Was Christ a communist?

So you keep suggesting, but with little reference to what the message actually was.In "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs", Jesus emphasized the from side of the equation - the responsibility to give, not the right to take, or even to have. His message was not to the lumpenproletariat, it was to the bourgeoisie.

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Maybe it should be mentioned too that that responsibility isn't just financial. Everybody has something to give: time, a sympathetic ear...."Suffer the little children to come unto me" doesn't involve money.

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I guess it didn't resonate with me until I thought of it myself.

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Abbrevs like that play havoc with my dyslexia. (I also have a problem with "young-earth cartoonists".) That might have something to do with the fact that He was in the middle of a very powerful empire. Talking politics directly would have been about as sensible as holding a Ku Klux Klan rally on the White House lawn.You and I seem to be on the same page regarding Jesus' message: to individuals rather than to societies. Maybe He expected goodness to have a trickle-up effect.But that doesn't absolve us of the responsibility to be "good" in the politics that we do involve ourselves in. And conservatism.The ideal is practical, not doctrinaire.
Unfortunately, too many Christians see it the other way around.

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Apparently your major malfunction is failure to read the thread.I have been saying all along that Jesus was not a communist.

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There is a reason why we have a different word, "communard" - to distinguish "communalism" form communism.And Jesus wasn't necessarily a communalist either. Every group of guys who pool their gas money for a road trip is not necessarily a commune. You'd have to come up with something to indicate that He practised communalism - not just sharing. He recommended "sell what you have and give to the poor" to one rich man - who didn't follow.Dig a hole and plant those goalposts. This is getting embarassing.-------------ABE: I have been informed that "one" is an underestimate.
See Message 101 below.Edited by Ringo, : Calculator malfunction - can't count past "one".

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Fair enough. I stand corrcted. Do you think there's any indication that Jesus advocated communal use of resources as opposed to just sharing? My impression is that the early Christians who practised "communism" were embellishing somewhat on His words.

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Actually, I think it was the Americans who invented the modern concept of "private property".For most of human history, the rich have owned all the private property and the poor have owned nothing. That's the situation that Jesus was trying to alleviate and that Marx was trying to overthrow.It wasn't until the American Dream was dreamt that the concept of everybody having private property became widespread. In a sense, the American ideal of every-man-a-capitalist is more communist than "Communism".

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I just meant that the American Dream has a levelling quality to it - "from each according to his abilities to each according to his need" in terms of oppurtunity if not outcome. Everybody has the oppurtunity to achieve, regardless of his starting place.(To paraphrase Homer Simpson: If you're going to pick up on every stupid thing I say, I guess I'll just have to stop saying stupid things." )

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