‘Murican Jebus.

There seems to be a tendency for nation states to ‘adopt’ Jesus as their own, personal flag. Unfortunately this often leads to an abuse of God, forcing him to fit into political ideologies that he never taught when he was incarnate as Jesus two-thousand years ago on the far eastern coast of the Mediterranean. In a recent article on the Legion by a guest contributor entitled “No, Jesus Was Not A Homeless Brown Refugee Who Ran Around Giving People Free Healthcare”, we ruffled a few feathers of those on our modern political left, as it was probably intended to. As I was not the author I shall not speculate on his intentions beyond his responding to a silly point of view.

The issue is not that the political left thinks Jesus embodies their ideology. At least not solely. Indeed, the right also claims Jesus as some gun-toting deity that handed down to them the American Constitution as if it were an extra book of Divine Writ. The central issue surrounding modern political ideologies and Jesus is that they go together about as well as petroleum and a spark. Any attempt to hold Jesus up as your political flag bearer will inevitably explode, burn, and cause a lot of damage. You end up not with Jesus but with a malformed Jebus whom you’ve been lopping bits off of and sticking other bits on in order to make him your own.

That is what most sane people would call blasphemy.

America is not the only country that does this to the Lord of all creation but it is the most polarised and, at least in loose terms, the most Jesus heavy. The American Left will try use Jesus to push for their policies of immigration reform, healthcare reform, social program reforms and the like. The American Right will use Jesus to try and block all of these things, at least generally speaking. It seems to have not occurred to them, in their rush to butt political heads, that Jesus is a monarch. He is the King of Heaven and Earth. He has strict moral Laws that he demands we follow.

For the Left, he demands you bow to him as King. He says you need to do religious things, such as eating his body and drinking his blood (John 6). He says that marriage is between one man and one woman (Matthew 19). He says that those who love him follow his commands (John 14). He says you must submit to his Church (Luke 10).

For the Right, he demands you bow to him as King. He says you need to do religious things, such as eating his body and drinking his blood (John 6). He says you ought to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar (Matthew 22, i.e taxation is not theft). He says you must submit to his Church (Luke 10).

In a nutshell, if you want Jesus and not your own malformed Jebus, then you’ll realise that political ideologies are mere crumbs of a far greater thing; the Kingdom of Heaven. None of our mortal politics can ever hope to speak to the whole of the Kingdom of God. No amount of social welfare, nor conservation of arbitrary Constitutions, can accomplish the salvation of a single soul.

Well, unless you fancy a theocratic monarchy.