Growing up in the Bible belt in East Tennessee, I can remember an entire campaign built around "What Would Jesus Do?" There were WWJD bracelets, stickers, and t-shirts.
Today there is a new campaign. As legislators in D.C. debate cuts in the federal budget, Christian leaders around the country are posing the question "What Would Jesus Cut?" We simply want to make sure the poorest and most vulnerable are cared for ... as Jesus said, "when you do it unto the least of these you do it unto me."
Just to put things in perspective. Consider this one proposed cut alone -- $450 million in contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. If passed, approximately 10.4 million bed nets that help prevent malaria will not reach people who need them; 6 million treatments for malaria will not be given; 3.7 million people will not be tested for HIV; and 372,000 tests and treatments for tuberculosis will not be administered. I'm not one to place a ton of hope on Capitol Hill, but it does seem all of us could do a little damage control. After all, cutting $3 mosquito nets that can save lives while continuing to spend $200,000 a minute on the military should raise some flags of a different sort.
What would Jesus cut?
In fact, US military spending is now 56 percent of the world's total military expenditures and that is more than the military budgets of the next 20 countries in the world combined.
Even though the 533 billion dollar military budget is the elephant in the room and the gushing, bleeding wound of America's deficit ... it has been the sacred cow. But folks are beginning to whisper. I'm not sure about sacred cows making good hamburgers, but I do know that military money could make some good schools. And the Bible I read gives a powerful image of beating "swords into plowshares" -- taking things that have brought death and converting them into things that bring life. It seems the world may be poised and ready for that kind of conversion.
So it's not a bad moral gauge -- What Would Jesus Do? Who Would Jesus Bomb? What Would Jesus Cut? The Jesus who loved the poor, challenged the rich, made friends with enemies, and healed the sick. So let's ask it - WWJC? And let's hope the politicians who claim to follow the Christ who carried good news for the poor will ask this little question as the debate goes on.
I don't think I've seen anyone illustrate the crisis of the federal budget better than my friend, Ben Cohen, the dessert-man and founder of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. He uses his favorite cookies as a measuring unit to show how the dollars stack up ... check it out --
Martin Luther King said 40 years ago that every time a bomb goes off overseas, we can feel the second impact of that bomb as we watch our schools crumble and our health care system go up in flames. As Dr. King said, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
So let us hold up our glasses of milk and toast to another world -- Christians and non-Christians, Muslims and Jews, all who would rather see ice cream dropped from planes rather than bombs -- and let us put our hands together to build that world -- a world where the schools have enough money and the militaries have to sell cookies for their uniforms.
Jim Wallis: What Would Jesus Cut?
What would Jesus cut? | National Catholic Reporter
But in the USA each and every person has a say in the direction and policies of the nation. More than the role our vote plays, we are encouraged to participate in political activities in order to sway the choice of others. And this seems to cause conflict. The non-Christian sees Christian voters/leaders go to war, or cut funding to the poor, or advocate the death penalty and they ask a valid question. "Why do your actions not line up with your convictions?"
Sometimes they are right. Sometimes Christians (honest ones even) confuse what is founded on Christ and what is founded on their culture or even what is founded on their political or financial interests. The Christian Right does it. The Christian Left does it. It's a problem that needs to be addressed sharply because Christ + Right/Left doesn't equal the Christian Right/Left, it just equals Right/Left.
"Beat your swords into plowshares" wasn't a call to peace. It was a call to hope, hope for the day when a perfect ruler creates a perfect government over a perfect world. But ours is not that world. Until it is, the State must protect itself. Christians must protect "what is God's" whenthatconflictswiththedesiresofthestate.
You know what Samson did, he got a hair cut, and America is getting one too. Samson could no more hold up the world then David could slay a giant with one smooth stone, though David sure gave it a whirl. It takes two or more.
Let the billionairs and millionair-to-billionair-wanna-be's who have fled the USA in search of greener pastures, provide those nets, and any other charity in that they became billionairs off the sweat of anothers back, unjustly, and stole from the American people.
Let the people of those countries rise up, like early Americans did (and need to redo), Egyptians did, and Libya is now doing and slay the giants; dictators, corrupt CEO's and corrupt Western government officials.
Billions upon billions of American tax dollars poor into impoverished countries only to be stolen by dictators. The people then hate us for supporting them. We create terror all over the world as a result.
I think church will be fulfilling their duty when they first take care of the people within their "own" community; Peter, feed my sheep. And now you know why Christians are greedy spreading Christianity around the whole world so that rich men can claim.......I hear you Lord.
Phonies.
Liberals protect themselves by dualistic suspicion judgments, making them overly dismissive of those they consider authorities or the top. Conservatives protect themselves by dualistic worthiness judgments, making them overly dismissive of what they judge to be the bottom. Both engage in their own kind of superiority system.
Note to fellow Christians: Jesus was somewhat suspicious of power structures and those at the top (Luke 22: 25-26). He never questioned the worthiness of those at the bottom but often advocated for them (Luke 6:20). We Christians need to live by the values of Jesus Christ, not Glenn Beck or John Boehner and without getting into the dualistic thinking of either the liberal paradigm or the conservative one.
You go out and "establish justice" in tax code, capital to labor markets. Taking 90% for the gross production dollars and giving 60% of that to Stock Traders who contributes nothing to the Capital to Labor Market. While receiving dividends for simply trading Stock with only 15% Dividend Tax to add to your accumulate wealth and Stock Market Appreciation that is tax at 0%.
While workers are charged income tax on interest for savings accounts
Then you take cash creating more debt for the worker to pay in Tax and give it to banks, auto iand GE to make profit of the worker and his consumption. Then give yourself $70,000 and the worker $1000 and say it is good for the worker and stimulating the economy. Even after 10 going on 12 years of complete economic failure..
You are so stuck on materialism you will die with your flesh. Your spirit is so buried in your greed you can not even see what you do. Is life not more than cash, lavish things, expensive trinkets. You will reap what you sow. Your treasure will be of the earth not of heart and spirit
A new moral code replacing Christian ethics? Egoism - the belief that the moral person is the self-interested person, holds that an action is right if it maximizes good for the self.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics
Is this what we're seeing now?
This country use to control this self motivation through our laws. No those laws are twisted and self motivation is robbing workers from both ends. Low wages and jobs at one end and higher relative tax at the other.
This is not new found it is the same Self Motivation turning all controls off to foster more and more greed creating a few rich and many poor. Here and throughout the world
Wiki leaks shows that an attempt was made, by Middle East countries, yet again, to lure us into war in the Middle East, this time with Iran. What about Libya, should we go there? If we do, you can be sure that we will later be accused of supporting a new dictator, and the game will being anew.
Drug cartell pour over the border. The sex slave industry pours over the border. Evendence shows that terrorists are working with and through Mexico and yet democrats cry foul if republicans demand the border sealed. Illegal immigrants in LA County, California alone, cost 1.6 billion dollars a year to support.
Ms. Obama would like the children of America to eat healthier. Thank you Ms. Obama, this is a worthy cause, but their parents can't afford it, especially the poor. Carbohydrates are cheap to buy, and deadly to eat, unfortunately. Still, I admire her effort.
Not so the republicans. I sense something sinister in their prostestations, perhaps they fear that if children eat better it will effect their portfolia, and especially the substities to handed out to agricultural corporations.
If that is not enough we are taking all of Israel's hate from there to here. So your kids will live as Israel and Palestine. With unlimited hate for the death of each others children.
A lose/lose for the common folk. Here and there
What difference does it make whether it is secular or not?
If you have a religious government that is oppressing the people would Jesus find that to his taste?
If you have a ostensibly Christian government that lauds self interest, wealth and power over feeding the poor and tending the ill would he find that to his taste?
He would probably say don't bother yourself being under the yoke. Seek ye the kingdom of heaven instead.
Now me, while I was experiencing spiritual growth, but working. I would say while I am also in the material world work. I am going to bitch about injustice, while I live a righteous life myself and baring my cross
(Im a Pagan now, there was a reason for the older mythologies as far as Im concerned)
The question really should be What Would We Do? and what we do will that truly be the Jesus way.
Unfortunately there are many things done in his name that is not him or you and I as him