To preface this: I’m also an apostate that used to be quite fervent and zealous. I agree with most of your points.
the teachings of christ as laid out in the gospel
The difficulty I see is that you’re cherry-picking which parts of the gospel to apply.
He also taught people to pray for god’s mercy and forgiveness, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done”, and according to him, the highest of commandments is to love God with all your heart and soul. It’s hard to put this in a secular light that doesn’t boil down to obeying a single highest authority. Yes, loving your neighbour is second, but it’s only second.
If we remove the religious parts, picking out merely his secular points, maybe reframe references to heaven as symbolic for “good people”, I agree with you. I’d even add the passage in Revelation about “When I was sick, you cared for me; when I was in prison, you visited me” and so on. It is an unmistakable message saying “Unconditional solidarity is divine.”
“What you did to the lowest of my brothers” is a very clear bar to set: Deporting immigrants is a sin against God so grave that piety alone can’t wash it clean. I’d read as a parallel to “If you want to know the worth of a society, see how it treats its poor.”
My contention is just that I don’t think it’s possible to cleanly separate his character from his religious nature, nor from what that religion has become. Early Christianity may have had much in common with leftists, but saying “some of his convictions were clearly socialist in nature” isn’t the same as saying “he is a socialist”.
Also, there are probably many leftists that don’t deeply engage with the topic. At a surface level, you see what religion does today, and whatever it may have been or whatever subtext it may have:
the hypocrites have won the battle for messaging and are the ones controlling the narrative.
And that narrative is awful. That alone will be enough to make the sentiment unpopular. Again, I agree with you in many points, and the rest are probably more academic in nature than relevant to the values we want to uphold. But being right (whether partially, mostly or entirely) alone doesn’t always mean you’ll be popular. The figure comes with a baggage that I don’t think can easily be removed.
Hence: To socialists, the fact that Jesus also held some socialist views doesn’t have much weight, because the figure itself has no more value than the views we already hold. It’s the Christians, to whom the figure does have weight, that could use some convincing about those values.
Very true, but I find it hypocritical to do the same.
Agreed. My issue is that it’s not all of it.
That is a subjective judgement. One I share, but not an objective and universal one.
Again, I agree that it is the most relevant book for all the reasons you mention, but selectively choosing which part of the gospel to take seriously, positing that it is more relevant to the figure being described is reductive in my opinion. Even if the person “Jesus” of Matthew may be socialist, the whole figure as understood by Christians today is more than just the person itself, shaped from the by two thousand years of historical context and political ambitions.
If I understand this right, you ascribe some manner of socialist nature to the entirety of existence? I’d question that assertion, but that becomes a philosophical question I’m not sure I’m equipped to grapple with, nor have the mental space to try right now. I’ll accept it as a premise for this line of reasoning.
The gospel of salvation and the figure of the redeemer doesn’t work without something to save from. If we understand Jesus as the spirit of forgiveness and solidarity, brought forth by a fundamental, cosmic imperative to respect each other and help each other flourish to our own benefit, the punishment for defying which is to suffer scarcity and abandonment, that would work. But then we’re essentially defining that solidarity is a key element of mutually beneficial support, which I’m fairly certain no socialist questions.
As an aside, this would also make the promise of God’s help in need circular: If we start helping each other, then and only then will that communal effect of mutual assistance actually deliver on that promise. The effect “we need to help each other, so that we each receive each other’s help” is a communal phenomenon rather than an individual “I’m faithful and generous, but I’m not getting anything in return when I need it.”
That’s not a failing or a contradiction so much as an initial condition I personally found wasn’t stated clearly enough, and particularly needs to be spelled out to a modern audience. The early Christian communes you mention did work that way, but a modern audience could use at least a reframing. It definitely tracks with socialist theory: Solidarity works if we all (or most of us) do it (and those who don’t will have to be prevented from enriching themselves, like casing the scalpers and grifters out of the temple grounds – the most based tantrum in the bible, if you ask me).
Curiously, I don’t find those to be mutually exclusive. Through the lense of class war, I find “love your neighbour” makes more sense as specifically referring to your peers in the worker class, whom he was preaching to, as opposed to the ruling class, whose fundamental lack of compassion and remorse both excludes them from the people the gospel would target and the people who would genuinely be capable of regretting their moral failings (as opposed to social blunders they’ll make a show of apologising for).
You and me both, sibling in apostasy. You and me both. This has little to do with the topic, but for me personally, abandoning that hope was the worst heartbreak I’ve known in my life, like a part of me had been ripped out.
I’m with you on all of these points. It’s something I’ve been trying to do myself. I understand (and endorse) your proposition that we should use it to guide the “sheep” away from their malevolent “shepherds” where possible.
But I think we’re losing sight of the original topic: Whether bringing up Jesus to leftists is a worthwhile endeavour. And on that, I don’t think much good will come from it. In the specific framing as a proposition to convince Christians of social values, yes, but if you claim that Jesus was a socialist to the socialists, that does sound like trying to convert them or at least redeem a figure that has been used for so much evil, and will accordingly meet resistance.
The figure, the symbol, the idol of Jesus Christ has long been more than just the person those part of the gospels describe. You’re not going to be able to separate that any more than you’re gonna convince people to stop using literally when they mean figuratively. Hence my reference to the parable of the four acres: the leftist sphere in a wider sense just isn’t a particularly fertile soil for that type of discussion.
On a closing note: Don’t give yourself over to cynicism entirely. It’s a bitter, hopeless kind of acceptance, at best, and a deceptive veil hiding possibilities at worst. I know it’s hard to hold on to light in these times, but it’s worth trying. Let your light shine, wanderer, and maybe it’ll inspire others to ignite their own.