If I hear the "Jesus was a community organizer and Pilate was a Governor" meme one more time I am going to scream. In fact while writing this I just heard it again on the radio – arg. But I guess it does say a lot about those who are willing to use it. They say it as if it was actually a slam against Sarah Palin. I have heard some stupid Democrat inspired religious memes in the past such as the "Holy Family was homeless" but this surely takes the cake.
To start off Pontius Pilate was not a governor he was a Prefect of the Roman Judaea province. But even if it was a governor then what they would say would prove too much since it would include any Democrat who was a governor. Now if you are going to do a Pilate comparison which candidate most fits the mode? Mark Hemingway at the Corner said that when it came to Jesus that Pontius Pilate merely vote "Present" Jay Anderson asks "Between Gov. Palin and Sen. Obama, which do you think would be more likely to utter the question "What is truth?" I think when it comes to washing your hands because of condemning innocent blood surely this is the modern Democratic party. When it comes to abortion, cloning, ESCR, Euthanasia, and even some cases infanticide then surely you hear the sounds of washing hands from the likes of Obama and company. State Senator Obama determined that it was more politically expedient to let children die that were born alive after a failed abortion to protect abortion. Pilate would have understood Obama’s politically expediency since he did the same thing.
The idea of Jesus as community organizer proves that they know nothing of who Jesus is and that they don’t know what a community organizer is in the first place. But I guess they can’t help themselves in continually comparing Obama to Jesus. Some people have the idea that a community organizer is kind of like a volunteer community helper in the Jimmy Carter Habitats for Humanity mode. When it reality a community organizer is a paid political position that does little if any actual good in communities. Habitats for Humanity is something that actually does good and their is a reason Obama doesn’t brag about his accomplishment during his time as a community organizer. But I can’t blame people for not knowing what this is since even Sen. Obama mentioned in one of his autobiographies that he didn’t know what it was when the job was offered to him. Community organizer came to us from Marxist agitator Saul Alinsky in a work called “Rules for Radicals” and is really a model for grievance-mongering. In fact it was some of Alinsky’s former students that hired Obama in the first place.
It seems the modern liberals seem to have almost the same view of Jesus as the zealots did. That he would serve a political purpose and a change in government. When the truth is that Jesus did everything he could to avoid being seen in these terms. The community that Jesus died for on the cross was for the whole human community and the sins of our community. Jesus was not limited to helping out in a community in temporal terms in Nazareth or Jerusalem, but in eternal terms by dying for our sins and enabling us to live with him forever. The organizing he has done is to order all things for our good. His job title is Messiah not community organizer, though Obama seems to aspire to both. Jesus taught us who are neighbor is and that we needed to broaden our definition of who are neighbor was and that besides loving them, that we must also love our enemies. That we are to administer to the poor and the sick, not that we are to agitate for the government to take care of our responsibilities towards our neighbor. At our judgment Jesus will ask us what we did for the least of these not what government program we supported. Son of God, son of man, prince of peace, Messiah, and even carpenter are all on his resume, but community organizing is not.
17 comments
“It seems the modern liberals seem to have almost the same view of Jesus as the zealots did. That he would serve a political purpose and a change in government. When the truth is that Jesus did everything he could to avoid being seen in these terms.”
I want to comment on this but I have nothing else to say. The quote above hit the nail right on the head.
I wrote on Biden’s moral relativism a few days ago. I incorporated a lengthy quote from Cardinal Ratizinger. The parallels between cafeteria Catholic politicians and Pilate are rather ovious, if not always quite identical.
“Kelsen sees Pilate’s question as an expression of the skepticism that a politician must possess. In this sense the question (What is truth?) is already an answer: truth is unattainable. (Notice Biden never refers to his alleged belief that life begins at conception as a truth). And we see that this is indeed how Pilate thinks from the fact that he does not even wait for an answer from Jesus but turns immediately to address the crowd. He leaves it to the people to decide the disputed question by means of their vote. (This in spite of the fact that he declares his own belief that Jesus is innocent! So much for the old adage: the man who is right is a majority of one. Biden wants to be part of “the salt of the earth,” but his salt is insipid. He wants to be a light of the world, but he chooses to vie in darkness {Matt 5:13-16}). Kelsen holds that Pilate acts here as a perfect democrat: since he himself does not know what is just, he leaves it to the majority to decide. In this way, the Austrian scholar portrays Pilate as the emblematic figure of a relativistic and skeptical democracy that is based not on values and truth but on correct procedures. Kelsen seems not to be disturbed by the fact that the outcome of the trial was the condemnation of an innocent and righteous man. After all, there is no other truth than that of the majority, and one cannot ‘get behind’ this truth to ask further questions. At one point, Kelsen even goes so far as to say that this relativistic certainty must be imposed, if need be, at the cost of blood and tears. one must be as certain of it as Jesus was certain of his own truth.” (i.e., all truth is subjective).
“The great exegete Heinrich Schlier offered a completely different exposition of this text, one that is much more convincing even from a political point of view. Schlier was writing in the period when National Socialism was preparing to seize power in Germany, and his exposition was a conscious testimony against those groups in the German Protestant churches who were willing to put “faith” and “people” on the same level. Schlier points out that although Jesus in his trial acknowledges the judicial authority of the state represented by Pilate, he also sets limits to this authority by saying that Pilate does not possess this authority on his own account but has it “from above” (John 19:11). Pilate falsifies his power, and hence also the power of the state, as soon as he ceases to exercise it as the faithful administrator of a higher order that depends on truth and, instead, exploits power to his own advantage. The governor no longer asks what truth is but understands power as sheer, unadulterated power. ‘As soon as he legitimated his own self, he became the instrument of the judicial murder of Jesus.’” (VALUES IN A TIME OF UPHEAVAL, PGS. 57-58. Words in parenthesis are mine)
Obama touts his community organizer experience when convenient, however, there are those who worked with him who see his political career as an outright abandonment of it:
In truth, however, if you examine carefully how Obama conducted himself as an organizer and how he has conducted himself as a politician, if you consider what he said about organizing to his fellow organizers, and if you look at the reasons he gave friends and colleagues for abandoning organizing, then a very different picture emerges: that of a disillusioned activist who fashioned his political identity not as an extension of community organizing but as a wholesale rejection of it. Indeed, the most important thing to know about Barack Obama’s time as a community organizer in Chicago may not be what he gained from the experience–but rather why, in late 1987, he decided to quit.
The community organizing movement Obama joined was still under the influence of a man named Saul Alinsky, who had died in 1972. Some of his disciples were intimates of Obama. His general principles would guide groups like the Gamaliel Foundation, which trained people who went on to work for the Developing Communities Project and similar organizations. They became the underpinning of Obama’s approach. “His assignment was to operate in the classic style,” Kruglik, a stubby, scruffy, intense man who now works for Gamaliel, tells me.
These rules can be reduced, more or less, to a few central ideas. Alinsky believed that humans respond to their own selfinterest rather than conscience or morality. (People are “moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, ” he argued, while morality is a “rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest.”) As a result, the job of an organizer is to discover what citizens think is in their self-interest and then help them fight for it. Alinsky also instructed that the organizer himself should not become a public leader, but should operate behind the scenes to encourage “natural” or “native” leaders among the people he is organizing. That is, the goal of an organizer is never to create a movement based on his own charisma. (“We’re trying to build an organization with staying power, not a movement based on instant power and charisma,” Ernesto Cortes Jr., a prominent Alinsky disciple, explained in 1988. ) Finally, Alinsky felt that organizers should draw a clear line between their work and the political world. An organization should forge “no permanent political ties,” declared a guide put out by the Industrial Areas Foundation, which Alinsky created. When I asked former community organizer John Kretzmann–who teaches at Northwestern and writes about organizing–whether organizers saw all politicians as “whores,” he replied, “Even if you found one that wasn’t, it makes no sense to get close to them.”
It appears the only Alinsky “ideals” Obama held onto were those relating to relativism.
Source of above quotes are from the National Review. Emphasis mine.
http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2e0a7836-b897-4155-864c-25e791ff0f50
MAtthew 27…
1. Now when morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people conferred together against Jesus to put Him to death;
2. and they bound Him, and led Him away and delivered Him to Pilate the governor.
6. The chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the temple treasury, since it is the price of blood.”
7. And they conferred together and with the money bought the Potter’s Field as a burial place for strangers.
20. But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to put Jesus to death.
24. When Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but rather that a riot was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd
“Organizing” a community isn’t always what it’s made out to be.
(NOTE–this is not intended in ANY way to imply that Obama would have crucified anyone. just a commentary on the vagueness of the term “community organizer”)
I have to admit to a lot of sympathy for Pontius Pilate. He was just a Roman army officer stuck in the middle of a bunch of crazy locals. He tried to convince them to do the right thing, but when he saw they were all out of their minds, he gave up. I can just imagine him walking back to his quarters after the whole affair ended, shaking his head and muttering to himself, “Man, this tour can’t end soon enough. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get stationed in Spain next time. These people are completely insane.”
Jesus was moving around too much to be a community organizer. Isn’t an organizer someone who lives in the community? As Jesus said, The Son of Man has no place to lay his head.
Community organizer came to us from Marxist agitator Saul Alinsky in a work called “Rules for Radicals” and is really a model for grievance-mongering.
The book was dedicated to Satan, by Saul himself.
Jeff:
“Son of God, son of man, prince of peace, Messiah, and even carpenter are all on his resume, but community organizing is not”.
Sorry to disagree: He organized 12 Apostles, excluding women for that priesthood (the Jews HAD priestesses, you know), with the Rock Peter as boss.
So much against the cliché “organized religion”.
Just ask yourself what situation we would have now if… the USCCB did enforce YEARS AGO Canon 915, or/and organized Catholics in parishes DEMANDED their bishops to obey Rome’s Canon organization.
Cordially
Wasn’t Brutus the backstabber a senator?
Seems this is a bit of a theme this week.
I hadn’t read this entry when I posted mine on political expediency and the scourging of Christ.
Jesus was a maverick. Caiaphas was a community organizer.
He organized 12 Apostles, excluding women for that priesthood (the Jews HAD priestesses, you know), with the Rock Peter as boss.
Am I misunderstanding, or did you just claim that Jesus had women priests?
How many have seen this:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2008/09/13/abc-news-edited-out-key-parts-sarah-palin-interview#comments
David:
The Jews had priestesses since Aaron’s wife. My point was, that Jesus propelled a MAJOR organizational change in His community, apointing a boss (the Rock), a first tier of 12 and a second tier of 72 (symbolic numbers) for the hardships of priesthood, to males.
This did not diminish women: Mary in Pentecost presided as Queen of the Apostles, and in 2,000 years, women saints have presided great waves of innovative thinking & action, like St. Teresa de Ávila, St. Catherina os Sienna, St. Faustina, Bl. Teresa of Calcuta, etc.
Cordially
Guillermo Bustamante,
Thanks for responding. Sometimes I think I can’t read. 🙂
If I hear that meme meme one more time I’ll scream… 😉
Although on a serious note I believe in judging all candidates by their adherence to natural law and the rule of law. And under that criteria Obama, McCain, Biden and Palin are all utterly horrendous.
Catholics have been fooled into voting for one of the two parties, historically Democrats, lately Republicans. The two parties are substantially identical and all this talk of “change” from both sides is just rubbish.
Hey, great blog…but I don’t understand how to add your site in my rss reader. Can you Help me, please 🙂