Jesus The Occupier? Now They’re Getting Desperate.

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In a post on his blog, “Jesus’ Good News Of Social Justice,” Mr. Jamie Kaufman tries to position the recent Occupy movement as a direct application of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Mr. Kaufman claims that Jesus “occupied” certain locations just like today’s occupiers are squatting at various public places, and for basically the same reasons. For instance, Mr. Kaufman states that the Sermon on the Mount “was an act of insurrection to the Roman governance and a religious act of defiance to the Sanhedrin.  He (Jesus) was giving speeches about how things should be in society, government and church.”

First of all, as a local college professor, a PhD in Theology, remarked to me about the comparison recently, “Yea, but Jesus packed it up at the end of the day.”

Furthermore, there isn’t a shred of evidence that Jesus mentions or alludes to anything in his teachings concerning change in society at large, or government policy at all. If he had done the latter, the Romans would have killed him a long time before the Sanhedrin got the gumption to have him arrested. But the Romans weren’t threatened by Jesus because they saw his teachings as essentially addressing individual and cultural issues, not political ones. In fact, Jesus consistently sidestepped politically charged issues (Matthew 22:15-22). If anybody out there can correct me on this, I’m all eyes.

Christian social justice types want to legitimize the Occupy movement by suggesting that protesters are being persecuted for seeking to apply Jesus’ commands. Again, if anyone out there has any evidence that protesters have been arrested or removed from public places for feeding the hungry, giving clean water to the thirsty, clothing the naked, attending to the sick, or visiting the incarcerated, I’d like to see that.

I’m waiting. (Crickets…)

When Jesus spoke about loving one another, there isn’t the slightest indication that he was defining love as making sure others are charitable. He was calling each heart to act for itself in love toward others. Any external compulsion to act charitably would not be love, but coercion and/or thievery.

The forces behind the Occupy movement are using class warfare to divide this country, not unite it.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m no friend of banks or bailouts. Quite the opposite. You could shut down and retract all of them for all I care.

I’m not saying there’s no reason for discontent among the working class, or that they don’t have a right to protest. But overall, the evidence shows that most of the protesters in the Occupy movement don’t know what they’re fighting, and many of them don’t care. The most sincere in this movement are targeting the smoke instead of the fire, and that’s just the way their benefactors want it.

Don Henley summed it up best in his song, “Damnit, Rose:”

“You could have given us the finger
Much more constructively than that
Now I sit here with the MTV
And your bloated, Burmese cat
We’re being treated to the wisdom
Of some puffed up little fart
Doing exactly what I used to do—
Pretensions to anarchy and art
He speaks the language of a warrior
He mounts his misinformed attack
He wears the clothes of a dissenter
But there’s a logo on his back
And it’s a hollow rebellion
As rebellions mostly are
It’s just another raging tempest in a jar”

In the midst of all this orchestrated confusion, it’s easy to mistake intelligence for wisdom, propaganda for knowledge, and passion for reason. The Occupy movement manages to do all three.

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