“Jesus Was A Commie” Says Movie Director Matthew Modine By Gary DeMar

 

 

“Jesus Was a Commie” Says Movie Director Matthew Modine by Gary DeMar over at Godfather Politics

 

“I think that you could define [Jesus] as a Utopian communist, where people would work together to solve our problems,” Modine told The Christian Post. I’m all for working together to solve our problems. But that’s not

Communism. Communism is forcing people to work for the goals of the State, and the State is a bunch of elites who claim they know what’s best for all of us. In the end, it’s these leaders who get the utopian spoils while the masses suffer.

 

Modine offers this simplistic reading of the Gospel accounts:

 

“According to the Bible, Jesus and his followers chose to own nothing, and shared their belongings. There were no needy people among them. Those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales, put it at the Apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. By this definition, Jesus and his followers were communists.”

 

The key word is “chose.” Being able to choose is not communism. In fact, Jesus’ disciples did not take a vow of poverty. Peter still owned a home in Capernaum (Matt. 8:14–17; Mark 1:29–31; Luke 4:38), and when he thought Jesus’ death ended it all for him, he returned to his family’s fishing business (John 21:1–14). Paul made his living as a tentmaker (Acts 18:1–3). Unlike Communists who covet what others have, Paul word with his own hands and used some of what he earned to help others (20:33–35). This can’t be done in a Communist system (Phil. 4:14–16). The list of attempts at failed Communist systems is a long one.[1]

 

Modine jumps outside the gospels and tries to make his case by an appeal to the actions of the early followers of Jesus in the book of Acts (2:44–45 and 4:32–37). R.J. Rushdoony puts the events in their proper historical context:

 

“The ‘communism’ of the early church, in Acts, was not economic in any sense, and should not be considered as an economic experiment. The church took seriously our Lord’s prophecy concerning the coming fall of Jerusalem (Matthew 24). They knew that they were living in a doomed city and country. The logical step of faith was to make liquid their assets for ready flight. Some who made liquid their assets dedicated their funds in part or whole to the church, for the evangelization of Judea before its destruction [Luke 21:20–24].

 

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