Individualism vs The Collective Part #1 "The Teachings of Jesus"

After returning from the Religious Educational Congress in Anaheim, I was reminded of several years ago when I heard Jim Wallis, the great apologist for Pol Pot’s massacre of a million Cambodians (Marxism for Christianity; Jim Wallis, Running With the Devil) and also an apologist for President Obama’s lack of a true Christian faith. Jim Wallis’ Sojourners and Jeremiah Wright’s Black Liberation Theology are two good examples of Liberal Christian Organizations that are co-opting Christianity for their political purposes (a truer meaning of “using the Lord’s name in vain” is using God for your own selfish purposes, not necessarily cursing). In this liberals using Christianity to spread communism. Listening to Jim Wallis he will tell you that Jesus was a Socialist; the truth is Christianity and Socialism are mutual exclusive.

Throughout history dictators and kings have used the concepts of collectivism to control the masses. Then as in now, the leaders cared not for the welfare on any one individual, but the health of the peasants or workers as a whole; for from the peasants/workers came the armies that would be needed and the food grown by the collective farmers needed to feed them. Then along came Jesus and Christianity, where for the first time the individual was the most important the collective non-existent. President Obama has discussed the need for “Collective Salvation”, a belief system advocated by Jeremiah Wright and his Black Liberation Theology. Here we have an almost perfect parallel with the Bible and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. The infant church was being corrupted as teachers added complexity, new rules and necessary deeds to earn ones salvation. The pillar of Christianity rests on John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. In other words one is saved, by the grace of God, from eternal punishment for sin which is granted to those who accept by faith God’s conditions of repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus. More simply put, salvation is gods gift to the world as no amount of deeds could free the world from sin; this is what is referred to in Christianity as “God’s Grace”.

In Christianity, redemption (the paying of a debt) was Jesus’ death on the cross that paid for the sins of the world. However Jeremiah Wright has other ideas. Black Liberation Theology teaches that the white race must redeem themselves for the past oppression of blacks; apparently the sacrifice of Jesus was not enough and the white race will still have to pay off the black race to reach salvation. This best described in Galations 1:7-10 Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse. Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Jesus never spoke of collective salvation or collective redemption; in fact it was the complete opposite. Jesus spurned the idea of the collective, in the name of a personnel savior. The health of the collective was not a concern of Jesus, nor was one’s station in life or economic status; in the Lord’s Prayer we pledge to “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (apparently Jeremiah Wright would want to interject an asterisk in the forgiveness part). And of course what is either purposely distorted or lost with Liberal Christian Organizations, is that giving is for the sake of the giver, not the receiver. While Jesus repeatedly directed his followers to feed the poor (and the poor certainly benefited), it was for the sake of the givers repentance (the act of changing your ways to God’s ways) and individual salvation, that Jesus wants us to give; as Jesus said in Matthew 26:11 The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.

Liberal Christian Organizations believe that communism (or socialism) would create a world according to the teachings of Christ, but the real teachings of Jesus are the bane of Liberal thinking. Jesus taught his followers since all are equal in God’s eyes, that material equality is insignificant; one should simply be the best at what ever their station of life and spend their energies helping others and loving god. To Jesus the collective had no meaning, because he was concerned about the saving the souls of individuals, not the health and/or control of the collective. I close with Jesus words in Mathew 23:13-15; words that could have been directed at Jim Wallis and Jeremiah Wright. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.