Christians vs Romans: A Modern Analogy

Pic: http://zionica.com/category/missions/page/41/

I do not not pretend to be a Biblical scholar but in my very young days I was, like many southern kids in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, drug to church every time the doors open. In addition to that my great grandfather [with whom I spent a great deal of time as a child] was a holiness preacher.

While raising two children of my own I found a good Methodist church with a strong youth program and we, as a family, attended regularly. I even taught the junior high Sunday school. So, suffice to say that in my rather lengthy life, I have been around the Christian religion a good bit. Additionally, my son is a devout Christian and me being a doubter we have many long and in depth discussions for which I have to constantly prepare myself.

All of that being said, and the current state of affairs in this country with the right wing of the Republican Party and their pandering to the Christians, has me thinking into my limited knowledge of history and the Bible. I must also give some credit to our publisher Michael Scott for his post Atheists Challenged to Prove Bible False, in which the Christian proposed a simplistic, moronic little quiz that is as relevant as Limburger Cheese would be to a Baked Alaska.

To get to the real issues one must try to find parallels between then and now. We must put the global trade issues into context between then and now as well as well as the global power structures but it can be done.

First, according to both the Bible and history, during the time that Jesus would have been gathering his followers, the Romans were in the process of literally raping as much of the globe as possible of its riches. They were rich and powerful while controlling the countries that they conquered.

In Judea they had conquered the land and co-opted the religious powers that ran the state. The Hebrews made certain capitulations just so their religion could survive. Jesus was a man of the people, mainly the poor, because the Romans were taking all of the wealth they could find and placing in offshore accounts which in those days were Roman treasuries which funded their global domination.

Jesus and his followers tended to hang out with the less fortunate and doing some really weird stuff like washing the feet of others, stopping people from stoning an adulteress, chasing money changers (bankers) out of the temple, and taking a few fish and a few loaves of bread and spreading it among many people.

Would the Romans do that? Not a chance.  What they would do would be to make the Christians slaves or use them for entertainment (see the Christian run from the tiger, an early version of Mario) or simply turn them into cat chow.

The Hebrews were powerless to stop the Romans, but they were of the same people and chose to stand on the sidelines while the [Christians] were persecuted. They essentially disowned the Christians even though they were Hebrews as was the Jewish power structure.

This, however, put Jesus and his folks in a bad spot. They were primarily the poor, and the lower middle class, and maybe a few middle class folks. But, not unlike America, all of the wealth and power rested with the Romans and the hierarchy of the Jewish state.

If you are a Christian and you doubt that just ask Jesus on the Thursday before Good Friday and I think he will confirm that they had the power. According to the Bible there is no doubt about that. Now, just in case some of you are not yet following let me explain:

The Romans were all about power, wealth and control. Where the money came from or what happened to the people they were getting the money from really wasn’t their concern.

Remember the dying man that Jesus saved?  Ron Paul said let him die. Remember Rick Santorum made light of the woman whose child was dying of cancer? Remember, Mitt Romney wasn’t concerned about the poor? Even in correcting it he wants a flat tax which would benefit the wealthy.

Newt is also a flat tax guy, but he and Romney remind me of the money changers. These are all the things I have found really, really strange. Being from Alabama it is like seeing a bunch of drunk Alabama and Auburn fans in a bar all agreeing that “Bear” Bryant was the greatest football coach of all time. Put another way its like a Rabbi going to a southern barbeque for the pulled pork sandwiches. It just doesn’t make sense.

Well here’s the deal..somewhere along the way the Evangelical Christians and the Southern Baptist Christians decided that having faith in Jesus and God wasn’t enough. They say that God called them to get involved in politics but if that were the case God would have appointed someone long ago to take care of Hitler, King Herod, and a bunch of other folks long before they did what they did.

No, this was a choice driven by human emotion and Richard Nixon’s strategy to pull the Southern states into the fold of the Republicans by aligning Republican social agendas with their fiscal agendas, which by the way, makes Nixon and his cohorts damn near geniuses.

The Southern states are poor as hell but they can romp and stomp their religious beliefs and if you can tie the two together, you have a winner.  So, as long as the Republicans kept up the front of being socially conservative the religious minded people took their eyes off what they were doing with the financial end of things, and, since the rich kept their social mores among themselves they could do as they pleased, get richer, and keep the Christians in their camp. Meanwhile, back in pulpits, the evangelical leaders found television and a tremendous cash flow. Suddenly they were stars, movers and shakers, and rich as hell themselves. The only ones left out were the parishioners. So, back to my point.

In his day Jesus would have been one of the 99% people most likely to be thrown out of public places. He was opposed to the status quo. and  opposed to the Roman and Hebrew establishment, and I will debate anyone who says he would not be anti-republican today.

My challenge to the faithful: prove me wrong.

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