| I had to bookmark that one...reminds me of a joke I once read about a church interviewing and rejecting Biblical figures for an important position in the leadership. Timothy was too young, Peter too hot-tempered, John The Baptist too radical, etc.. The man they eventually selected was not Jesus, but...
...wait for it!!!...
...Judas Iscariot, one of the points in his favor being that he showed evidence of good money management (as I recall, he was responsible for handling financial transactions on behalf of the apostles)!
On a more serious note...it never ceases to amaze me how often I have to get out the ol' clue-by-four and remind people that Jesus was anything but a spokesperson for the status quo. If it hadn't been for His willingness to tolerate people that everyone else despised and ostracized, Matthew and Mary Magdalene would most likely have remained nothing more than an obscure tax collector and a forgotten prostitute (and there's even some question among Bible historians about whether she was one or not, since this is apparently never actually specifically stated anywhere). For his time and society, Jesus was quite a social revolutionary and counterculturalist. I remember having a conversation with my father about this, and he recalled one of his college professors posing the idea that Jesus was probably (if anything) a socialist in the political spectrum! Ye flipping gods...I can only imagine how that would go over with the GOP!!! |
