Reddit reviews The Politics of Jesus
We found 5 Reddit comments about The Politics of Jesus. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
William B Eerdmans Publishing Company
Reddit reviews The Politics of JesusWe found 5 Reddit comments about The Politics of Jesus. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Jesus was going to be arrested anyway, even without the betrayal. He proclaimed a political Kingdom and was associated with zealots i.e. the Hebrews who wanted a violent revolt. (Getting my information from The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder as well as Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel: Abridged Edition by Alexandre Christoyannopoulos. If Judas was doing anything, it would be fulfilling prophecy like how the the disciples were to get swords (two only) so Jesus can be counted amongst criminals.
Politics of Jesus - John Howard Yoder
You could pretty much pick up anything by John Howard Yoder as an introduction to the ideas of Christian pacifism, though his sort of standard work is The Politics of Jesus. This book is a bit hard to find, but I highly recommend The Politics of Love for some accessible and inspiring historical research into the early church. Wikipedia offers some helpful places to look as well. Those should keep you busy for a while and open up some primary sources for you to look into if you're still interested.
Though a Christian has a choice to be whatever they want to be. I think it would be more Christ-like to love and minister to those that a police-state or police entity would arrest or kill. God will still be with someone that society calls "degenerates" and, confusingly enough, with those that are enforcing the law.
I say, as a Christian, get as far away from taking a job that may require to take a life. If you do, however, I will still love you like a brother (or sister) in Christ.
Check out The Politics of Jesus if you are looking for more convincing.
> Christ never got involved in politics. And "Christians" (or people claiming to be) today are destroying our reputation by doing so. It is time Christians listen to their own advice and read the bible.
I feel that this illustrates a great misconception within the Christian community regarding what does and does not constitute legitimate political activity. Insofar as Christ interacted with and even brought criticism to loci of socioeconomic power in his milieu, insofar as Christ sought to not only instruct but influence the behavior of others (either individually or as a group), he was most certainly involved in politics. What Christ was not involved in was political gerrymandering or ladder climbing, and it is this specific variety of political activity where Christians today often part ways with Jesus's approach. Indeed, Christ repeatedly emphasized that his Kingdom was "not of this world," that he would not introduce the Kingdom of God vis-a-vis an overthrow of Roman authority as so many expected the Messiah to accomplish--often to the chagrin of his closest followers.
Christians need to recover a better, broader sense of legitimate political action. Not only is fixation upon leveraging the highest echelons of political power different than Christ's approach, it's much less interesting and much less effective at promoting lasting change than the spectrum of other political activity available to us. We get distracted by the misbelief that we can alter people's hearts and minds by legislatively shifting society in a more "Christian" direction. We forget that we are called to be salt (a preserving agent) and light (a clarifying, hope-inducing) agent to our world by following the even more revolutionary path Christ himself tred.
I believe that as followers of Messiah, we are most certainly called to political action--just not the sort of political action for which we are unfortunately known. Great examples of contemporary theological reflection on this point include the following, to name a few: