Tag Archives: OWS

Together In Solidarity

About | Occupy New Mexico

http://www.occupynewmexico.org/about/

This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

  • As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality:
  • that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members;
  • that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors;
  • that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth;
  • and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.

We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

  1. They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
  2. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
  3. They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
  4. They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
  5. They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
  6. They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
  7. They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
  8. They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
  9. They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
  10. They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
  11. They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
  12. They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
  13. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
  14. They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
  15. They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
  16. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
  17. They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
  18. They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
  19. They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
  20. They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
  21. They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
  22. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
  23. They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

 

Description: Signature - Rob clear background-70x49

Clergy target Wells Fargo

Slideshow: Clergy target Wells Fargo in Ash Wednesday protest over foreclosures

San Francisco Business Times by Mark Calvey, Senior Reporter

Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 1:26pm PST – Last Modified: Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 1:36pm PST

View photo gallery (6 photos)

Description: Description: wells fargo clergy protest foreclosures

Clergy held a protest at Wells Fargo’s San Francisco headquarters Wednesday, calling on the bank to freeze all mortgages until an investigation is completed after a San Francisco audit found several foreclosures in the city were done under questionable, if not illegal, circumstances.

Clergy from several denominations held an Ash Wednesday protest this morning calling on Wells Fargo to freeze all mortgages until an investigation is completed after a San Francisco audit found several foreclosures in the city were done under questionable, if not illegal, circumstances.

The clergy also called on Wells Fargo to write down principal on underwater mortgages, which are those loans in which balances now exceed the value of the house.

The calls echo similar demands for a foreclosure moratorium made at Wells Fargo’s annual meeting last year.

For its part, Wells Fargo last month highlighted its efforts to help troubled home owners. The bank said it assisted almost 725,000 customers with trial or completed mortgage modifications; provided $4 billion in principal forgiveness; and conducted more than 50 workshops since 2009 to assist troubled mortgage borrowers.

Several clergy members, including Gloria Del Castillo who faces the threat of foreclosure from Wells Fargo, spoke at a news conference in front of the bank’s San Francisco headquarters Wednesday.

The church leaders cited last week’s San Francisco audit of 400 recent San Francisco foreclosures commissioned by city assessor-recorder Phil Ting that found that almost every one of the foreclosures involved legal violations or suspicious documentation. The San Francisco study examined foreclosures in San Francisco from January 2009 to November 2011.

The religious delegation also said they had moved $10 million in congregational deposits out of Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and encouraged others to do the same.

The clergy also spelled out their demands in a letter to Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO John Stumpf, which was accepted by a member of the bank’s security team when they sought to enter the bank.

“These are not speculators or those who are seeking to make a quick dollar. These are families striving to achieve the American dream,” the clergy wrote in their letter to Stumpf.

The protest and spreading of ashes in front of Wells Fargo’s ATMs outside the headquarters branch was conducted by the San Francisco Organizing Project, consisting of 30 congregations, schools and community centers. Other foreclosure protests in recent weeks have targeted Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and J.P. Morgan Chase, (NYSE: JPM) in addition to Wells Fargo.

“As members of San Francisco’s faith community, we are gravely concerned about the stories of wrongful foreclosure and the lack of cooperation of Wells Fargo that we hear from families in our pews every day,” the clergy wrote in their letter to Stumpf.

Mark Calvey covers banking and finance for the San Francisco Business Times.

Description: Description: Signature - Rob clear background-70x49

P.S. This religious peep sort of reminds me of the Apostle James and John the Baptist.

“And a final word to you arrogant rich: Take some lessons in lament. You’ll need buckets for the tears when the crash comes upon you. Your money is corrupt and your fine clothes stink. Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. What you’ve piled up is judgment. All the workers you’ve exploited and cheated cry out for judgment. The groans of the workers you used and abused are a roar in the ears of the Master Avenger. You’ve looted the earth and lived it up. But all you’ll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse. In fact, what you’ve done is condemn and murder perfectly good persons, who stand there and take it. James 5:1-6 from THE MESSAGE translation

Luke 3:7-8, 10-12

7 So he began saying to the crowds who were going out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 “Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves,

10 And the crowds were questioning him, saying, “Then what shall we do?” 11 And he would answer and say to them, “The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise.” NASU

Hyper-Masculinity On the Verge of Exploding

    • The streets of Montreal are clogged nightly with as many as 100,000 protesters banging pots and pans and demanding that the old systems of power be replaced. The mass student strike in Quebec, the longest and largest student protest in Canadian history, began over the announcement of tuition hikes and has metamorphosed into what must swiftly build in the United States—a broad popular uprising. The debt obligation of Canadian university students, even with Quebec’s proposed 82 percent tuition hike over several years, is dwarfed by the huge university fees and the $1 trillion of debt faced by U.S. college students. The Canadian students have gathered widespread support because they linked their tuition protests to Quebec’s call for higher fees for health care, the firing of public sector employees, the closure of factories, the corporate exploitation of natural resources, new restrictions on union organizing, and an announced increase in the retirement age. Crowds in Montreal, now counting 110 days of protests, chant “On ne lâche pas”—“We’re not backing down.”
    • The debt obligation of Canadian university students, even with Quebec’s proposed 82 percent tuition hike over several years, is dwarfed by the huge university fees and the $1 trillion of debt faced by U.S. college students. The Canadian students have gathered widespread support because they linked their tuition protests to Quebec’s call for higher fees for health care, the firing of public sector employees, the closure of factories, the corporate exploitation of natural resources, new restrictions on union organizing, and an announced increase in the retirement age.
    • The Quebec government, which like the United States’ security and surveillance state is deaf to the pleas for justice and fearful of widespread unrest, has reacted by trying to stamp out the rebellion. It has arrested hundreds of protesters. The government passed Law 78, which makes demonstrations inside or near a college or university campus illegal and outlaws spontaneous demonstrations in the province. It forces those who protest to seek permission from the police and imposes fines of up to $125,000 for organizations that defy the new regulations. This, as with the international Occupy movement, has become a test of wills between a disaffected citizenry and the corporate state. The fight in Quebec is our fight. Their enemy is our enemy. And their victory is our victory.
    • If Canadians can continue to boycott university classrooms, continue to get crowds into the streets and continue to keep the mainstream behind the movement, the government will become weak and isolated.
    • The protesters are part of what has been nicknamed the army of the cacerolazo, or the casseroles.
    • The importance of the Occupy movement, and the reason I suspect its encampments were so brutally dismantled by the Obama administration, is that the corporate state understood and feared its potential to spark a popular rebellion. I do not think the state has won. All the injustices and grievances that drove people into the Occupy encampments and onto the streets have been ignored by the state and are getting worse. And we will see eruptions of discontent in the weeks and months ahead.
    • If these mass protests fail, opposition will inevitably take a frightening turn. The longer we endure political paralysis, the longer the formal mechanisms of power fail to respond, the more the extremists on the left and the right—those who venerate violence and are intolerant of ideological deviations—will be empowered. Under the steady breakdown of globalization, the political environment has become a mound of tinder waiting for a light.
    • The Golden Dawn party in Greece uses the Nazi salute, has as its symbol a variation of the Nazi swastika and has proposed setting up internment camps for foreigners who refuse to leave the country. It took 21 seats, or 7 percent of the vote, in the May parliamentary elections. France’s far-right National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, pulled 18 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election. The right-wing Freedom Party in the Netherlands is the third largest in the parliament and brought down the minority government. The Freedom Party in Austria is now the second most popular in the country and holds 34 seats in the 183-seat lower house of the parliament. The Progress Party in Norway is the largest element of the opposition. The Danish People’s Party is Denmark’s third largest. And the Hungarian fascist party Jobbik, or the Movement for a Better Hungary, captured 17 percent of the vote in the last election. Jobbik is allied with uniformed thugs known as the Hungarian Guard, which has set up patrols in the impoverished countryside to “protect” Hungarians from Gypsies. And that intolerance is almost matched by Israel’s ruling Kadima party, which spews ethnic chauvinism and racism toward Arabs and has mounted a campaign against dissenters within the Jewish state.
    • The left in times of turmoil always coughs up its own version of the goons on the far right. Black Bloc anarchists within the Occupy movement in the United States, although they remain marginal, replicate the hyper-masculinity, lust for violence and quest for ideological purity of the right while using the language of the left. And they, or a similar configuration, will grow if the center disintegrates.
    • These radical groups, right and left, give to their followers a sense of comradeship and empowerment that alleviates the insecurity, helplessness and alienation that plague the disenfranchised. Adherents surrender the anxiety of moral choice for the euphoria of collective emotions. The individual’s conscience, a word that evolved from the Latin con (with) and scientia (knowledge), is nullified by personal sublimation into the collective of the crowd. Knowledge is banished for emotion. I saw this in Yugoslavia. And this is what happened in Germany during the Weimar Republic. The Nazis, who knew whom they could trust, forbade recruitment from the Social Democrats. They understood that the bourgeoisie liberals of that political stripe lacked the desired ideological rigidity. But the Nazis embraced recruits who defected from the Communist Party. Communists easily grasped the simplistic, binary view of the world that split human relations into us and them, the good and the evil, the friend and the enemy. They made good comrades.
    • “Comradeship always sets the cultural tone at the lowest possible level, accessible to everyone,” Sebastian Haffner wrote in his book “Defying Hitler,” which more and more looks like a primer on the disintegration of the early 21st century. “It cannot tolerate discussion; in the chemical solution of comradeship, discussion immediately takes on the color of whining and grumbling. It becomes a mortal sin. Comradeship admits no thoughts, just mass feelings of the most primitive sort—these, on the other hand, are inescapable; to try and evade them is to put oneself beyond the pale.”
    • Those of us who care about a civil society, and who abhor violence, should begin to replicate what is happening in Quebec. There is not much time left. The volcano is about to erupt. I know what it looks and feels like. Yet there is a maddening futility in naming what is happening. The noise and cant of the crowd, the seduction of ideologies of hate and violence, the blindness of those who foolishly continue to place their faith in a dead political process, the sea of propaganda that confuses and entertains, the apathy of the good and the industry and dedication of the bad, conspire to drown out reason and civility. Instinct replaces thought. Toughness replaces empathy. “Authenticity” replaces rationality. And the dictates of individual conscience are surrendered to the herd.
    • There still is time to act. There still are mass movements to join. If the street protests in Quebec, the most important resistance movement in the industrialized world, spread to all of Canada and reach the United States, there remains the possibility of hope.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Was Jesus Christ a Revolutionary? Pt 4

No Complacency

But we need to stop here to be sure that no one is taking this as an endorsement of the present world order or, which is also wrong, an endorsement of all the acts of our government. It is true that Jesus had no room for utopias—except, of course, for the one that he himself was going to bring. But neither did he have room for complacency. On the contrary, he constantly called men to the most radical involvement with himself and in spiritual terms to the most revolutionary outlook possible.

In the spring in which Jesus Christ was crucified, the Roman authorities in Jerusalem had arrested a Zealot for his revolutionary activities. His name was Barabbas. The Bible tells us that the charge was for insurrection and murder, which means that Barabbas had been among the bands who were seeking to drive the Romans from Palestine by means of guerrilla tactics and political assassinations. He would have argued that life under Rome was oppressive. He was fighting the racism, the injustices, the militarism of the oppressors. Perhaps he was even a heroic, noble figure as men measure heroes. But he was arrested, and they locked him up.

Then there was Jesus, another man also charged with being a revolutionary. The Bible never suggests that they met. But if they had met, I imagine that Jesus would have agreed with much of what Barabbas was saying. He would have said, “Barabbas, your diagnosis of the system is right. The Romans boast of their justice; they are all for law and order. Herod was elected on that platform. But the administration of the law is corrupt, and they will prove it in a few hours by executing me. Moreover, you are also right about the Pharisees. They too are far more interested in preserving their own necks than they are about justice. Caiaphas himself said, ‘You know nothing at all. . . . It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.’ You are right. There is oppression. There is racism.

“Nevertheless, you are making one big mistake. Your diagnosis is correct, but your treatment is faulty. You are being revolutionary in your attitude to the Roman and Jewish authorities. But you are not being at all revolutionary with yourself. In fact, you are being complacent. What makes you think that the system you will set up will be any less corrupt than the system you are involved in overthrowing? What makes you think that you are any more moral than the Romans or that you would act with any less self-interest than Caiaphas? I am here to tell you that you are all corrupt. The Jew is as corrupt as the Roman. The poor man is as corrupt as the rich man. The black man is as corrupt as the white man. The slave is as corrupt as his master. Consequently, you can only change things by changing people.

“Barabbas, I have come to change people. And when I change people, these people are going to revolutionize society. They will not overthrow society, but wherever they can they will attempt to set the systems of this world right.”

This, of course, is where the cleansing of the temple comes in. John tells us, “When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, ‘Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!’ His disciples remembered that it is written: ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’” (John 2:13-17). Jesus did not seek to eliminate temple worship read more here. He sought to reform it. In other words, within the sphere of his influence he worked to transform what was into what it always should have been.

Such people are dangerous. They will either be loved or hated. In Christ’s day most of the world turned from this all-demanding, revolutionary type of commitment. Pilate addressed them and asked, “Whom should I release to you? Jesus or Barabbas?” They answered, “Barabbas.” Why should they have asked for Barabbas—Barabbas, the man who was going to burn their houses down and destroy the system? Tom Skinner, who tells this story in his book Words of Revolution, says: “It’s very simple. If you let Barabbas go, and he starts another disturbance or another riot, you can always call out the National Guard, the Federal troops or the Marines to put his thing down. All you have to do is push a few tanks into his neighborhood and you can squash whatever he’s up to. You can find out where he’s keeping his guns and raid his apartment. You can always stop Barabbas. But the question is: how do you stop Jesus? How do you stop a Man who has no guns, no tanks, no ammunition, but still is shaking the whole Roman empire? How do you stop a Man, who—without firing a shot—is getting revolutionary results? They figured there’s only one answer—get rid of Him. . . .

“Barabbas would never really ask to run your life. Barabbas would exploit you, but he wouldn’t ask to run your life. Jesus would ask to run your life. Jesus would ask for the right to rule over you! And that’s the problem. Men would rather be enslaved to tyranny than let Jesus rule their lives. They would rather be exploited than let Christ determine their lives. So they said, ‘Give us Barabbas.’”

The Call

It is the same today. Is Jesus Christ a revolutionary? No, he is not. He was executed wrongly on that count. And yet, like all revolutionary leaders, he demands the utmost of involvement, love, and self-sacrifice from his followers. Jesus did not offer a life of ease. Like Churchill, he offered men blood, tears, toil, and sweat. He told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt 16:24). He demanded their all! There were few to follow him.

Will you dare to follow him? It is worth reflecting on who it was who first responded to his teaching. There were establishment figures as well as Zealots—that did not seem to matter—but there were few of the soft, well-heeled figures of southern Palestine. There were not many priests, not many rulers. The ones who followed him were the vigorous, rough-speaking fishermen types from Galilee. For they had the courage, and they were not afraid to be despised for being different. Have you that courage? Jesus will not ask you either to defend the status quo or to overthrow it. But he will give a new perspective. He will make you a new man or woman, capable of radical obedience within the bounds of true Christianity.

(from Boice Expositional Commentaries, Copyright © by James Montgomery Boice, Baker Books.)

_________________

Description: C:Documents and SettingsRobert CossApplication DataMicrosoftSignaturesRob_filesimage001.gif

Was Jesus Christ a Revolutionary? Pt 3

No Utopias

The first point we need to see then is that whatever the cleansing of the temple may or may not have been about, it was definitely not an attempt to set up an earthly kingdom viewed as a utopia. That was the goal of the revolutionaries, but it was not Christ’s goal. In fact, if it was, it was most unsuccessful. A revolt did not come from it; and, what is more, the effects were even of short duration, for the other Gospels tell us that Jesus found it necessary to repeat the same cleansing again three years later near the end of his ministry (Matt 21:12,13; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45,46). Actually, if we are to take his saying about the destruction of the temple with all seriousness (Mark 13:2), it would be most accurate to say that Jesus did not attribute eternal worth to any existing institutions, even the temple and the temple worship. For in his view all belonged to the old order that would one day come under judgment and pass away.

This truth has several important conclusions that flow from it, and we should not miss them. First, it is obviously wrong for us to deify anything human. This applies to democratic institutions as well as to those of socialism or communism. Consequently, we must not make the mistake some Americans make of identifying the American way of life or the American form of government with Christianity. The American way of life may have its good aspects (as well as its bad), some of them derived from Christianity, but America is not in itself God’s kingdom.

Second, the followers of Christ are also not to take it into their hands to pronounce judgment upon their rulers. Judgment will be executed, but God alone is capable of such justice. Consequently, in speaking of the turmoil that would take place at the end times, Jesus warned his disciples to flee from Jerusalem rather than to join in insurrections (Matt 24:15-26). For us this means that Christians are not to take part in movements that are attempting to destroy the system.

The third conclusion is that, in the time prior to the final judgment, the state even in the hands of corrupt rulers will have a proper role. Jesus illustrated this most clearly in the story of the tribute money. One of the political parties of the day, the Herodians, had come to Jesus with a question meant to trap him into a fatal admission. They asked, “Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” (Matt 22:17). In other words, should a loyal Jew pay taxes? If Jesus said yes, he would be despised by a large section of the people, particularly the Zealots, for whom this was a point of patriotic zeal and religious honor. He would cease to be a leader. On the other hand, if he said no, then he could be denounced to the Roman authorities as an insurrectionist. What did he do? Jesus took a coin, and after pointing out that Caesar’s image was on one side, he replied, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (v. 21).

There were some, no doubt, who took this reply as a compromise. There were some who accused him because of it, for it was brought up against him at his trial before Pilate: “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ, a king” (Luke 23:2). Nevertheless, this was not Christ’s teaching, Jesus acknowledged the absolute authority of God. He taught that all human institutions would one day be brought under judgment and pass away. Nevertheless, there was still a proper role for the state and a proper duty toward it. One of these duties was to pay taxes.

We may apply this point by saying that withholding taxes on the grounds that much of the tax money goes for the military is not a justifiably Christian form of social protest.

(from Boice Expositional Commentaries, Copyright © by James Montgomery Boice, Baker Books.)

Next…

No Complacency

_________________

Description: C:Documents and SettingsRobert CossApplication DataMicrosoftSignaturesRob_filesimage001.gif

Was Jesus Christ a Revolutionary? Pt 2

Pros and Cons

One of the most valuable of the recent books on this subject is a highly condensed monograph by Oscar Cullmann, recently of the universities of Basel and Paris, entitled Jesus and the Revolutionaries. In it he points out the complexity of the issues.

On the one hand, notes Cullmann, there are certainly elements in Christ’s sayings that allow some radicals to see him as their ally. In Christ’s day in Israel there were men known as Zealots (from the Greek word zelos, meaning “zeal”). The Zealots were fanatical in their concern for Jewish law and in their expectation of the imminent dawning of the kingdom of God. Many carried swords or daggers that were frequently used in political killings. Hence they were also called Sicarii, which is a Latin term meaning “cut-throats” or “assassins.” In time the Zealots produced a politico-religious revolt that led to the Jewish war against the Romans beginning in  A.D. 66. As a result of this war Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman general Titus in  A.D. 70. After the fall of Jerusalem one Zealot group continued the resistance until  A.D. 74 in the mountain stronghold of Masada, which is a shrine today.

Against this background there are certain elements that have led some scholars to see Christ in this coloring. Jesus, as well as the Zealots, proclaimed that the kingdom of God was at hand. Jesus was critical of Herod, whom he called “that fox” (Luke 13:32). He was executed officially for his alleged Zealot activities (Matt 27:37). He had among his disciples at least one, Simon the Zealot, who had been a member of a Zealot group before he became Christ’s follower. Some of the disciples carried swords (Luke 22:38; John 18:10). And, most striking of all, in the passage that is the basis of our study, we are told that he cleansed the temple in Jerusalem in the midst of the very volatile days of the Passover. Many in his day, as well as in ours, would have considered this the act of an agitator.

On the other hand, as Cullmann also points out, there are elements that reveal Jesus to be the opponent of every act of political resistance and all acts of violence. To begin with, there are the sayings on behalf of nonviolence (Matt 5:39; 26:52). There are the exhortations to love our enemies (Matt 5:44). Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they [not the Zealots] will be called sons of God” (Matt 5:9). On several occasions Jesus repudiated any political elements in his divine mission, principally when he was tempted by the devil (Matt 4:8-10) and when he was tried before Pilate (John 18:36). Moreover, if some still cite the presence of a Zealot among his disciples, it must be pointed out that this is an argument that cuts both ways. For Jesus also had Matthew, a tax collector, and it is hard to find a greater representative of the establishment than that.

When we put all these texts (not just some) into the picture, we find a Jesus who goes beyond either of these two categories. And we are led to ask: What are his distinctive teachings? And, if it is true in one sense that he does call us to a revolutionary commitment, to what kind of a revolution does he call us?

(from Boice Expositional Commentaries, Copyright © by James Montgomery Boice, Baker Books.)

Next…

No Utopias

_________________

Description: Description: Description: C:Documents and SettingsRobert CossApplication DataMicrosoftSignaturesRob_filesimage001.gif

Was Jesus Christ a Revolutionary?

John 2:12-17 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”   His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

A person does not need to be an expert in current events to know that we live in an age of impending revolution. The call to revolution has been raised by communism. Radical groups forecast revolution for America. In the student world—whether it be in Los Angeles, New York, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, Havana, or Djakarta, wherever students gather—there are millions who debate the nature of the revolutionary days in which we live and there are thousands who urge revolution. “We are going to change the world” is the claim of many persons—and, indeed, they may just do it!

But the secular world does not have a monopoly on sounding the call to revolution. It has also echoed from the sanctuaries of the churches. In many of the major denominations, radical clerics have sought to align the prestige of their denominations behind particular sociological and political objectives, some of which, according to their advocates, are to be obtained by destroying the present systems of social order and government. This segment of Christendom often points to actions and teachings of Jesus that are thought to support their objectives.

Was Jesus Christ a revolutionary? That question is of crucial importance for Christians who wish guidance for their actions in our time. Was he a revolutionary? The answer to that question, as I hope to show, is “No, he was not.” He was not a revolutionary in the way most people understand that word. On the other hand, he was not a defender of the establishment either, and it is correct to say that he actually called men and women to a revolution (although a peaceful one) that was far more radical and long-term than anything that people then would in themselves have dreamed possible.

(from Boice Expositional Commentaries, Copyright © by James Montgomery Boice, Baker Books)

Next…

Pros and Cons

_________________

Description: Description: C:Documents and SettingsRobert CossApplication DataMicrosoftSignaturesRob_filesimage001.gif