Comment by Forrest Curo on 1st mo. 7, 2017 at 7:03pm

The small end of the question we're attempting to address is how to handle person-person level politics when two people are working at cross purposes.

---

My intention is to discuss the question; someone else here has a gift for derailing discussions, diverting attention from real issues to irrelevancies, and denying that he's doing so and/or shouldn't.

I don't need to speculate as to his motives; that might be a good subject for him but for my purposes it's another distraction. I don't need to bust him for anything; I don't need to make him stop (though I wish he would.) I don't need to achieve my intention of keeping the discussion coherent, interesting, or helpful to anyone.

I don't need to look good to anyone, including myself.

Jesus says I'm supposed to 'love' him in the same operative sense that God loves people, ie sincerely wish him well, be helpful when possible. -- "Spontaneous natural affection" as my late friend Frances Brill used to put it, isn't a consideration; would not make behaving this way more virtuous or less so. I need to recognize him as myself, as I'd be with my perceptions & feelings out of whack in some puzzling way.

And I'm supposed to rely on God, not any skill of my own, since it's clearly beyond me.

Comment by Kirby Urner on 1st mo. 8, 2017 at 12:50am

My constructive extension of the essay up top was to ask what it means to "walk away" from one's political life to embrace Jesus. What exactly is one's "political life" and is following Jesus "not political"?

For the sake of argument, I'm suggesting Jesus was one of the great social engineers of all time ("love they neighbor" etc.) and that Richard Stallman (blessings be upon him) in pursuing GNU, was in no way turning his back on our collective responsibility to make this God's Kingdom, as best as we are able. In continuing with Richard's social engineering, I'm following Jesus, according to God's Will, practicing Quaker that I be.

I'm very on target and contemporary in my thinking.  We have a laggard here who thinks he knows better and who injects his disruptive / derailing non sequiturs about GM selling Americans on automobiles, as evidence of how much more than the rest of us he knows about politics, and why I should shut up and listen to my betters about what God says it all means.

Forgive me if I titter behind my fan (a rather gender bender gesture for someone of my stature, but hey, this is Portland).

I'll get off this thread now, having contributed constructively, and go link to it from Facebook, as further evidence of how quickly Quakerism is advancing. I'm just back from a showing of '13th' at the Stark Street meeting house, with Lew Frederick, who gets inducted as a state senator tomorrow.  An Earlham grad, also black, former broadcaster for KGW. Historic! Pix in my Photostream.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 1st mo. 8, 2017 at 8:47am

James -- It isn't just that we need (and can depend on) the Spirit to help us navigate obscure historical details (so far as these matter):

The crucial detail about Jesus is that he was killed as a dangerous nuisance to the rulers of the Roman province of Judea, who were living high on the severe hardship, deprivation, and humiliation of the people they ruled.

Rather than honor (and/or ignore) Jesus as a pious teacher of personal religious practice, they went out of their way to hang him up, naked and bleeding, to die as a public example of what would happen to anyone who challenged their authority.

Jesus in fact did so. From the beginning of his historical role he was talking about "the Kingdom of God," "the Reign of God." He wasn't talking about some other place in the sky.

Given that this was the man God resurrected -- as we'd both agree -- That event wasn't a pointless sideshow fluke, as if some random Galilean lowlife had stood up and walked after a freak accident.

This particular man was singled out for death of the most shameful and painful sort, and miraculously vindicated, because what he'd been doing and saying seriously offended the Powers that Were, and remained, nominally in charge.

[more later]

Comment by James C Schultz on 1st mo. 8, 2017 at 11:01am

I don't want to be picky but the most crucial part of Jesus' life is that He was resurrected.  On the political question I am closer to Tolestoy's belief that if people allowed the spirit of God to lead them they would disdain "politics" and all its forms and eventually there would be no support for those who would use government power for ill.  Of course if Tolestoy saw how the horror of modern weapons far surpasses those of his time and yet governmental leaders still engage in killing and maiming people who simply want to live a peaceful co-existence he would not just role over in his grave but dig his way out of it.:)

Comment by Forrest Curo on 1st mo. 8, 2017 at 11:23am

Yes, 'picky' is fine if we pick the right details. Resurrection invalidates everything people believe is true about the physical universe and its relation to Spirit. It wasn't expected, not by Jesus' opponents nor by his followers; taking it as your given changes everything.

But he didn't get killed just so he could get resurrected. He got killed because he scared and angered the most powerful governing factions of his time.

The world's way of doing 'politics' is far removed from Jesus' way of doing politics; yet he recognizably did politics, recognizably enough to the rulers' eyes that they saw him (rightly) as a threat to what they did and their whole way of doing it.

Comment by James C Schultz on 1st mo. 8, 2017 at 12:53pm

Well he certainly wasn't politically correct.  I think those in charge are always threatened by those who don't accept their rules and when the rules don't work the way they expected they change the rules.  Rules are necessary to avoid chaos (cars should all drive on the same side of the road) but they can't change hearts.  Jesus was about changing hearts in spite of the rules.  With the right heart attitude you will naturally follow the rules for the sake of order but not rules that unnecessarily hurt others.  Of course deciding which rules cause unnecessary harm varies with the individual and the progress they have made in watching over their heart with all diligence.  In my original post I equated politics with partisanship as that is how I experienced it and still see it on both the National and local stage.  I also equated it to political parties and their platforms which are designed to curry favor with and cause division between various factions of society.  To the extent that that was misunderstood, I apologize.  Jesus did say he came to cause division so I guess in that sense he did fit today's political mold.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 1st mo. 9, 2017 at 12:15am

What did Jesus mean about causing 'division'?

The political divisions were already there when he was born [For example, there'd been an insurrection that left the Romans hanging some 2,000 young Israelites on crosses along the roads of Galilee close to that year]; that conflict continued in various ways long afterwards.

Jesus is quoted as saying he'd been sent to set the members of each household against each other -- in a society where people generally founded their identities and honor on their place in a family, on that family's place in a village (or a city), on that city's place in some nation (Galilean, Samaritan, Judean being different hostile divisions within that people called Israel...) --

That dividing line would presumably separate: those who saw Jesus as a true prophet and those who saw him as leading Israel astray (or at least, turning people away from honoring their own prestige, authority, loyalties.)

Didn't that come down to a conflict about political/religious authority and where it lay?

I really don't think the conflict fits into "today's political mold".

Yes, the two rival gangs of the American Biparty do tend to see each other as irredeemably evil, misguided, etc, based on minor differences in the values they profess. But they're both firmly loyal to Caesar's values, yes? (Maybe that's what you meant about the spiritual irrelevance of what contemporary people call "politics"?)

Comment by James C Schultz on 1st mo. 9, 2017 at 9:33am

As you suggest: Matthew 22:21 says it all.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 1st mo. 9, 2017 at 11:04am

For those with ears to hear, Matthew 22:21 says it all. (But many readers of the last few centuries misread it!)

But there's a great deal more to read and understand, to realize why Jesus was (ala Crossan's description) 100 religious and 100% political.

Luke 22:25 looks at this stuff from a slightly different angle: "In 'the world', kings lord it over their subjects; and those in authority are called their country's 'Benefactors'."

We have so many Benefactors these days, it's a miracle they never manage to benefit anyone but themselves and a few unwitting accomplices. So it was in Jesus' day as well.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 1st mo. 11, 2017 at 11:27am

What pious modern readers miss about "Give Caesar what is Caesar's" is that Jesus isn't allotting Caesar some privileged turf of his own where God, or his followers, should not interfere.

What is Caesar's, when God gets His due, comes down to some sacrilegious  bits of metal (paper, these days) with his picture on them.

This doesn't say that Christians can, or should, seek to improve Caesar's operation by a few cosmetic changes. The whole modus operandi needs to change; and it may well not be in our power to bring that about. But it's in God's hands, what we can and should try to accomplish.

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