Assuming you believe that Jesus was ever around.

"There's no prophet, er, ... profit in the latter interpretation."

They will tell you, as they have told me, that Jesus was referring to voluntary efforts on the part of private individuals, not the government feeding the poor by requiring everyone else to pay taxes.

He was outraged that I would attempt to read all that into a simple statement about obeying the laws about paying taxes. At some point, you just have to walk away.

There's no ignorance like willful ignorance.

"All the nations will be gathered before Him; and and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. (Matthew 25:32-33)"

If the religious right take the bible literally than Nation refers to entire countries of people NOT individuals.

So feeding the poor by requiring every member of the nation to pay taxes then using those same taxes to feed the poor is exactly what Jesus was talking about. Unless of course you want your nation to be a goat, Or Not inherit the kingdom.


The rest of the passage reads: 34 “Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

35 ‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in;

36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’

Seems Jesus was very explicit about how nations should act.

Used to be more commonly used even when I was a kid.

The idea of one nation fitting within one state was rather a novel one from the 1800s. It led to things like the Bulgarian liberation movement to expel the nasty Ottoman imperialists and colonialists. And justified the Ottoman Empire's genocide against Armenians and Greeks, both of whom pre-dated the Turks' arrival in Asia Minor by a thousand years or more. (We hear about the Armenians, not so much about the Anatolian Greeks.)

It also led to what happened in Germany, Italy, and France--the assimilation of various peoples (more or less) to a single "ethnicity". Ultimately it led to nationalism, which was confusing ethnicity and state. It's one thing to be proud of being a citizen of a country; it's another to confuse ethnic pride with that country's military.

Ultimately it also led to Israel, since not only should every state have one nation but every nation should have its own state.

Christ using the idea of "nation-state" is almost as anachronistic as Jesus on a dino.

No matter the evolution of the word Nation, a literal interpretation requires a well, literal interpretation. If the religious right believe the earth and it's animals all came to be in 7 days, then nation means nation.

Even by your definition of the word, nation refers to a GROUP of people, not individuals. So a group of people should feed the hungry, cloth the naked and tend to the poor. Which is NOT a contradiction to a country doing the same with taxes. Yet the religious right wants you to believe that Jesus wants only individuals to take care of the least among us, and to do so with taxes, as a nation, a nation-state or country somehow does not fit into Jesus's teachings.

See the religious right wants you to believe that Jesus preached "free" trade or neoliberal economics.

another one I do ask is: "What wiggle room is there in 'thou shalt not kill' in relation to war, the death penalty.