Jesus - Effeminate Liberal or Right Wing Republican?

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Jesus - Effeminate Liberal or Right Wing Republican?

In recent years, a popular slogan in the Christian world has been "WWJD?" or "What Would Jesus Do?" This poses a deep, probing question to all believers as we live to daily pattern our lives after the example of the Master. In every situation, Jesus always reflected His Father's perfect wisdom, mercy and justice. In this election year, we have an opportunity to look at this from some unique angles. A new question could be posed: "HWJV?" or "How Would Jesus Vote?"

In today's world, it is very easy to allow our perception of Jesus to be skewed by our ideology, attempting to define Him in light of our preconceived views. As a Christian whose political views generally lean to the conservative side, I still must recognize that both conservativism and liberalism are man-made philosophies, both having their respective limitations in regards to biblical truth. As Christian sociologist Tony Campolo astutely points out:

Republicans may dress Jesus in a Brooks Brothers suit while Democrats put Him in the denim work clothes of union workers...There is no better way for a political party to establish the legitimacy of its political point of view than to declare that Jesus is one of its members. This remaking of Jesus is not just some kind of harmless campaign technique...The Bible calls it idolatry! (see Romans 1:22-23, 25) (1)

I sincerely hope my intentions in writing this message will not be misunderstood. Jesus was not a political figure, and I am not attempting to present Him in that manner. Nonetheless, the Bible does tell us that civil government is to be an instrument of God in bringing order to society (see Romans 13), and in order for it to accomplish this, it is important that it be modeled after the message and example of Jesus.

Obviously, the political climate in which Jesus lived was vastly different from our own. To apply modern labels such as "conservative" or "liberal" to a person who lived on earth 2000 years ago is spurious to say the least. In fact, there were numerous political parties and factions in Jesus' day, yet there is no evidence that He ever joined any of them.

Modern Christianity is sometimes criticized for attempting to tie the Gospel to a right wing political ideology. Unfortunately, some of this criticism is justifiable. As we will see, having a consistently Biblical world view will not always fit neatly into "left wing" or "right wing" categories.

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