Jesus For President: I was just wondering about how popular Jesus would be in the climate of today's elections. Here are a few quick thoughts I've had. I welcome your comments - which may get edited since spam does accumulate..
- Humility - while some of our scriptures indicate more openly that he is the Son of God, others have him referring to himself as the Son of Man. or “Human One”. Even instructing his disciples (when they figure out his references) to keep quiet and not tell anyone. I think ‘Son of God’ might get him more votes.
- Commander in Chief - would be a problem. He never tried to ‘take anyone’s swords away’. He did stop his disciples from using them at the time of his arrest so it is doubtful that he would have sent troops to war. So he’d lose the hawk vote, and also lose the ‘strong defense’ vote.
- War on Poverty - I do think he'd resurrect LBJ’s war on poverty and commit significant resources to eliminating poverty and hunger. Like “Bread for the World” says, we have the resources to end hunger RIGHT NOW, all we have to do is allocate them better. Jesus would do that. (If congress didn’t stop him.)
- Security - I do think Jesus would be for strong encryption. He spoke in parables that we are STILL trying to understand, so I think he would have very strong encryption to all communications. But he might freely share the encrypted messages and let the world try to understand. This would certainly take care of leaks and hacking…
- Appearance - We don’t know about how he would dress in today’s world. Certainly the sandals and robe would be an interesting look over pants. Being an middle-easterner, he might be used to head-covering, although the images created in the last century show long flowing hair. His middle-eastern origin and distinctly Jewish features might divide the vote along ethnic lines. (Of course his birth certificate would prevent his running. But this is all hypothetical anyway.)
- Demeanor - We also don’t know if he smiled enough, or too much, or had straight white teeth. And we all know how important are these finite details of presidential demeanor.
- Life - Although he is pro-life, his definition of how to stand up for life is a bit different that we are used to hearing in 2016. And he seemed willing to let people act in private according to their conscience- he didn’t pick up the first or last stone… I’m not sure the “religious right’ would vote for him at all.
- Pardon - Certainly his proclivity for forgiveness would turn off the ‘law and order’ vote.
- Immigration - He liked to freely move between regions and lifted up the immigrants and social outcasts of his day, so we have to think open borders would be part of his platform.
No PAC funding -
But we know Jesus could never be elected. Even without all the above lost votes, his constant barrage against those with money and great wealth would eliminate any donations from business, wealthy, PACS and the like. Without such funding, how would he secure any but his own vote.
And whether or not Jesus would vote??? Well that’s another essay.
