What Would Jesus Do and Say?

Several of the Republican candidates trying to be their party’s nominee in November’s presidential election have made G-d, religion and its teachings at the forefront of their campaigns.  It started with Sarah, who after consultation with Him and public opinion surveys decided not to run.  Then it was her surrogate, Michele, who thought that her Lord or her husband wanted her to be President.  She was terribly wrong.  Then there was Rick, who was in love with America and G-d. Neither reciprocated. Now there is Rick II or the Saint.  He is preaching Catholic gospel that even the Catholics no longer ascribe to but that the Christian evangelicals just can’t get enough of. These people love Jesus and follow his teachings.  They think that his teachings include having sex only for procreation, not recreation, and therefore not using birth control, not having prenatal screenings to check for predictable future medical problems and never having an abortion even in cases of rape, incest or congenital irregularities.  They believe that Jesus hated gays and so they do too.  Many are not crazy about minorities or Jews either.  They love their guns and are willing to fight to the death to protect their right to use them.

These evangelicals are very conservative and believe that government is interfering too much in their lives and businesses.  They fear that their hard earned money will be squandered on helping the poor by providing them with health coverage, education and food subsidies.  They are for the rich who they feel pay too many taxes to help the neediest instead of going where it should - to build a larger and more powerful armed force to keep our country number one in the world.

These people say that they love Jesus and want to live the life he recommended.  They love him so much that they want this to be a Christian country, preferably a white, Christian country filled with people just like them.

What would Jesus say?  What would Jesus do?

Jesus is said to have preached for less than three years.  He perhaps realized that he wouldn’t have much time since he no doubt knew his fate, so he kept his teaching very simple.  The Jewish tradition from which he and many of his followers came had 613 laws governing all forms of activity.  There were laws about what animals could be eaten and how they should be slaughtered, laws governing commerce including the treatment of servants and slaves and laws about relationships and inheritance. While many Jews even back then were able to read and write, few probably knew all 613 laws and did not carry them around on note cards or on their iPads.

When asked which of the 613 to focus on, Jesus is quoted as replying “Love thy neighbor as thyself” taken to mean “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but probably actually meaning “treat each person as an end as well as a means to an end.”  I think that he believed that if that one law could be followed, every other law would be obvious.  If you treat everyone as though it were you, the ultimate end,  you would not kill, steal, lie, commit adultery,  envy your neighbor, cheat, keep slaves etc. He apparently was not that concerned about keeping kosher or making sacrifices at the temple.

When a crowd was stoning an accused prostitute, incorrectly identified later as Mary Magdalene, Jesus said “Let he who has not sinned, throw the first stone.”

When confronted with severe income inequality, he said:  “A rich man has as much chance of going to heaven as does a camel of going through the eye of a needle” and “the way you treat the poorest among you, is the way you treat me” and Jesus could have added “and the way I will treat you,” but that went without saying. So what would Jesus say to the new Republican Party which seems more and more like the New White Man's Christian Party.  What might he say to these “good Christians” who live to win G-d's love and salvation?

Should they hate homosexuals? Should they want a stronger armed force to crush our many enemies?  Should people be allowed to be as rich as they can possibly get?  Should the poor be left to their own devices to teach them some self-reliance? Should people be punished for having sex for non-reproductive purposes? Should we all have as many weapons as we have room for to protect us from our neighbors?

What is Aramaic for “Hell no!”?

But What Can We Do?

This column has questioned the truth or wisdom of some of our most famous and revered national and religious quotations.  But there are some that even this column will not challenge.  One is JFK’s famous “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”  It seems more valid today than it was 50 years ago. How many of us remember it or think about its meaning?

Today we are facing many serious challenges to our well being.  America has been digging out of a severe recession for three years now.  More than 13  million Americans are out of work.  Millions of homeowners are losing their homes owing much more for them than they are now worth.  We seem held captive by OPEC, which sets oil prices affected by supply and demand as well as speculation and forces us to pay more when filling our cars. Some of us feel that we are not getting enough information from our mainstream media.  Many of us feel that we are not getting the same advantages as others take for granted.

We want the government to help us.

If we are unemployed, we want the government to give us unemployment benefits for as much and as long as possible.  We want our elected officials to fix our economy, which is affected by various global factors.  If we have borrowed more than our homes are worth, we want the government to help us get the principal and interest rate reduced.  If we have large cars and trucks and are being forced to pay a fortune to fill up, we want the government to do something to lower gas prices. If some, like the rich, are getting advantages that we aren’t, we want the government to fix the system so that we all get a fair deal.  Many of us have lost faith in our elected officials to fix our country the way we want. Our government, like our very nation, appears fractured and moving in different directions.  We fear that our representatives cannot be counted on to make the needed changes to make sure that our lives only get better.

What are we to do?

We could ask “what can we do for ourselves as well as our country?”

If we are unemployed, sending out resumes to get back into our former careers, we might consider other employment options.  What else can we do that needs be done?  We could get a specialized education doing a different kind of work.  We could do work that people have said Americans won’t do like gardening, housecleaning, child care, manual labor, farming, building maintenance, dog walking and handy-person jobs. We could offer our services to our neighborhood as well as to the larger community.

But most of us are not unemployed.  What can we do about the unemployment problem?  If we run a company, we can refuse to outsource work to other countries.  We could comply with federal law and hire only legal residents and citizens even for yard work or child care.  We could go out of our way to buy products made in America, even if they cost a little more. When making calls to large corporations that outsource their customer service, we can ask to speak with someone working in America.

If we borrowed more than our home is currently worth, should we stop making payments and move out only when forced regardless of its effect on the neighborhood or our economy, not to mention our credit rating?  When our homes were worth much more than we paid for them, should we have offered to pay the bank more? Do we have any personal responsibility for borrowing too much or too often to have something we could not afford?  We could realize that the home is worth to us exactly what it was before the crash.  It is not just an investment, it is a place to live in comfort and security. We could try to remember that homes were not always seen as profitable investments.  Their value used to decline with age, like cars, refrigerators and washing machines.  When we buy a new car or appliance on credit, as most of us do, we are immediately underwater.  Not only are they worth less than we owe for years, when we sell them, if we do, we get much less than we paid.  Should we immediately walk away from all these purchases?

We recently got a reduction in our payroll taxes.  It amounts to, on average, about $2 a day per worker more in our pockets.  We were excited to get this small amount because it would help us and the economy recover.  Now gas prices are up by almost $.50 a gallon.  We are in shock.  It threatens to destroy our personal and national economic recovery, the media tells us. We hear that the increase is due in large part to speculations driven by media hyperbole.  We watch interviews of our fellow Americans in the back of their large trucks and SUVs saying that this is outrageous.  They say that the government should do something to lower prices at the pump.  Is drilling the answer, even though the effects would take many years to realize? 

It has been only a few weeks since the payroll tax cut extension was signed into effect meaning that the average worker will save $14 a week, but we have already forgotten.   This additional amount per week would pay the additional $.50 per gallon for 28 gallons of gas per week.  If we drive 60 miles a day (most of us don’t) and get 15 miles a gallon for the same seven days we would come out even.  But there’s more.  Are we driving a truck or SUV? Why? Is it just for work?  If yes, can the additional cost be written off or passed on to the consumer of the services?  If the truck is not needed for work, why have it?  We could sell the SUV or pickup and buy a more practical family car.  They get much better gas mileage and are easier and more fun to drive.  Or can we reduce our driving by the percent of increase in the price per gallon? So a $.50 increase is about a 14% change from a $3.50 a gallon base.  Can we cut our driving by 14%?  We could do our errands more efficiently.  We could carpool, take public transportation or even walk when possible? Could we cut waste in other areas, like spending four dollars a day on coffee at our favorite cafe?

Could we stop whining and do something?

And if we no longer trust our elected officials, we should work to replace them with people we trust more, if not completely. When we see what the conservatives in the Congress have been up to these last few years, many of us are starting to realize that more must be done.  We must change the way we pay for elections, and should restrict lobbying to clear presentations of positions without the exchange of any money or favors so that our legislators are not tempted to prostitute themselves to special interests.  We must also encourage our best and brightest to go into government service.  In order to have enough best and brightest, we must significantly improve our education system.  This would involve not only hiring, training and encouraging more great teachers, it would also mean changing our high school curriculum to better prepare our students for college and life. A better educated population should produce better voters as well as improved candidates. These are changes that we must know enough to care enough to fight for.

And if we believe that some are getting more advantages than the rest of us, we should insist on better coverage by the media and organize for changes in our tax code which is usually at the heart of economic and political inequity. ( This column has proposed a new, simple and fair tax code with no itemized deductions, just a standard one; treating all sources of income as equal; and with only five tax brackets ranging from 10% to a maximum of 30%. Please see this previous column online).

So maybe we, as a strong, self-reliant people, can stop complaining about our difficulties blaming the government for not doing more to help us, and instead can ask ourselves what can we do for ourselves and our nation?

Taking positive action to effect change is the best way to get over our depression about life’s cruelty and our own shortcomings.

So let us not ask what our government can do for us but rather discover, declare and demonstrate what we can do for ourselves and our country.