I pray in both of those senses also. However, I know Jesus will not rebuke anyone who didn’t hold back from working to bring forth a voluntary giving-and-sharing-all political economy for the sake of the many.

I will carry on debating the laissez-faire capitalists who take delight in claiming Jesus was not and is not a communist, by which they mean not a communalist, baggage or no. I will also therefore continue using the pre-Marxist connotation of the word communist so that the debate will become plain and clear. It is a matter of selfishness versus unselfishness (perhaps you use the term selflessness), what that means, where Jesus stands, and where the capitalists stand. It is they who are misleading, not I.

Of course, when Jesus said “one,” he meant what encompasses communism.

I wish you well. Perhaps our paths may cross again.

Peace,

Tom

I also hold to Catholic eschatalogical teaching that says the New Heavens and New Earth will not come until Jesus personally returns. When I pray the Lord’s prayer, I ask for the coming of the kingdom in two senses. The first is a progressive sense, which happens every day, but is incomplete. The second is an ultimate sense, which will happen with the return of Christ and the final judgment. Many Christian social movements have gone astray confusing those senses.

Misleading connotes leading astray. I know that’s not what I’m doing at all.

The fact that the currently prevailing usage is that which has been dictated by those falling on the political spectrum of the Communist Party to the laissez-faire capitalists is no reason not to set the meaning straight again. Afterall, the currently prevailing usage of love is far from Jesus’s meaning. The other connotations of love are loaded with hypocrisy when they are divorced from his meaning.

When I say Jesus is love, I don’t need to first explain that he is not the love of money for instance.

People who are against the voluntary giving and sharing economy Jesus teaches that will come to this world to save it have deliberately twisted the meaning of communism.

Isaiah rightly said that the meanings of words would be put back.

Not everyone who sees Jesus’s words understands his full context. That’s no reason at all to avoid using them. How can one flesh them out without first using them as intended and leaving it to others to inquire? From the start, I invited you to see the context. I do that with everyone.

Your idea that I should confine myself to current usage would preclude the message of Jesus Christ. His parables are loaded with terms that are not understood by those who follow your advice here to me.

You wrote, “The key to the kingdom is evangelism and discipleship, not political power or economic policy.” The kingdom, however, is both political and economic when those terms are used in the full context of the message of Jesus. The kingdom is to come to the Earth and they are to conflate as the combination of the New Heaven and New Earth. That’s what Jesus teaches. It’s there. You’ve read it. It’s for the here and now. It’s what we pray for in The Lord’s Prayer.

God bless,

Tom Usher

Otherwise, I agree with most of what you say. Jesus did bring a kingdom, which is a government, but it is the government of God expressed through the Church. I don’t know how that is supposed to work out ultimately; the various efforts to bring about Christendom in the past have had their problems. I think that when Jesus says that the Kingdom is within us, that he means that it begins with individual conversion of the heart, which leads to action, as I said before. The key to the kingdom is evangelism and discipleship, not political power or economic policy. However, some Christians are called to position of government responsibility, or have significant economic influence, and they must exercise that according to the Gospel.

Peace be with you,
Greg

Thank you for your reply. Did you read my post to which I linked in my comment above?

http://www.realliberalchristianchurch.org/wordpress/?p=2380

Please note I didn’t say Jesus is a Communist (capitalized) as in the one-party, totalitarian dictatorship of the proletariat (industrial workers) that turned out to be a dictatorship under the party bosses and particularly Stalin and Mao and their like.

The communism of the disciples of Jesus has nothing to do with the Communist Party(s) that came up under Marxist ideology.

As for Jesus not coming to set up a political or economic system, that is semantically incomplete. Politics is the government of the polis (city). In the revelation of Jesus Christ, it represents the Shining City on the Hill, Jerusalem, the City of Peace, Heaven, Zion, etc. Likewise, economics at its heart or root concerns how the house is run, again meaning government. The Kingdom of Heaven and God is government by unselfishness and love and sharing all things as one spirit. This is exactly consistent with what Jesus said to his followers as related in John. They did live it out with Jesus and continued to do so as stated in Acts.

We are to pray the Lord’s Prayer in which we say that God’s Kingdom is to come to the Earth. That means that his government is to come to the Earth. We are to be governed as he wants us to behave, to be. It means that true Christian love includes sharing all with none saying anything is his or hers that is not also the property of God and all other Christians or the entire Church’s.

We all serve each other as the lesser. That’s the spirit is it not?

God bless,

Tom Usher

Jesus is a communist. I’d like to create a network of those who agree.

Would you be so kind as to read the linked post and perhaps leave your impressions.

It would be beneficial for those who agree that Jesus is a communist (not a Marxist) to network together.

God bless,

Tom Usher

Interestingly, Origen was very prolific and had a very inquisitive nature. In his attempts to explain certain mysteries he sometimes said things that were later determined to be erroneous. Therefore, later generations used Origen’s own criteria to condemn some of his teachings.

I am VERY open to the idea that I don’t understand his meaning.