“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have. Do not even the tax collectors do the same. And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Mat 5:38-48)

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Not if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For your heavenly Father knows that you need these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient is the day for its own trouble.” (Mat 6:25-34)

Sorry for the long gap in between posts, to the few people who read this (I know you’re out there…somewhere)! I have been very busy with school and raising this crazy little kid I call my son (I am pretty positive that he switched with my real son at some point). I just watched a tremendous movie called Hellbound which examines Universalism. When I am done with my examination of Jesus, I will be attempting to tackle this question. For now I will say that I am a Universalist, that is to say, I believe all people will eventually be reconciled to God, regardless of their belief system currently. But this post is devoted to that peculiar character Jesus. First let me say that when I read about him, he never ceases to surprise me. I mean, I read him and I get him figured out and he goes and does something nuts, like hanging out with people with leprosy (how many of us would that, right). So Jesus is a guy that is very bizarre, even more so in his own time and space, partly because he was Jewish but didn’t obey some Jewish laws and traditions, but also because this was a guy who hung out with some odd people and cared little for any particular form of government or control, save one: God.

So over my next four posts, I want to make the case Jesus was demonstrating anarchism. He even at one point declares himself an anarchist! Okay, I made that part up. But his tradition matches that of anarchism, and I will examine four pieces of Jesus’s preaching to show how. I have selected one passage from each gospel. There are other passages, but I believe these four to demonstrate Jesus’s political bent towards anarchism most successfully, and I also wanted to save some for the book I am writing. A writer never gives away all the details in the first act. So let’s dive in to the gospels!

It’s approximately 30 AD, in an area around Galilee, in the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire. The Romans were one of a long list of rulers who had ruled over the area, dating all the way back to the Babylonians. It had been a long time since Israel ruled the area. Because the province was so far from the Roman epicenter, it was neglected; there were a lot of needy people not being taken care of by the empire. Further exasperating matters was that the people of the province weren’t considered citizens, compounding their problems. They were ruled by Herod Antipas, who was only nominally Jewish. Herod, like his father before him, was a terrible king. Yet the ruling class of the Jewish people tended to favor him because for one, what choice did they have? But also, he gave them outlets to access power. Recently, a young man had emerged in the area preaching something about this so-called Kingdom of Heaven. Now, there were plenty of magicians around, so when people heard rumors that he was healing the sick and raising the dead, there was skepticism. But lately, other rumors were circulating. This man was forgiving sins. The Hebrew people were shocked at this, because who else but God forgave sins? So this man had to be a liar right? Well, perhaps, people thought, but we had better hear him for ourselves, just to be safe. So one day, people came around to listen to this man, Yeshua, and he saw that he had accrued a great following. Climbing to the top of a hill, he proclaimed a great many things. Among those things, he proclaimed the passages quoted above. People were of course shocked; this man Yeshua was declaring new laws; the old Jewish laws for him weren’t good enough or clear enough. Yet he also came to fulfill the law, so he claimed. Of course, he was from Galilee, and everyone knew that this place never produces anything good. Yet there was something about what he said that seemed so right.

The above passage is from Jesus’s famous Sermon on the Mount. It is widely recognized by Christian anarchists to be the key teaching by Jesus besides salvation. Jesus never outright proclaimed political truths. He was cleverer than that. What Jesus did say though, were laws that, if obeyed, would cause people to come into conflict with the authorities. For example, Jesus proclaimed that people must love their enemies. This inevitably meant that Christians began to refuse serving in the Roman legions. For this, they faced martyrdom. But the power of the message was so strong, that at times, when their comrades in the legions were ordered to execute them via beheading, their comrades refused as well, and converted on the spot. This was the power of Jesus’s message. Now, the Christian church often has allied itself with power, and wants us all to believe that Jesus’s words meant to apply to the spiritual realm, not necessarily to political alliance and power and governance. Yet, I have to ask, what good is a message that his no meaning in how we interact with power? Jesus’s message gains new power and momentum if we believe it to be calling us to a way of life so different from the hierarchal power structures we have now. It is easier to say, don’t rock the boat. But to do so, it is to offend the founders of our faith. It is to offend the people who saw Jesus in the flesh. It is to offend Jesus himself. For although Jesus never rebelled or led a revolt against Rome, nor did he simply obey. His obedience came with a price: the proclamation of God’s will. Jesus obeyed so he might die a martyr, the greatest martyr of all.

Why would Jesus say to his listeners, forgive this who treat you badly, love those who hate you, if someone sues you, give them your cloak as well, unless he meant it to apply here and now? Now one could certainly say, you know, maybe this applies to our daily interactions, but not to the relationship between people and government, or with employees and their bosses. Yet I have to ask, if we obey our kings, our presidents, our CEOs, what is the end result? In an interview shortly after 9/11, Jerry Falwell said that we should “blow them all away, in the name of God.” This is what we get when we obey power. Falwell clearly did not forgive his enemies or love them. This is to say, when we don’t apply our laws of love to our power structures, we allow them to use God to justify insane actions, like bombing Iraqi civilians, or using the nuclear bomb. We must remember that our leaders in America, at least, proclaim to be Christian. Yet they also have authorized strikes executing our enemies. How can our leaders not see the discord between killing Osama Bin Laden and Jesus saying “love your enemies”? If we exclude our leadership and our governance, indeed our very power structures, from this law, we ruin the law itself.

One of the main themes of anarchism is usually pacifism. I say usually because there are anarchists who advocate violence. But most credible anarchists do not. In his sermon on the mount, Jesus is talking about loving our enemies, and when we are struck, to turn the other cheek. He is calling for pacifism, one of the chief tenets of anarchism. So here, we Jesus advocating for pacifism and loving and forgiving our enemies. Now, these two ideas are not at odds with government or capitalism as such. Jesus never proclaimed himself to be an anarchist, and capitalism did not yet exist. The problem though, is that every form of government, and every form of capitalism, has shown that they stand at the opposite end of the spectrum from Jesus’s teachings. In other words, in obeying our government or our current economic system, we have to leave behind Jesus’s teachings. They simply aren’t compatible.

Jesus points out further that the sun and rain exist for all, just and unjust. This is to say, God doesn’t discriminate between people. This is in agreement with Jesus’s parables on say, the wheat and the chaff, or the goats and the sheep. God does not recognize national boundaries. Does anyone really believe God has picked America, for example, to be an example for God’s will? After reading the passage from the Sermon on the Mount, how can we believe that? If Jesus says, do good to your enemies, and we return to slaughter them, is that not at odds with God’s will? Jesus specifically tells us that the old law of “an eye for an eye” isn’t to be followed as such. But that’s exactly what we do.

One other note before I end this post. At the end, Jesus says “therefore you shall be perfect, as God your Father in heaven is perfect.” Many Christians believe this to mean simply, flawless. Yet there is another more subtle meaning behind the word that Israelites would have thought of when hearing Jesus says this. Perfect also means complete or absolute. Jesus isn’t calling us to be flawless; Jesus is calling us to be absolute. In the context of his Sermon the Mount, Jesus is calling people to be absolute and complete in their love for each other. In other words, Jesus is saying everything people do should be out of love; and not just any love, but studying the sermon, Jesus is talking about agape. This kind of love, a self-sacrificial love, is the kind of love Jesus displayed for humanity to witness. It is the idea that we love one another so absolutely that we sacrifice all for each other. Ladies and gentlemen, this idea of communal sacrifice for the sake of one another and our love for each other is an anarchist concept. Again, Jesus is not proclaiming himself an anarchist. But what I wish to say here is to insist that there is not one piece of the Sermon on the Mount that anarchists can find that would be at odds with our political views. Nothing Jesus says, would we disagree with, most likely. We may of course find pockets of people who disagree on this or that, but the anarchist community by and large, I believe would agree with everything Jesus says in his Sermon on the Mount.

In Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, we see a lot of laws proclaimed. But chief among them is forgiveness, pacifism, and love. Not just for some, but for all. This communal concept is prevalent in all Jesus’s teachings. His ideas of forgiveness, pacifism, and self-sacrificial love are some of the main tenets of anarchism. So although Jesus never proclaims a political stance in black and white, it is clear that his beliefs at the time, and even today, were at odds with everything the government of man usually stands for. Which leaves room for just one idea: anarchism.