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richardhutnik on 30 April 2012
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Kasz216 said:
richardhutnik said:
badgenome said:
richardhutnik said:

Those are your words.  To get discussion off the GOP and so on, the SUBJECT OF THIS THREAD, you bring up the Democrats.  I had later on said that the GOP does it more, because I failed to call you on distracting from the subject of the thread.  You did this.  What the Democrats does is irrelevant to the topic at hand here.  it is about Paul Ryan and the GOP.  What I am guilty of is letting you get the topic derailed.

So, back to the point raised, and you can choose to not answer it, as I would predict: Is GOP budgetary policy reflective of the wishes of Jesus in any way or not?  Do you care to answer that?  I will tone the extremes and ask you that.  There are some who will say no:

* Jesus said to Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar (and to God that which is God).  Jesus supported paying taxes for what the government did.

Uh.  Richard, that comment was in regards to someone asking Jesus if it was "legal" for Jews to pay taxes to government in relation to their faith.

All he did was suggest that one could pay taxes to a secular force and still be loyal to god.

 

And just going by one verse also, is why one gets an incomplete view.  The video I posted goes into greater detail regarding what governments can and cannot do, and then one can also ask if the Old Testament can inform, because one verse goes into God commanding the government to take care of those in need.

The entire text of render unto Caesar is here:

http://niv.scripturetext.com/mark/12.htm

If you were to bring in the entire Bible, or at least the rest of the New Testament, then one gets to Romans 13, that speaks of governments being ordained by God, and the submission of Christians to government:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+13&version=NIV

 And there is more here, on what Jesus would want to see also from a society, based upon his commands to people.  One can then question whether or not government is the best means, or if in a Democratic society (do not split hairs of "But we are a Republic" here, because it involves people electing democratically Representatives to carry out their will, not the electing of dictators who don't factor in the wishes of people) decides to do things that Jesus would approve of (like helping the poor), decides it wants its government do do welfare.

If anyone wants to get into a deep analysis of what the Bible says regarding the role of government and helping the poor, and it is in agreeable with Christian teaching, that would be fine, and I could.  I have a feeling that not too many people here are really qualified, and it iwll end up deviating from the message, and go all over.

So, those chiming in here, would you rather table discussions on this, or go into dueling scriptures and try to show that what Glenn Beck says about "social justice" is superior to what the Catholic Church says about the subject of "social justice"?

Here is the Catholic Church on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice#Catholicism