Hi MT,
Originally posted by midnight Target
I wonder ... would Jesus score 100% for "Bread for the World"? Is that a bad thing?
She isn't anywhere near the Lib you guys think she is. Amazing how so many of you can be wrong.... all at the same time.
Christ was not a politician, nor did he attempt to advance a socialist agenda. While he and the Apostles accepted the fact that rulers had the power to raise taxes (Matt. 22:17-21, Romans 13:7), he never advocated me confiscating your money to pay for government programs of questionable value even if they have the stated intention of ending hunger. If that is your criteria for ultimate success then the Roman authorities who provided "Bread for the Headcount" in the city of Rome in order to prevent riots were doing more good works than Christ. They certainly directly put more of the kind of bread you get from the earth into the hands of people year to year. While Christ was compassionate to those in physical need, He has always been concerned with meeting mans greater need, the spiritual hunger and need that no earthly bread can satisfy. " He declared that He Himself was the bread of Heaven that alone can feed starving souls:
Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
"For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
Then they said to Him, "Lord, give us this bread always."
And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. (John 6:32-35)
So, in the end the Christian asks, what does it matter if I fill a man's belly but leave him spiritually empty? What good have I really done someone if I send them off to hell warm and well fed? So we don't deny the need for personal charity - i.e. that people, themselves, without coercion would give to the needy, but we also don't forget that they have a need to "taste and see" the bread of Heaven and so we must preach the good news as well.
As far as DiFi not being a liberal. I think this comes from the fact that most liberals think of themselves not as liberal or left-wing but as simply "mainstream." Everyone rational that they know thinks pretty much the same way they do, so they must be "moderates" smack dab in the center of American reasoning. Therefore anyone to their right is a dangerous right-wing nut-job and anyone to their left is Cindy Sheehan. It's rather like the famous case of the editor who couldn't believe that Nixon had been elected because no one he knew had voted for him. Its a matter of perspective. Is DiFi a big lib compared to the majority of San Franciscans? Hardly. But plunk her down in a Middle American Red State, where for instance they think the idea that calling sticking scissors into the back of a partially delivered infant's head and then sucking out their brains a "constitutionally protected right" is outrageous and you begin to see why most people would regard her as left-wing.
[Oh, incidentally MT, before you start down that line, theologically and politically I know I am far from being in the American mainstream as well. Added together for instance, I'm fully cognizant of the fact that I'm more conservative than perhaps 90% of the population. I'm sometimes amazed though that the majority of people more liberal than 90% of the American population are so painfully unaware of that fact. Apparently very few of us nutjobs are aware we are well... nutjobs.
]
- SEAGOON
