this theologically questionable, spiritually empty, thoroughly Christ-less thing you so audaciously call Christianity.
Do you agree with Miles? Or do you think he’s not feeling the Christmas spirit? Email him at milesu1 “at” stanford “dot” edu to let him know.