Jesus and the 47%

And he gathered his disciples together and said, "I say unto you - well 47% of you anyway - that you have grown dependent on a handout. Verily, I say unto you, as you treat the least of these (except for the free-loading 47% - you know who you are) so do you do unto me. And those among you who are outcast, downtrodden, without taxable income - you are now uninterested in caring for yourself. And those who have much will have more as long they create jobs which they do not need to do until a Republican is president. And if you are struck on the cheek by an enemy, turn the other cheek, unless that enemy is a member of the 47%. Oh, wicked 47%ers, what profit you if you win a free meal but lose your potential for corporate personhood?

Jesus - at least the Jesus who comes to us through the oral tradition that was later written down, edited, rewritten in parts (there is no other Jesus) - was obviously speaking like someone who felt, as he put it, that the Kingdom of Heaven was nigh. His movement was essentially an apocalyptic one, predicting an end of the world as they knew it before some of his followers had tasted death, as he put it, meaning in their life times. Therefore, if your time horizon is contracted, your priorities change. You behave differently if you believe the ship is about to sink than if it will reach the port safely (and your kids' college bills are there waiting to be paid). Give everything away and get ready was essentially his message. Live as the birds in the field live, he said in Matthew, who do not (according to belief at that time anyway) gather food for the future but have faith they can find sufficient food each day. One of the essential difficulties with Christianity is that this short-term model is not viable long-term economically if taken literally, so a balance must be found, not just in my humble opinion, but in that of most of those who have identified themselves as Christians in the centuries that past after all his followers tasted death but the world was very much its old bloody, labor-demanding, investment-rewarding self.
Mitt Romney's solution to this problem seems essentially ignore it, pretending Jesus never said these things, or if he did, that he was just kidding. Hoard, invest, don't be bothered helping the poor who are, he tells us in a moment of candor, simply looking for a hand-out and will only be enabled by your helping them.
But Jesus did say these things and most of what he said had to do with such a radical view of wealth redistribution and personal material wealth (eschew it in favor of spiritual wealth) that he would never have been invited on Fox and Friends had it existed, Glenn Beck would have warned his listeners (viewers?) not to listen to his message, and O'Reilly would have devoted an entire season to bashing the War on Wealth launched by this long-haired hippie-looking Jewish teacher spreading a subversive message of class warfare.