Christ was not a Communist.....but He wasn't a Libertarian Capitalist either

This is in response to http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2013/07/christ-was-not-a-communist/

"Yet Jesus focused primarily on the soul over the senses of men. Such verses support socialism only if you divorce Scripture from its actual meaning. If reading Jesus’ teachings through purely naturalistic or materialist lenses, it’s plausible to support welfare, but even then you must be a “cafeteria” Christian ignoring many more sections that argue fervently against government expansion."

er, you cannot divorce the spiritual from the physical. Doing so is gnosticism,

and at the root of the docetist heresy (that Jesus only seemed to have a 

physical body but didn't really). 

you cannot reform the physical, absent fear, without reforming the spiritual.

and you cannot divorce the two. If you do, you have what is called hypocrisy.

That drew some of the sharpest remarks from Jesus (against the Pharisees).

Now, communism is hardly biblical. But neither are the capitalist values of

greed, glory, ambition, and so forth.

It is not possible to put The Bible squarely in any camp outside of moral 

issues. Communism in the mean time is a kind of heresy in that it, like 

fascism and even libertarianism and extremist monarchism all propose to

create heaven on earth by human means.

There are precedents for a certain amount of govt. intervention and

controls and the charity of the OT was MANDATORY, the third year 

tithe went to the poor, the edges of croplands were not to be harvested

but left for the poor, ditto going over one's fruit trees more than once,

and the tither on the third year was required to make an accounting to

the elders and public to be sure he had in fact done this. 

Punishment to enforce? risk of loss of God's protection and famine, 

disease and foreign invasion as a result.

NT the same more generalized COMMAND, not voluntary, but should come

from compassion that we get from God (IF we are IN FACT spending time

with Him) and not just fear. But if one must fear in order to act right? 

"fear not men who can only kill the body but do nothing more, but rather

fear Him who can destroy body and soul in hell." The soul is immortal, 

but here destruction would relate to the pragmatic lack of freedom, 

the presence of torment. (Kalomiros' nonsense is totally at odd with 

the clear words of Scripture, and even if punishment and blessedness

are not geographically distinct, but only different experiences of God's

presence, you are back to square one, do you face pain or pleasure?

your actions are the result of your spiritual condition, and if the latter

means you find God's presence a torment, then all the piety in the 

world with a personal out of church services life that is at odds with

this means your spirit is still incompatible with God! Exactly this 

condition is warned of by St. Theophan the Recluse and other Holy

Fathers.)

Now, another question is, just what DOES help the poor? Sure, there

is an issue of proper use of funds by govt. but the same is true of

private charitable organizations. Discernment is necessary. But if

everyone on food stamps or SSI suddenly had to depend on churches

and Salvation Army, you can count on it those systems would go 

bankrupt. 

Meanwhile, the real estate agent industry helps drive up property

prices, with their cut of every deal, which in turn is what taxes are

based on, which in turn is what real estate values are heavily 

dependent on, aside from "the market." (and markets can be rigged,

and often are. And the real problem when you look closely, is not 

so much big govt., as big business that OWNS the govt. and runs it.)

This in turn drives up rental prices incl. to stores, which drives up

prices of goods and increases demand for higher wages. As someone

once put it, real estate is a hidden driver in inflation (of prices).

Another problem is the repeal of the parts of Glass-Steagall which 

prevented the derivatives market we have now, which is precisely

the part of the market that caused the disasters in the past 20

years.

Justina