Socialist Exegesis and Cheap Grace

Lawrence O'Donnell is a liberal political commentator on MSNBC who in this clip functions as a liberal televangelist. He is a false prophet who, like his master the Devil, expertly twists Scripture to make it sound as if the Bible said the opposite of what it obviously does say. It is enough to make one sympathetic to the calls to get religion out of politics. The real problem is not that orthodox Christians get involved in politics, the problem is that unorthodox liberals are already there doing damage day in and day out.

Don't be put off by the fact that this clip happens to contain an attack on Rush Limbaugh for Rush is incidental to my point here. Plenty of people other than Rush Limbaugh find the liberal Scripture-twisting that obscures the Gospel and co-opts Jesus for some kind of neo-Marxist political agenda to be pernicious. O'Donnell is really attacking all conservative Christians, that is, he is saying that all non-socialist Christians are not real Christians. I confess that Rush Limbaugh is not my idea of a great Scripture scholar, but O'Donnell manages to make Rush look like a veritable John Calvin by comparison.

What makes this clip especially galling is the smug complacency and self-assurance with which O'Donnell speaks. I think he really believes what he is saying and is not in the least ironic or deliberately deceptive. He thinks his lame attempts at exegesis are absolutely knock down arguments that we conservatives never heard before and cannot answer. He reminds me of Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion taking three whole pages to refute Thomas Aquinas' arguments for the existence of God - just think, three whole pages!

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Limbaugh said that the left is happy to co-opt Jesus as the first socialist and use him to justify their agenda of state control of everything, but that is the only use they have for Jesus. They are not interested in hearing Jesus on other topics and they twist his words on this topic. Rush is completely correct in this, as we shall see.

Limbaugh replies to the current propaganda slogan being advanced by the Soros-funded, former Evangelical Jim Wallis that the real question is not "What would Jesus cut?" but rather "What would Jesus take?" implying that the socialists are pitting Jesus against the Eighth Commandment and the New Testament against the Old Testament, which they always do. The Socialists think it is fine to break the Eighth Commandment so long as it is done by majority vote and so long as it is done in the name of their great idol: Equality.

Give O'Donnell this much credit: he knows Limbaugh is shooting holes in his whole socialist agenda and he knows it is absolutely crucial to discredit Limbaugh's arguments. He is right about that; the problem is that Limbaugh is right and he is wrong. But since when did that ever stop heretics?

Let's look at the exegesis one passage at a time.

First, we have the story of the rich young ruler. O'Donnell points out that in Mark 10:21 Jesus tells the man to go and sell all his possessions and give to the poor. He then claims that this verse is an answer to the question of how much the government should tax us. Jesus, he says to Limbaugh, "takes" it all - 100%.

Well, how many holes are there in this sophistry. For one thing, Jesus gave the man a choice, something that socialist governments never give citizens. Jesus used no coercion; he called for a free commitment of the will. This is basic to human dignity and moral responsibility. Socialism infantilizes people and deprives them of their basic freedom to act morally by determining what their behavior must be and coercing them into doing whatever the State deems correct.

For another thing, Jesus was not talking about giving all you have to the control of the Government. Jesus is Lord, not Caesar. Jesus wants our commitment but we don't follow Jesus by voting socialist and submitting to the dictates of a socialist government; we must follow Jesus only.

O'Donnell stresses that this means "give all of your wealth to the poor, not just some." So this is what he claims the Bible teaches. Fine. Has he given all his wealth to the poor? Has Barack Obama? Joe Biden's income tax return last year showed that he gave 1% of his income to charity. (Obama did a bit better by giving 14% to charity, but he made over 1.7 million!) John Kerry won't even pay the taxes on his yacht let alone sell it and give it to the poor. What blatant hypocrisy and cunning double talk!

Socialists like O'Donnell are people who want the government to take money from other people and give it to the poor. They could just follow their interpretation of the Bible and give their wealth away - but they don't. Instead they want the government to confiscate your wealth and redistribute it while they continue to live the good life.

O'Donnell twists Jesus' words (at 2:25 in the video) saying to sell all that you have and give to the poor into Jesus endorsing a 39.6% income tax rate for those making over $250,000 annually! How does he get that out of the call to evangelical poverty? Wouldn't the people making over $250,000 who paid 39.6% still be "rich?" How, exactly, does remaining rich equal selling everything and giving it to the poor?

O'Donnell then quotes Luke 14:33 where Jesus says that anyone who does not give up everything cannot be my disciple and then says "That means you, Rush." He does not say: "That means me and that is why I have sold all my possessions and given everything to the poor." No, it only applies to conservatives, not to socialists. Confused? Don't be, you are just hung up on Aristotelian logic and need to embrace the Marxist dialectic in which "two legs bad, four legs good."

O'Donnell next continues his little trip through the NT by claiming that Jesus was the first advocate of the progressive income tax! His basis for this? It is Mark 12 and the story of the widow's mite. O'Donnell claims that Jesus saying that she gave more because she gave out of her poverty than those who gave out of their abundance means that the government should make her tax bracket zero and tax rich people at a high rate. Is that what Jesus meant?

Again, she gave voluntarily, which is what made it meritorious in Jesus' eyes. The progressive income tax is not voluntary. And under O'Donnell's socialism, she could not have earned praise from Jesus because she would be classified as a victim and supported by the nanny state. In welfare state liberalism and social democracy private charity dies out. This is by design. Yet, Jesus' words of commendation are twisted into meaning the opposite of what they actually mean. For Jesus, private charity is good; for socialists like O'Donnell it is an evil to be stamped out.

O'Donnell then makes Jesus into a Marxist by saying (4:25) "What would Jesus take? Obviously, he would take from each according to their ability to pay. That is the clear, Christian, philosophical basis of a progressive income tax." Rush is right: Jesus is being co-opted by the Left and people who don't know the Bible very well may well be taken in.

Then at the 6 minute mark, O'Donnell begins reading the parable of the sheep and the goats from Matthew 25 and then he basically consigns Limbaugh to hell unless he repents and turns to socialism. And here I thought Marxists didn't even believe in the after life or God or Divine Judgment or hell. I guess they will pretend to believe in anything if they think it will be a useful rhetorical trick to manipulate their audience. They are Sophists and Socrates had them figured out 2,500 years ago. And Jesus would have no time for their hypocrisy. He didn't come to make Caesar Lord. He came to be Ceasar's Lord.

But what is really intriguing about this altar call is that he calls Rush to abandon his opposition to the welfare state and socialist principles. He doesn't single out John Kerry or Obama's Hollywood actor supporters or any other rich Democrat and call them to sell all that they have and give it to the poor. Why not? Well, for O'Donnell they are already saved. They vote Democrat. That is it. That is all you have to do.

I challenge Lawrence O'Donnell to walk the talk and emulate the Rich Young Ruler by selling all that he has and giving it to the rich. When he does that, I will believe that he is at least sincere in his wrong-headed biblical interpretation.

But O'Donnell doesn't think he needs to do that in order to be a follower of Jesus. Being a follower of Jesus means supporting the Left politically and the latest Party edicts will inform you from time to time what this means you must do. Jesus says "Sell it all and give to the poor" but as long as you refrain from attacking the Democratic Party, that is close enough.

This is cheap grace. Break all the Commandments you like. Fornicate, abort, lie, cheat, covet and manipulate. You can even evade taxes! It doesn't matter. All you need to do do is vote the right way and never criticize Socialism or the Great God Equality.

If Rush just switched to supporting the Democratic Party, he could keep his fifty million dollar fortune and O'Donnell would be fine with that. You don't hear O'Donnell naming Oprah or Soros in his altar calls, do you? Want to be filthy rich and still go to heaven? Just get a party card.

Grace doesn't get any cheaper than that.

Ezra Levant on George Soros

On his website, Ezra Levant has posted his latest column for the Sun newspaper chain on George Soros' attempt to interfere with the creation of a conservative TV news enterprise in Canada.

The first part of the column introduces the reader to just exactly who Soros is. I thought, in light of the recent revelations that Sojourners has received major funding from Soros (first denied, then admitted to be true by Jim Wallis), that it might be interesting to be introduced to the Wallis' new benefactor. After all, we are constantly hearing fevered stories about "the powerful interests who are pulling the GOP's strings" - as if the Democratic Party was just a bunch of ordinary, middle-class Americans fighting big business and Wall Street.

Here is the background of one of the Democratic sugar daddies:

George Schwartz was born in Hungary in 1930 — not the luckiest time and place to be born a Jew.

George’s father Theodore tried to change the family’s fortunes by changing their name to something less Jewish-sounding. It didn’t help. And soon war came.

When the Nazis took total control of Hungary in 1944, the Holocaust followed. In two months, 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to death camps.

To survive, George, then a teenager, collaborated with the Nazis.

First he worked for the Judenrat. That was the Jewish council set up by the Nazis to do their dirty work for them. Instead of the Nazis rounding up Jews every day for the trains, they delegated that murderous task to Jews who were willing to do it to survive another day at the expense of their neighbours.

Theodore hatched a better plan for his son. He bribed a non-Jewish official at the agriculture ministry to let George live with him. George helped the official confiscate property from Jews.

By collaborating with the Nazis, George survived the Holocaust. He turned on other Jews to spare himself.

George moved to London after the war and then to New York, where he became a stockbroker. He’s rich now. Forbes magazine says he’s the 35th richest man in the world. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He goes by the name his father invented: George Soros.

How does Soros feel about what he did as a teenager? Has it kept him up at night?

Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes asked him that. Was it difficult? “Not at all,” Soros answered.

“No feeling of guilt?” asked Kroft. “No,” said Soros. “There was no sense that I shouldn’t be there. If I wasn’t doing it, somebody else would be taking it away anyhow. Whether I was there or not. So I had no sense of guilt.”

A Nazi would steal the Jews’ property anyways. So why not him?

That moral hollowness has shaped Soros’ life. He’s a rabid critic of capitalism, but in 1992 when he saw a chance, he speculated against the British pound, causing it to crash, devastating retirement savings for millions of Britons. Soros pocketed $1.1 billion for himself. If he didn’t do it, someone else would, right?

In 2002, Soros was convicted of insider trading in France, and fined millions of dollars. He admitted buying the shares, but denied it was a crime.

Last year, when he made $3.3 billion off the banking collapse, he called the world’s financial crisis “the culmination of my life’s work.”

This is a man who boasted he offered to help his mother commit suicide. Apparently he didn’t see enough death in Hungary.

Soros is a sociopath. But he’s a sociopath with $14 billion, and he likes to spend it on politics.

When your "Christian ministry" gets funded by this type of guy, it is no wonder you look like a Democratic Party front - like the Catholic version of Sojourners called Catholics United. Peter Smith writes at LifeSiteNews.com:

Catholics United is an affiliate of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, an organization funded by atheist billionaire George Soros. Both organizations have been condemned by Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput as front groups for the Democrat party that have “done a disservice to the Church.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue told LifeSiteNews.com that, as Planned Parenthood gave House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “well deserved” award “for her work championing abortion” on July 15, perhaps next year they would like to consider Korzen for the prize.

“Though Korzen may scream all day long about pro-life groups ‘misusing the language of faith to score cheap political points,’ every honest person knows he is a master of expedient politics,” said Donohue. “His latest gambit, funneling George Soros money to Pelosi shills, is just the latest example of his duplicity.”

Archbishop Chaput and Bill Donohue have Catholics United figured out; how come it has taken so long for Evangelicals to come to grips with what Jim Wallis and Sojourners have become?

Wallis Apologizes; Critics Keep the Heat on Regarding the Funding of Sojourners

Christianity Today is reporting that Jim Wallis has now admitted he was wrong and Marvin Olasky was right and that Wallis has now apologized to Olasky:

Sojourners founder Jim Wallis apologized Wednesday to Marvin Olasky for saying, "Glenn Beck lies for a living. I'm sad to see Marvin Olasky doing the same thing."

Wallis told Christianity Today that he sent a private e-mail to Olasky and plans to speak with the editor-in-chief of World Magazine by phone on Friday.

"I was wrong, out of anger at the insinuation about the dependence on these foundations, I was wrong to imply that like Beck, Marvin lies for a living," Wallis said. "Glenn Beck does lie for a living. Marvin Olasky doesn't lie for a living; that's not something I should say about a brother in Christ."

There are some troubling things about this apology, however. While it is encouraging that Wallis has now conceded that Olasky was speaking truthfully all along, it is not edifying to see someone who likes to be known as "Rev." Wallis using such aggressive and mean language about Glenn Beck. If he catches Beck in a lie, by all means point it out. But this hateful rhetoric is not becoming to someone who constantly claims he is trying to start a "conversation."

Beyond this, there is also the problem that Wallis continues to underplay the significance of his "Christian" and "non-partisan" organization being funded by secular and left-wing foundations - as if these non-Christian foundations just wanted to advance biblical teaching above all other priorities. The Christianity Today article quotes Olasky as follows:

"George Soros, one of the leading billionaire leftists—he has financed groups promoting abortion, atheism, same-sex marriage, and gargantuan government—bankrolled Sojourners with a $200,000 grant in 2004," Olasky wrote in his original column. "Since then Sojourners has received at least two more grants from Soros organizations. Sojourners revenues have more than tripled—from $1,601,171 in 2001–2002 to $5,283,650 in 2008–2009—as secular leftists have learned to use the religious left to elect Obama and others."

Jay Richards, in an article entitled "Soros Funding of Sojourners is Only the Tip of the Iceberg" in the National Review Online, explains why Wallis is still not being completely up front:

The “clarification” of his earlier statement is equally unsatisfying. First, Wallis is still trying to claim that his organization transcends the Manichean political divide of left and right. They just do “biblical social justice,” he insists. But again, as I show in much more detail elsewhere, Wallis and Sojourners regularly couple strained, narrow readings of scriptural texts and a vaguely Marxist economic foundation to arrive at political and economic positions that are well left of center and far afield of a far more nuanced charity and justice tradition stretching back through almost 2,000 years of orthodox Christian thought.

Second, it’s implausible for Wallis to claim that grants between 2004 and 2007 totaling $325,000 are “the tiniest fraction” of Sojourners’ funding. Worse, the three grants from Soros’s Open Society Institute are only the tip of the iceberg. Based on publicly-available 990s, I’ve discovered that Sojourners received at least forty-nine separate foundation grants between 2003 and 2009, totaling $2,159,346. Not one of these is from a discernibly conservative foundation. Very few are from discernibly Christian foundations.

Besides the Soros grants, for instance, there are two 2006 grants from the infamous Tides Foundation totaling $72,106; a Ford Foundation grant in 2008 for $100,000; a Rockefeller Brothers Fund grant for $100,000 in 2005; and a $50,000 grant from the Wallace Global Fund in 2008. The Wallace Global Fund also supports ACORN and a cornucopia of population-control groups.

Three grants, totaling $20,000 between 2005 and 2007, are from the Streisand Foundation in California. Yes, that Streisand foundation. (That’s just funny.) Other recipients of Streisand philanthropy include People for the American Way and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. This is very left-wing company.

Apparently Wallis thinks the range from left to far left represents a “broad spectrum.”

Of course, $2,159,346 is not the total budget of Sojourners for the years in question. Does that mean that the remainder of Sojourners’ budget comes from readers of Sojourners magazine? Not at all. You see, this figure is drawn from public 990s of charitable foundations, which have to report such grants because they have minimum giving requirements. But savvy donors, such as George Soros, have a variety of ways to donate to causes. Private, non-foundation grants don’t have to be released publicly, as long as they don’t make up a large percentage of an organization’s operating budget in a given year. So the $2,159,346 is the floor and not the ceiling on left-wing funding of Sojourners. There’s no easy way of knowing how much they receive from these and other like-minded donors outside the ordinary foundation channels, unless Sojourners decides to release that information. (Wallis has said their books are open, but I’m not holding my breath.)

To be clear, I am not saying that because the Streisand Foundation gives to both Sojourners and Planned Parenthood, Sojourners secretly supports Planned Parenthood. I am saying it is dishonest for Wallis to keep claiming he’s above the political fray. You don’t have to be keen-witted to figure out that Sojourners is overwhelmingly a left-wing operation, optimized to brand left-wing ideas for Christians, ideologically moored on the left, and funded to a significant degree by secular, left-wing donors with little interest in the health of the church. Certainly this fact is apparent to the trustees and officers of many left-wing foundations.

Richards is right. Jim Wallis has become a creature of the secular left and has forfeited all right to speak for Evangelicals. He attends an Episcopalian church, has embraced sexual heresy, and is completely sold out to socialism. He distorts Scripture and places it into the partisan service of the Democratic Party.

Jim Wallis Admits Taking Donations from Soros after Calling Marvin Olasky a Liar for Telling the Truth

Sarah Pulliam Bailey at Christianity Today has a post on the Jim Wallis mini-scandal. It turns out that Wallis has been getting funding from billionaire leftist George Soros, who funds dozens of ultra-leftist organizations including pro-abortion, pro-same-sex "marriage" groups and faux "Catholic" groups that promote abortion and seek to fool Catholics into voting for Obama. It comes as no surprise that he has been helping Sojourners given its role of trying to fool Evangelicals into voting for Obama.

But the scandal is not so much that Sojourners got money from him - although he is one unsavory source of funding for a supposedly Christian organization - but that Wallis lied about it when he was accused of taking money from Soros.

Bailey quotes Marvin Olasky, who made the accusation:

Jim Wallis has admitted that Sojourners has received funding in the past from liberal billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute.

Last month, Marvin Olasky asked Wallis to admit his affiliations on the left when reported on the money from Soros in World magazine.

George Soros, one of the leading billionaire leftists—he has financed groups promoting abortion, atheism, same-sex marriage, and gargantuan government—bankrolled Sojourners with a $200,000 grant in 2004. A year later, here's how Jim rebutted a criticism of "religious progressives" for being allied with Soros and MoveOn.org: "I know of no connections to those liberal funds and groups that are as direct as the Religious Right's ties to right-wing funders."

Since then Sojourners has received at least two more grants from Soros organizations. Sojourners revenues have more than tripled—from $1,601,171 in 2001-2002 to $5,283,650 in 2008-2009—as secular leftists have learned to use the religious left to elect Obama and others.

Apparently, shilling for Obama has been lucrative for Sojourners in its latest incarnation as a front organization for the Democratic Party: 5 million per year is not bad. Later, Wallis doubled down on his deceptive claim that he was a pure as the driven snow.

In a Patheos interview, Wallis suggested that Olasky was lying.

“It’s not hyperbole or overstatement to say that Glenn Beck lies for a living. I’m sad to see Marvin Olasky doing the same thing. No, we don’t receive money from Soros. Given the financial crisis of nonprofits, maybe Marvin should call Soros and ask him to send us money.

“So, no, we don’t receive money from George Soros. Our books are totally open, always have been. Our money comes from Christians who support us and who read Sojourners. That’s where it comes from. In fact, we’ve had funding blocked, this year and last, by liberal foundations who didn’t like our stance on abortion. Other liberal groups were happy to point out to them that our stance wasn’t kosher on abortion, so our funding was blocked.

“So tell Marvin he should check his facts, and not imitate Glenn Beck.”

It is kind of interesting how obsessed Jim Wallis is with Glenn Beck; Beck has obviously gotten into his head in a serious way. But it certainly wasn't very nice of Wallis to call Marvin Olasky a liar. Bailey quotes Olasky's response to Wallis' accusation:

Jay Richards of National Review and Olasky responded to Wallis. Here's Olasky again:

Want to see for yourself what someone apparently did not want you to see? Click here to download the PDF, go to page 225, and you’ll see the grant to Sojourners.

You can also see the 2006 grant by downloading the 990-PF for that year and going to page 125. And by the way, look at page 114 of the 990-PF for 2007: another $100,000 grant to Sojourners “to support the Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform campaign.”

Unfortunately for Sojourners and Wallis, the web pages did not disappear quickly enough. Bailey notes:

Wallis released a statement through a spokesperson to Patheos.

I should have declined to comment until I was able to review the blog post in question and consulted with our staff on the details of our funding over the past several years. Instead, I answered in the spirit of the accusation and did not recall the details of our funding over the decade in question. The spirit of the accusation was that Sojourners is beholden to funders on the political left, which is false. The allegation concerned three grants received over 10 years from the Open Society Institute that made up the tiniest fraction of Sojourners' funding during that decade -- so small that I hadn't remembered them.

That is one mealy-mouthed admission of guilt. There is no apology to Olasky and a lame attempt to justify himself while taking a feeble shot at conservatives in the process. No CEO of a non-profit would "forget" about a $200,000 donation from a foundation when his total budget was less than 2 million dollars. Jim Wallis has come a long way - or fallen a long way depending on your point of view.

It is now impossible to regard Sojourners as anything more than a front organization for the secular Left and the Democratic Party that has been seized by Leftist extremists.

For more details on the disappearing web pages, see Jay Richards' article at National Review Online entitled "Why is Jim Wallis Denying That He Received Grants From Deep-Pocketed Leftists Like George Soros?"