Comic Strips

The difficulty I see is that you're cherry-picking which parts of the gospel to apply

Modern christians cherry-pick the bible, and they don't even do it well or honestly. Pretty sure if we were to quantify it, most of the gospel would be socialistic in nature; also it would be the most relevant and essential parts.

I also focus mainly on the book of matthew because he's the only one who was there, a member of the "inner circle." "To you it is given to know, and understand, but to [the public] it is given to hear and not understand." (Paraphrasing).

The others had other motives. A historian, and evangelist, and an apologist. Easier to write them off, but matthew was a disciple. His goal was to record the teachings as faithfully as he could.

He also taught people to pray for god's mercy and forgiveness, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done", and according to him, the highest of commandments is to love God with all your heart and soul. It's hard to put this in a secular light that doesn't boil down to obeying a single highest authority.

If you're interpreting "god" as some personified/anthropomorphic/humanoid being, then sure that tracks. But if you interpret it rather as some panentheistic or panpsychic collective consciousness, the essence of the universe or the primordial first cause, the thing that triggered the big bang, the singularity that existed before, and the all-encompassing entirety of everything that has been since or will ever be, from the quantum level to general relativity and beyond, if there is a beyond; then suddenly "god's kingdom" doesn't seem like a stuffy catholic dystopia, but rather a socialistic utopia, "god's will" isn't that everyone becomes catholic and obeys the pope but rather has universal respect for human rights, and animal rights too for that matter, and nature and the rights of ecosystems, and that the world's institutions ensure not only this baseline of respect but also that everyone's needs are met and they're allowed to flourish. "Loving god" isn't "obeying the highest authority," but maintaining consistent and regular contact with that essence of unconditional love within yourself, your connection to the collective consciousness which unifies all, and allowing that love to inform all of your decisions.

Granted, I'm not that optimistic anymore. I'm far more cynical now. I've gone from the "love everybody unconditionally" jesus to the "toss the hypocrites and the elites into the lake of fire" jesus, and even lost faith that either of those are real or ever coming to deliver cosmic justice. But that's the angle I was approaching faith from, for quite some time before finally giving up on it.

I'd even add the passage in Revelation about "When I was sick, you cared for me; when I was in prison, you visited me" and so on. It is an unmistakable message saying "Unconditional solidarity is divine."

"What you did to the lowest of my brothers" is a very clear bar to set: Deporting immigrants is a sin against God so grave that piety alone can't wash it clean. I'd read as a parallel to "If you want to know the worth of a society, see how it treats its poor."

Yeah, I pretty much agree with that.

And that narrative is awful. That alone will be enough to make the sentiment unpopular.

All the more reason to subvert that narrative, in my opinion. Especially when you see how much sway it holds, in the US for instance. Even religious black and hispanic people votes for the racist xenophobe because he was using a veneer of their religion to manipulate them. Why not point out to those people that the actual guy their religion is based on was really a leftist, as demonstrated by his words and deeds?

Hence: To socialists, the fact that Jesus also held some socialist views doesn't have much weight, because the figure itself has no more value than the views we already hold.

I'm not saying that socialists should become christian or adopt christian values. But reading the new testament (not just Matthew, but Acts as well) through a leftist lens and reinterpreting it might prove more effective at changing the narrative than simply burning bibles (figuratively or literally). I'm not expecting a bunch of brainwashed christians to do that scholarship; if I tried convincing them to, they would just find new reasons to reaffirm their own biases. Everything would backfire when they simply reinterpret "gods enemies" as whoever they hate, rather than the powerul, hateful people that they themselves are...

Instead of telling religious people that their entire lives have been based on a lie and that they need to abandon their beliefs (which it's been ingrained in them that they'll be tempted to do by the devil as a test of their faith, and will really only make them dig their heels in), it could be more effective to help them examine their beliefs from a different angle so that they see that jesus wasn't telling them to persecute the marginalized and the oppressed, but to help them, and to even go so far as to give up their own privileges and suffer with the disenfranchised. Is that not the meaning of "bear your cross and follow me"?

Also, the early church can be an interesting case study. If you limit your study of communism to the nineteenth century forward, you'll be hard-pressed to find examples of successful communes. But study some of the earliest monasteries, and you'll find examples that have withstood the tests of time. The best part is, that many of these monastic communities have avoided the politics that are more common among the church leadership structures in population centers. Monastic tradition tends to focus more on the "love, forgiveness, community, and mutual aid" parts of their religion rather than the "power, obedience, conversion, and hierarchy" parts.

Those are just some of my thoughts. I'm not trying to say socialists should become christians, but they're leaving an entire theater of messaging on the table for other people to sweep up, and I do believe it can be wielded far more effectively than by simply trying to bury it.

I've got them lined up in my calvary crosshairs!