>From "Christ Among the Partisans," an op-ed in today's NY Times by 
liberal Christian theologian Garry Wills, which argues that the Jesus 
of Christianity has nothing to do with politics, Democratic or 
Republican:


...Some may think that removing Jesus from politics would mean 
removing morality from politics. They think we would all be better 
off if we took up the slogan "What would Jesus do?"

That is not a question his disciples ask in the Gospels. They never 
knew what Jesus was going to do next. He could round on Peter and 
call him "Satan." He could refuse to receive his mother when she 
asked to see him. He might tell his followers that they are unworthy 
of him if they do not hate their mother and their father. He might 
kill pigs by the hundreds. He might whip people out of church 
precincts.

The Jesus of the Gospels is not a great ethical teacher like 
Socrates, our leading humanitarian. He is an apocalyptic figure who 
steps outside the boundaries of normal morality to signal that the 
Father's judgment is breaking into history. His miracles were not 
acts of charity but eschatological signs — accepting the unclean, 
promising heavenly rewards, making last things first.

He is more a higher Nietzsche, beyond good and evil, than a higher 
Socrates. No politician is going to tell the lustful that they must 
pluck out their right eye. We cannot do what Jesus would do because 
we are not divine....


(Some of us might change that to "because we have not realized our 
divinity."--JS)

Read the whole op-ed at:
http://tinyurl.com/r9eag







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