Posted on 04/17/2014 3:16:47 PM PDT by IChing
Someone needs to explain to those (especially socialists) who have been misled otherwise–Jesus Christ did not preach public charity. In fact, he taught the opposite.
Deranged, hyper-manic left wing comedian Lewis Black made a complete fool of himself Monday when he gave a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., delivering a slobbering, convulsive tirade in his usual style, that of a bombastic barroom boor who pontificates wildly in a blind rage on matters of which he knows next to nothing.
Black claims that he is one of only a handful of true socialists still alive in American society, and that his philosophy of government is the only way to enforce what he purports are the values of a Christian society.
Full videos of Black’s bellowing rant, in two segments, are at this link: rawstory.com
Black can be very entertaining with his angry, bug-eyed, ranting curmudgeon act, his hands and fingers flapping around spastically as he gesticulates and foams at the mouth–and I’m sure his fellow lying lefties which comprise the crowd at such an establishment-journalism confab were eating out of his hand, and agreeing with him. But to anyone who actually knows and understands what Jesus Christ really taught about helping the poor, Black showed his utter ignorance.
Black delighted in erroneously (in his mind, vindictively) hollering that having socialism as the form of government forces professing Christian people to actually behave in a Christian way, to “shut up and put their money where their mouth is” by making helping the poor the official law of the land, “whether they like it or not.”
Beyond the theological falsehood in Black’s screed (and the glaring unlikelihood that the likes of Black would also want aspects of Christianity with which they disagree to be enforced by the government, such as opposition to abortion, homosexuality, etc.) there is the proven fact that socialism does the opposite of what people like Black allege. Socialism actually spreads and aggravates pervasive poverty more than it does anything else. But let’s focus, for now, on the Biblical misrepresentation in his remarks.
Like many, many similarly misinformed people, including even many conservatives, Black thinks that doing good by publicly helping the less fortunate is what Christianity is about. Of course, Black and people like him have not actually understood the Bible in this regard.
To the contrary, Jesus scolded and derided those who make a public show of doing good deeds before the eyes of others. Instead, Jesus commanded us to do such acts of charity in secrecy–to be so stealthy and under-the-radar about our benevolence that even “your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing.” That way, Christ reminds us, we can keep ulterior, selfish agendas of trying to promote ourselves in the eyes and minds of others in check, and minimize the tendency to have mixed motives and false reasons for helping others–specifically, as a way of trying to appear to others to be good, when in fact we are really only cynically managing our public reputations:
Matthew 6:1-4; “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Further demonstrating his ignorance of Biblical doctrine, Black ranted and caterwauled at length about how Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” was being stymied on the political right, by advocates of smaller government and of private sector/entrepreneurial solutions to economic problems. Black calls for an official, government-enforced Christian ethos as an alleged way of supposedly eliminating poverty–but he clearly does not know that Jesus said “the poor will always be with you” (Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, John 12:8), as did the book of Dueteronomy 15:11, “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded to your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”
Doing good deeds in secret as a matter of personal, private policy is what is commanded by Christianity; not as a matter of public policy to be forced on us as a way of making politicians and their socialist supporters look good.
Christ knows the hearts of men; his words can help people like Lewis Black and the legions of limousine liberals learn to reform their ways and their rhetoric, and privately put their money where their mouths are (studies show conservatives donate far more of their own private earnings to charity than do so-called liberals), instead of seeking to make themselves appear generous by forcing a false agenda with other people’s money.
Capitalism is the honest public acknowledgement and benevolent exploitation of the human tendency toward rational self-interest. The abundance produced by capitalism is what affords us greater opportunity to do good out of the nobler impulses of our hearts, in private and in secret, where our sincerity is not likely to be contaminated and corrupted by ulterior agendas of cynical public relations.
Unless and until Lewis Black learns how to tell the truth, he just needs to shut up, and not be given a platform such as the National Press Club luncheon.
have him donate ALL his big money to a christian organization for the poor...ha
it’s easy enough to push the existence of millions of poor off onto lack of Christian charity. when “helping” the poor has been the stated mission of Liberals for decades. Their own policies and social experimentations have failed and someone besides themselves must be blamed.
Is this where we post the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition pic?
Yes, most appropriate.
If he’s a true socialist he would have no problem giving up all his cash he made in a capitolist society for the greater good and his cause, lying sack of ............. George Lopez goes into a tirade reving up his audience to the fact that mexicans are going to take over the US and whitey can suck his you know what. Im sick of these ungrateful useless unfunny a##es
He is right about one thing. There is a connection between Christianity and socialism. It is that socialism is a *parody* of Christianity.
Imagine taking a King James Bible and removing all reference to God from it, and replacing them with “mankind” or the equivalent. This is socialism in a nutshell.
It is the first sin, the sin of Lucifer, the sin of vanity, that through the ages, again and again, some men have found irresistible: to imagine themselves in place of God.
But from the start of the socialist Bible, things go askew.
Man discovers the knowledge of good and evil, and it is this discovery that ruins paradise. The knowledge of good and evil means man is no longer one with nature, that instead he exploits nature to benefit himself, and in the process, ruins it. Man becomes civilized and unnatural. He uses machines. He creates knowledge. He inhibits his sexuality and other impulses. He creates inequality, which thwarts “mankind”, the actions of man as Leviathan, a colony like of insects. Some socialists lust for the beehive, the anthill, the herd, but made of humans.
So a primary purpose of socialism is to disavow the idea that good and evil exist. That by disrupting the knowledge of good and evil, civilization will end, and man will return to a simple, pastoral way, never changing.
These extrapolations are less philosophies, though they have been expressed as such, independently, many times; but they are the logical outgrowth of the socialist Bible.
And the arrogance of socialists is astounding. Despite their complete perversion of the Bible, they so strongly believe it their version, that they imagine themselves as more faithful, more religious. This is how such people as Nancy Pelosi and Kathleen Sibelius imagine themselves: as more sanctimonious than the Pope.
Because they know better. The Pope just doesn’t understand the Bible as well as they do. He still worships God, not socialism.
It is truly ironic when the Catholic church sees the corruption of socialism and imagines the “through a glass darkly” image of Christianity within. They need to realize that what they see is not their faith, but perversity.
Wow, that was good!
I always love it when Jewish socialists want to tell Christians what Christianity is.
Christ is NOT an ATM machine for all kinds of lazy socialists greedy ideas.
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