"I think, therefore I vote Republican". I've seen that bumper sticker more times than I wish to count. It made its debut some time in the late 1980s, but even now it continues to have some appeal. Just saw one today, right next to a "Protect Freedom: Elect Santorum" sticker (of course, the latter placard signals true ignorance on the part of the truck's owner).
I've always wanted to put out my own corollary to the Republican sticker: "I care, therefore I vote Democratic". But see, caring is out of style. Folks have let that "bleeding-heart" epithet get them down, driven them to coldness. "You can care too much," conservative types say. Even stranger is the doctrine that caring actually causes harm, that compassion makes a person an enabler. And so when conservative Catholic leaders speak out on behalf of the poor, many cash-driven ideologues give a big "hunh?"
Of course, conservatives are much more likely to publicly pronounce their Christianity. Though, if I recall my New Testament classes from college (giving me more formal education on the subject than most Christian conservatives), the main message Jesus brought was that people can't care enough. He didn't happen to mention anything about loving too much. Maybe he was a bit too liberal with the water-to-wine trick and never got around to espousing his true philosophy (a handy crutch folks of all political persuasions use whenever they try to justify their beliefs with the thoughts of an eminent historical figure who never said anything on the subject--like, say, Jefferson's many "opinions" on abortion).
With the recent discovery of the Dead Sea Bowls, however, we get a different picture. It turns out that early in his ministry, Jesus sat down with a few pals, lit a pipe and related the parable of the welfare queen.
"Once, in Samaria," Jesus began, understanding that his listeners found Samaritans as distasteful as Jesse Helms finds Castro supporters, "there was a woman with many children. Every year, another arrived." So far, so good, of course. This was standard operating procedure, insurance against an unknown future. Lots of kids died, and you needed to keep plenty of potential replacements handy. However, our story's hero had one other problem. "The woman, however, was without a husband. She relied on the kindness of her village for support." Now we get to the rub.
"After the birth of her tenth child, the mayor of the town came to her house. 'You cannot continue to expand your family at the expense of the village,' he said. 'If you have another child, we will have to evict you from your house and send you on your way.'" Jesus paused for a moment, to allow his listeners time to digest the inutterable cruelty of the Samaritan mayor. There were a few gasps from the gallery. Jesus smiled.
"Well, as you might guess, the woman delivered another child the next year. After a series of recriminations and retribution, she and her family were booted from the town. They trudged slowly out of sight." This, of course, if the point where the whole story turns around. You know your parable structure, doncha?
"Two years later, a wealthy traveler and his wife came to the town, asking to see the mayor. The mayor, a man of simple means, asked them into his house, apologizing for its modest nature. When the wealthy man's wife took off her scarf, the mayor was shocked to see the woman he had driven from his town not two years before. 'Oh, I am so ashamed at our treatment of you,' he said. 'Please consider me and my entire town at your mercy.' The woman smiled and bid the mayor rise. 'No, it is I that should be at your mercy,' she said. 'If it were not for your tough love, which forced me to go find a husband, I would have mooched off your town for the rest of my life. And then my children, too, would have drained this fine village of its livelihood, its rightful claim to the wealth of the world.' The now rich woman knelt down and kissed the mayor's feet."
Jesus sat back and let the lesson sink in. Then he lit up another bit of the latest hemp shipment from the upper Jordan valley.
Plenty of my conservative pals are just elated by this recent discovery. Now they know Jesus wasn't some pansy who got his ass kicked every time he went to a wedding. This Jesus understood the principle of higher love, a grasp of the true, brutal meaning of love which somehow got left out of the gospels. Not to mention a previously unspoken understanding of the capitalist ideal.
Just when you think you know someone...
Jon Worley likes the Biblical version of Jesus much better.