Was Christ a communist?

Since this is Bible Study:

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Mat 8:20 And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

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Jesus lived in poverty and advocated an austere lifestyle. I agree that that doesn't necessarily make Him a communist.I think the real question is: Was Jesus' message, "Sell what you have and give to the poor," meant to be universal? If everybody sells what they have, who do they sell it to?It seems to me that He wasn't saying, "Don't be rich." He was saying, "Don't be too rich."
He was advocating redistribution of wealth, not equality of wealth.

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That's what I'm saying. If all of the Bill Gates types all lived in shacks, there wouldn't be any work building mansions. The carpenters would starve. It's up to each of us to decide how much of our wealth we keep and how much we pass on. Jesus' message was more about not being attached to material wealth than about not having any.

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I hesitate to use the modern terminology. I think Jesus would have agreed with, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." But He would have emphasized that the distribution was up to individual consciences. Once again, the terminology is a stumbling block. I could say that I'm a democrat and a republican, but that would confuse our American readers. Similarly, the terms "communist" and "socialist" carry too much baggage."Was Christ a communist?" makes a good provocative title, but I don't think the debate will go anywhere if we dwell too much on the words.

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What "ultimately" drives communism to its failure, in history, is a rival government/society/culture spending billions and billions in a concerted effort to make it fail. The atrocities inflicted on communist experiments are in no way an argument against Jesus being a communist.

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I could almost agree with that. I shouldn't have two pairs of shoes as long as somebody else has none. But there's a practical side to it.Instead of buying a second pair of shoes, I could give the money to a shoeless man. But how do I know he would spend the money on shoes instead of booze? I could buy a new pair and give him my old pair, but how do I know he wouldn't sell them to buy booze?The long and short of it is that his shoelessness depends on himself as well as on me. I can't force anybody to have shoes.That's why the emphasis should be on individual choices rather than collective.

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You have given examples from the Bible and from history of groups that believed they were following Jesus' teachings. You might just as well use the existence of snake-handlers as evidence that Jesus taught snake-handling.You need to show what Jesus taught, not what people thought He taught.I have already suggested that Jesus' instruction to "sell what you have" was not universal. I'll ask again: Who would they sell to?

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Which is why I say the "communistic" message was not intended to be universal. Jesus came for the whole world, didn't He? He wanted His movement to catch on in a big way, didn't He?But "sell what you have and give to the poor" requires three roles: the seller, the buyer and the recipient of charity. The rich should reduce their material goods in favour of the poor, but there's the third party, the buyer, who doesn't fit into the communist equation.Jesus also said:

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Mar 14:7 For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.

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He recognized the different roles. Where did He say He wanted to do away with them? There's no doubt that Christianity has been co-opted in many un-Christlike directions. So far, you haven't shown that communism is a Christlike direction.

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Umm... it doesn't. That's what I've been trying to say. If Jesus had been advocating communism, He would have left no place for the buyer.

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That's not necessarily what it says though.

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Mar 10:25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

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It could just mean that "you can't take it with you" - i.e. when we do enter heaven, we all have the same material goods: none. You're presupposing your own conclusion. All Jesus said was that He didn't expect poverty to end. You're the one who's assuming that Christianity was intended to end poverty. What if the "Christian communists" are wrong? He might have called them thieves because they were taking too much profit, not necessarily because they were taking a profit.

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Well, this is Bible Study. The idea is to look at the words and figure out what they probably mean in context.So far, it appears that Jesus might have had certain ideals in common with communism, but it's quite a stretch to conclude that He was a communist. Well, that's not a "fact". You'd do well to chose your words more carefully. And no, I'm not allowing for that. If you're going to turn this into just another Christian-bashing thread, you've been wasting my time. Do your homework and come back when you have something to back up your wild speculations.

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It doesn't have to "become" that. It already is that.A "rich man" is a man who has riches. If/when he enters heaven, he can't take his riches with him. Inside the pearly gates, he's no longer a "rich man", he's just a man. The verse in no way implies that the man can't get into heaven.Consider the parable:

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Luk 16:22 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;
Luk 16:23 And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

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By all accounts, Abraham was a rich man on earth and he made it to heaven.That's why you have to consider the whole picture. You can't base an interpretation on one or two quote-mines. I didn't say that (some) Christians don't deserve to be bashed, or even that Christian-bashing is a bad thing. I said that it doesn't belong in this thread. It looks like a weak fallback position since the wheels came off your thesis.

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That's just the obvious part of "you can't take it with you". The main point is that people are judged in heaven by completely different standards than on earth. On earth, the rich man has all the status and privileges. In heaven, if there is such a thing as status and priviledge, it's based on what you did on earth, not what you had.That distinction is difficult for the rich to grasp. On so many levels, literalism just doesn't work. I wouldn't call Abraham a prophet. He was just a man who followed God and God rewarded him, materially on earth and eternally in heaven.And I don't see anywhere where Jesus advocated special status for prophets, etc. Jesus was just acknowledging that humans can never eliminate human suffering. It's all part of that "free will" thing. As I mentioned earlier, you can't force a man to have shoes."To each according to his needs" is simplistic. You can give a man all he "needs" to feed, clothe and house his family. But you can't guarantee that he will distribute the wealth evenly. The child who is a basketball star might get all the new shoes and the maladroits go barefoot.That's a big part of why communism doesn't work on a large scale: micromanaging the redistribution usually requires a police state.

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I didn't say that "none" of it needs to be taken literally.The imagery of a camel going through the eye of a needle is a pretty good clue that the passage is not meant to be taken literally - or even seriously. It's a pretty obvious example of hyperbole.On the other hand, when Jesus told the rich man to sell all he had and give to the poor, I don't see any reason to think He didn't mean it literally. But He applied it to that one person, not necessarily to all.When you read anything, you have to take it literately, not literally. That would be a different topic (and I would argue "no".)

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I've heard that too. The idea that you'd have to unload the camel to get through reinforces the idea that "you can't take it with you".Whether it was a universal joke or an obscure reference, the interpretation is the same.

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