They are 10 reasons why people think he was the first actual socialist of course before the birth of the dogma these are the 10 reason: The funny thing is, I'm not a Christian. 1. Jesus owned nothing. 2. Jesus argued for the dissolution of the family and the establishment of communes. 3. Jesus loved all people regardless of ethnicity or class. 4. Jesus revolted against the imperial government, established religion and finance capitalism (usury). 5. Jesus taught that we should act as one body, one blood. 6. Jesus taught that his kingdom (ie nation state) is in the heart and not below the feet. 7. Jesus taught that we should fight for Justice and 'turn the other cheek' to petty morality. 8. Jesus was a laborer and a teacher. 9. Jesus practiced healing and forgiveness. 10. Jesus taught that you can't be an imperialist and a disciple at the same time.
But wait This depends on what one means by “socialism”. And there are huge difficulties in trying to force the 1st-century Jew, Yoshua Ben Yosef, into a 21st-century political mould. Universal suffrage and human rights were undreamt-of in his age; even Greek democracy was city-based and excluded slaves and women.
But by focusing on the Gospel narrative, stripped of its theological accretions, one can get a sense of where Jesus might stand on today’s political spectrum.
For all their inconsistencies, interpolations and reliance on hearsay, the Gospels paint a compelling picture of the man and his conception of how people should treat each other.
He would definitely be on the left, but equally definitely, would not be a socialist of the revolutionary or even activist type. He saw no role for the secular state in redistributing wealth and power -- the heart of the socialist platform. He could perhaps be described as a utopian liberal.
Traditionally, Jesus is betrayed by the Zealot Judas because he refuses to lead a struggle against the Roman occupiers -- and his foxy rejoinder on the payment of Roman taxes, “Render unto Caesar … ” tends to support this.
“The first shall be last ... ”, “the meek shall inherit ... ”, Lazarus and the rich man and many other Gospel passages do seem to suggest imminent revolutionary upheaval.
But Jesus is clearly not predicting the reversal of power hierarchies in this world, nor urging the poor and downtrodden to overturn them. Instead, they are told to love their enemies and offer the other cheek -- the watchword is patient submission, not revolt.
It is in the impending Kingdom of Heaven that the poor will have their reward. Jesus was convinced that he was ushering the “great and terrible day of the Lord” prophesied in Judaic scriptures, which would turn the world upside down.
Indeed, his confident prediction that his disciples would see the coming of the Kingdom in their own lifetimes rather puts paid to the doctrine of his “divine nature” (which he never claimed). The end did not come then and has not come since, despite the incessant forecasts and timetable revisions of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Wrote theologian JC Duncan in 1870: “Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud; or he himself was deluded; or he was divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma.”
The deferment of social justice to the Kingdom prompted Marx’s “opium of the masses” jibe. It also underpins Nietzsche’s idea of Christianity as a “slave ethic”, which, by sanctifying their status and promising other-worldly redress, took the underclasses of the Roman empire by storm.
Yet, at the same time, Christ’s basic ethical perspective -- his sense of who will enter the Kingdom -- has been a taproot of modern, mass-based democracy and the democratic left-wing perspective.
The latter implies a belief in the unity of the human species and in people as fundamentally good, redeemable and cooperative by nature. Among the corollaries are sympathy for the underdog, hostility to insolent power and wealth, and anti-militarism.
All are central motifs of Christ’s message, which appears as the last gasp of the Judaic prophetic tradition (“You levy taxes on the poor [and] persecute the guiltless,” thunders Amos). In Luke, he sets the tone in his first public utterance: good news for the poor, the release of prisoners, freeing “the broken victims”. Peacemaking, justice and mercy are extolled. Repeatedly, “his heart goes out” to the hungry crowds; he protects an adulteress from stoning; he asks a Samaritan “untouchable” for a drink.
