Jesus' Moral Ideology

In the United States today, there is much dispute between "Conservative" and "Liberal" politics and with them are equal Christian positions—both politically and religiously. Both positions are based on Biblical theologies, and so both sides pull out Bible verses that place their positions in the best light. However, these Biblical theologies aren’t the heart of the conservative or liberal dualism that is at the heart of the divide within the country, within denominations or within churches. Both the conservative and liberal positions are based on a moral stance that are so based in one’s cultural understanding that it is difficult to separate the truth out and understand another’s position. And these positions have developed in such antagonism, that they have anathematized the other position, growing away from each other as time goes on.

What both moral positions, and the theologies they are based on, have missed is that they are each only one part of a whole. Both sides are a simplification of the complex Christian moral message, as taught by Jesus. Christianity is a religious moral system, based on the life and teaching of Jesus, empowered by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Neither position is a full representation of Jesus’ moral ideal, but each is a bastard born of a union of the New Testament and modern American ideals. Both positions have been created by lopping off parts of Jesus’ body of teaching, idealizing a part and trashing the rest as "unworthy" of God.

Below are the five principles of morality that Jesus held to. Admittedly, the moral position of Jesus is not complete without the worldview and eschatology of Jesus, which is not included below. But this list is sufficient to indicate that Jesus’ moral position is only inadequately represented by the liberal or conservative moral positions. I hope this will move us toward a completely Jesus-based moral position, which could be called truly Christian.

Purity
"Evil thoughts, sexual immorality, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness—All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man." Mark 7:21-23

The one moral principle found in all the Bible—both Old and New Testaments, no matter which book you choose—is that God will judge everyone based on what they do. People’s actions can be neutral, but there are certain actions that if one does them, it negates their ability to enter into God’s presence. Among the actions that Jesus says negates one’s ability to approach God or have God listen to one’s prayer are: worship of false gods, dishonoring authority, oppression of the weak (such as abortion), sexual immorality (including sex outside of marriage and homosexuality), stealing, acts of hatred and others.

This principle is central to the conservative moral position, and it is at the heart of what they call "family values". However, we must also recognize that Jesus’ answer to one breaking this very firm moral position is not punishment or ostrization, but is repentance. Jesus commanded people to regret their sin, admit it openly to God and to do all they could to change the action, and God would forgive them and welcome them back. Repentance from sin is the center of Jesus’ teaching.

"Unless you repent, you will all perish." Luke 13:5

Love
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Matthew 19:19
"Love your enemy" Luke 6:27

In response to those who would like to take moral purity laws and use them for punishment, Jesus upheld an overall principle of love as the context of morality. Jesus definition of "love" is "to act for the benefit of the another, no matter what they have done." Jesus’ most radical statement is to apply this moral principle of beneficence to everyone, without exclusion. Thus, if one is acting in a manner to harm another, or acting in an impure way, or even acting against one’s culture or one’s personal family or life, the need to act in accordance of the benefit of all still applies.

This principle is central to the liberal moral position, and with it they see a necessity to weaken the principle of purity. They want to say that if an action does not harm another, then it is not evil. However, Jesus did not pit these two principles in opposition to each other, but sees them as being complimentary. Purity communicates the moral line over which one may not cross, or else one is excluded from a relationship with God. However, a loving human may cross the line that God might not be willing to. For Jesus, this means that representatives of God might go to the impure and draw them back to God, gently coaxing them to repent, and so be restored to God. Love is not in opposition to purity, but it is the principle in which impurity can be overcome.

"The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." Luke 19:10

Faith
"The greatest law is this: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength." Matthew 27:37-38

The basis of all morality in Scripture is not the conscience of man, but the justice, authority and mercy of God. God is the ultimate authority, so his law is the first command above all human law. God is ultimately just, so his morality is right for everyone, in all societies. God is the most merciful, so his principles are for the benefit of all people, especially the lowly. In order to take advantage of God’s morality, one must be more devoted to God than to oneself, than any earthly authority, or than anything that might give you benefit apart from God.

The political positions of the liberals and conservatives forget the basis of faith in their moral position, and instead adopt a position of public pluralism. Even the religious moralists of these positions, however, forget that God is the one and only basis of authority. Many of them think that each person’s heart completely contains God’s will, forgetting that people are rebellious and forgetful. And others think that a greater morality than what God expresses can be gained. However, this only leads to judgmentalism and inconsistent moralities. According to Jesus, we find truth in God and we limit our morals to what God says through Jesus, bringing nothing else to it.

"You have neglected God’s command by upholding human commands." Mark 7:8

Sacrifice
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me." Mark 8:34

To be devoted to God’s morality is not just for times when it is convenient or when society is in agreement with it. Jesus recognized that his moral principles would be rejected by every society that exists in the world. And there is no one that would make it easy to live according to these principles. Thus, living according to Jesus life and teachings is a challenge that is very difficult to achieve. Thus, endurance through difficulties is an essential part of His morality.

An aspect of this challenge is forgotten by the liberal and conservative moral viewpoints. In those moralities, one must maintain ones’ own well being in order to be moral. However, in Jesus, one’s personal well-being must be set aside in order to live according to His moral principles. To do God’s will, one must set aside one’s own and society’s desires. To love others, one must sacrifice one’s own interests and even life. The ultimate act of Christian morality is that of martyrdom for the benefit of others.

"The greatest love is to lay down one’s life for his friends." John 15:13

Spirit
"The Father will send you the Holy Spirit who will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all that I have taught you." John 14:26

God’s command is not limited to the basic principles one finds in the New Testament, however. God has more to say to every person devoted to Him through Jesus. These more individualistic commands are granted through the Holy Spirit, the mystical presence of God in everyone committed to Jesus as Lord.

Christian morality is not complete without the Holy Spirit, for not only does He guide the Christian to do what is right, but he also empowers the Devoted to do even the most difficult task in obedience to God. God understands the weaknesses of human resolve and human limitation, and so offers the Spirit as the ability to act beyond one’s humanity into a fullness of God’s strength and purity and love.

The moral positions of conservatism and liberalism have little use for the mystical power of God through the Spirit, unless it has been transformed into a naturalistic process. Jesus would allow no such limitation to the power of God, commanding exorcisms, healings, meals, speaking unknown languages and unnatural boldness, only accomplished through the Spirit, not flesh.

"The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Mark 14:38

Jesus is neither conservative nor liberal, but greater than either.
Follow Him, not his bastard offspring.

Christian Liberal Moral Ideology

There are a multitude of ways to understand Christianity. Each denomination has a distinctive sense of their focus, and every congregation has a different way of presenting their understanding of the basic truths of Christianity. In the United States, there are two foundational ways to understand the truth of Christianity, which, for convenience’s sake we will call "Conservative" and "Liberal". The liberal understanding of Christianity has recently been called "the new Christian paradigm", but it is at least one hundred years old, has its roots in the enlightenment of the eighteenth century and has it’s own set of traditions and theologies. Some of the basic features of the "new paradigm" are described below.

Denying supernaturalism
The liberal point of view is not that miracles don’t happen, but that miracles occur in the context of everyday, "historic" reality. This means that God is working, but he is working within the confines of material existence. For all practical purposes, the spirit world does not intersect with material reality, except in subtle, mostly unseen ways. They deny the reality of overt supernatural acts such as a six-day creation, fire from heaven and the physical resurrection of bodies.

Jesus as moral example
Jesus is seen in the liberal worldview primarily as a teacher and example of the exemplary way of life. God desires us to live a life of unconditional love and care for others, and Jesus displayed that love in the midst of a culture of rules and separation. Jesus died in a conflict with that culture, and his resurrection—which was spiritual, not physical—was God’s way of showing the superiority of that moral way of life.

Relationships as core responsibility
The central moral concept of liberal philosophy is the nurturance of relationships. To build and establish relationships, we need to display unconditional love, which is seen as full and joyful acceptance of all—no matter how one subverts the traditional moral paradigm— and assistance to those who are weak or marginal in society. Salvation is seen as receiving God’s grace to live according to this way of love, as Jesus himself displayed. To be saved is to live out the principle, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Sin as systemic
The liberal worldview acknowledges the Bible’s point of view of sin as personal acts in rebellion to God. However, the sins that need to be taken most seriously are those acts that support a system of oppression, in opposition to an ethic of unconditional love. They see the system of the world to be supporting a minority—whites, males, wealthy—while the rest are automatically placed in a secondary role, forced to submit to the oppressive paradigm. Sin, then, is supporting that system of oppression and acting in apathy to those in need. The serious sins are not those of adultery, homosexuality and rebellion, but oppression and its extreme form, violence. Submission to the dominant authority system is a sin, though less serious, for it supports the systemic sin.

Response to sin
Given this point of view of sin, personal sin is usually responded to with acceptance. If a sin is seen as just being in opposition to the primary paradigm, then there is joyful, full acceptance without a call to change. If one sins in a way in opposition to unconditional love, they are encouraged to repent and change, while still being accepted. However, every worldview has lines of acceptance and non-acceptance. Those who are not accepted are those who refuse to refrain from tearing the nurturing community down. Thus, prison is reserved for rapists and child molesters. And the liberal church has no place for those who reject the needy because they are "sinners" or "irresponsible."

Love as Basis of Truth
The truth of the liberal paradigm is not strictly seen in the Bible as a whole. They recognize that the Old Testament does not teach this paradigm, and neither does Paul. However, they understand Jesus as teaching the basis of this paradigm, and the church is growing over time to accept this paradigm. The Bible is not the basis of morality, but unconditional love, which they see is the love of God. The Bible is not full of historic truth, but of deep metaphors that helps one understand God’s love. The Bible is simply a bridge leading from an older moral paradigm toward a new, perfect paradigm of God’s love. The locus of truth is God’s community of love, led by God’s spirit of love. This community may at times be in denial of the old paradigms, such as it was in the Jerusalem council in Acts 15, but the main focus is the display of God’s spirit, not any traditional standards of morality.

Continuity and Discontinuity with Society
They see themselves as being a part of society through tolerance. They hold as a central moral statement the acceptance and care for all people, no matter what religion they believe in or what their personal habits are. However, they also see themselves as subversive and as challenging the dominant authority system. Thus, in practical actions, the liberal church accepts homosexuals who act with unconditional love, for while they might act in opposition to standard morality, they have received God’s grace of love. They often accept abortion as a possible moral decision because a relationship has not been developed with a fetus, thus there is no moral obligation. And they typically support progressive politics which assists those who are marginalized by society.

An Anabaptist Critique of Liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity focuses much on what has been missing from traditional Christianity. Like Jesus and Paul, they focus on the needs of the marginalized of society, and they accept those who are traditionally seen as "sinners" (Luke 15; Matthew 8:11-12) They also recognize that Jesus spoke of himself as a moral example, which is something much of the church has ignored in their focus on Jesus as the savior from sins and the Son of God (John 13:13-17).
However, there is much that the liberal approach to Christianity has missed in their understanding of Jesus. Liberal Christians deny the very worldview that Jesus held. Jesus did not just practice God’s love, but he practiced God’s love with God’s supernatural power, seeing the spirit world as a real force in everyday life (Mark 1:16-2:10). The NT as a whole recognizes Jesus’ resurrection as physical and historic—and, in fact, were it not, then it could not be called "resurrection" at all, but simply "death" for a spiritual life after death is what all ancient cultures understood as what death was. Resurrection meant the renewal of the body—anything else would have been called something else.

Liberal Christians also neglect that Jesus held to God’s standard of righteousness, which was not restricted to sins against unconditional love. Jesus spoke against sexual immorality, idolatry and those who did not believe in him—sins of which could be participated in while still being nurturing (Mark 7:20-23; John 58). Jesus said that the context of righteousness is love of others, but that was not the whole of God’s standard—we first and foremost must love God for who he is and obey him even though it may not seem like the kind of "love" we understand. Jesus welcomed sinners of his time, but he called them to repent, not just to be welcomed (Luke 5:32)

God’s love is unconditional, but the unconditional form of his love is limited, as well. God loves everyone by providing even those who hate him with their basic needs. However, his true blessings—his kingdom, his Spirit, his salvation from suffering—is not given to everyone, but only those who prove to be faithful to him, not only in love, but in the purity of heart and action that can only come through Jesus (Matthew 7:6, 17-27; John 15:5). Thus, followers of Jesus sympathize for those who do not believe in Jesus, but we cannot fully accept them as part of the community of God, even as others who sin against God without repentance (Romans 10:9; Matthew 18:15-17). Jesus affirms love, but also recognizes that his gospel causes deep relational ties to be severed dramatically (Luke 14:26-27)

Ultimately, liberal Christians, while drawing their ideals from the gospel, only accept half of it. They do not believe what Jesus believed or hold to what Jesus stood for. In the end, liberal Christianity is not a representation of Jesus, but just another form of the Enlightenment, denying both the Scriptures and the power of God. They want the morality of Jesus, but neglect the righteousness Jesus actually espoused.

Men will be... holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. Avoid such men as these. II Timothy 3:5

The Conservative Moral Ideology

There are a multitude of ways to understand Christianity. Each denomination has a distinctive sense of their focus, and every congregation has a different way of presenting their understanding of the basic truths of Christianity. In the United States, there are two foundational ways to understand the truth of Christianity, which, for convenience’s sake we will call "Conservative" and "Liberal". The conservative approach to Christianity has been called "evangelical" and also "fundamentalist". Although "evangelical" Christianity has existed since the early 1500s, the fundamentalist form of American evangelicalism has existed only since the beginning of the 20th century—although its roots do run deeper to the early reformation.

God as Creator
In the conservative Christian worldview, all things come from God, the spiritual entity that rightly rules all creation. There is a spiritual world that is greater than this one, and the principles of which determine our success in this world. God is the maker of all things, which he did in six 24-hour days at the beginning of creation.

Jesus as God
The conservative Christian boldly proclaims Jesus as God, by which he means a human who is equal with God in every way, including his essence. Jesus showed his authority over all things on earth, including the spirit world and nature, which indicated that he was the true maker of all these things. Many doubted Jesus proclamation of his true nature, and they eventually killed him. But the Father—the primary personage of God, along with Jesus and the Holy Spirit—rose Jesus from the dead, thus displaying Jesus’ true identity—God himself. One who wishes to receive God’s salvation—life in heaven—must believe that Jesus is God, attempt to live in the standards of God and be responsible to God’s church.

Jesus’ death as once-for-all sacrifice
Conservative Christians hold Jesus’ death to be the most significant event in all of history. They hold that God held all people under the judgment of death because of their sin, but Jesus provided a blood sacrifice through his death, which allowed God to offer forgiveness for sin instead of death. Anyone who believes in Jesus, then, is forgiven of all of their sins, no matter what they did.

Inerrant Bible
According to conservative Christians, the Old and New Testaments, sixty-six books, are the Bible. Although the Bible was written by human authors, God’s spirit directed every word in the Bible, and thus every single word is true. They understand the Bible to be interpreted literally, which means that everything in it must be understood as it would be understood by those who read it first, with allegorical sections interpreted as allegory and historical sections being taken as plain facts. The Bible expresses not only spiritual, moral and historic truth, but scientific truth as well.

The Moral Order
In the conservative worldview, it is held that God established an authoritative order. God established parents to rule over their families, governments to rule over their citizens, bosses to rule over their employees and God to rule over all. Some conservatives hold that men are also an authority over women. Bosses, parents and government leaders, therefore, are representatives of God to those under them. . This does not mean that human authorities cannot make mistakes, but the proper response to any authority over us is to submit and obey the authority. The authorities, on the other hand, are to offer proper moral guidance, punish those who disobey the proper authorities, and to provide the basic needs for those under their authority.

Family as Building Blocks of Society
Conservative Christians hold strongly to a conservative view of the family. This includes the authority of the husband over the family in the God-established moral order as well as the establishment and independence of the nuclear family. For this reason, they oppose homosexuality, abortion and secular education as things that break down the God-established order of the family.

Independence as maturity
In the conservative morality, the goal of the authority is to have every person under them be independent productive members of society. This requires the authority to provide training and punishment for each individual, until each of them are responsible in their own right. Responsibility, in this context, means that they are proper authorities over their own families, providing for them and needing no assistance from authorities to maintain their appropriate lifestyle; and that they are obedient to the requirements of their authorities without needing to be punished to correct them.

Sin as disobedience
For conservatives, sin has to do with one’s relation to the proper authority. Authorities establish law, which is an absolute standard and enforced by their authority. One sins if they disobey the authority above them, even if what the authority demands is unreasonable. Should one sin, the proper response of the sinner’s authority is to punish them, to train both them and everyone else under that authority that sin is unacceptable and will be punished.

Church as Upholder of Standard
The church, then, is the place where these conservative beliefs and morality are held as the standard and they constantly remind the people of God of these truths. This does not mean that the church in some way isn’t subversive. The conservatives hold that the world is constantly being led further and further into sin and subversive values. The church, in this case, is a beacon of light in the midst of darkness. One of the greatest purposes of the church, then, is to defend the people of God against the many forces attacking them—cults, secular humanism, communism, Islam and other religions.

An Anabaptist Critique of Conservative Christianity
The conservative evangelicals have much in their favor as a worldview. They uphold the Bible as the very highest standard, and Jesus as the very highest authority. They recognize that God’s standard may be different from the world’s in many ways and may not make sense to humans. They recognize that sin is very serious, and needs to be dealt with seriously.
However, for all of their proclamation of the Bible as God’s inerrant word, they typically have neglected what the Bible actually says quite seriously. Although they confess Jesus as their Lord, they will frequently disagree with Jesus and his teachings in the New Testament and maintain their own standards of morality instead. Jesus did not punish sin, although in the most extreme cases he did recommend separation from the church (John 8:1-11; Matthew 18:15-17). Rather Jesus showed mercy to the sinner and called them to repentance (John 12:47; Luke 5:32). Jesus recognized that authority came from God, but he also harshly criticized conservative authorities for not adhering to God’s standard and claimed that they should not be followed (Matthew 23:1-23).

Jesus actually came to earth to subvert the authorities of the world through the cross, and the "proper authorities" of this world are still acting in rebellion to Jesus’ way of the cross (Colossians 2:15; Acts 3:12-19; I Corinthians 2:6-8, 14). Jesus did not present submission as a way to uphold the authorities of this world, but as a way to subvert them and to establish God’s kingdom as the true authority over this world. In many ways, conservative Christianity is still holding to medieval feudal standards, and they see the church as being a part of this world. But the Bible says that God’s people are not of this world, but belong to a different nation, to live by a different standard, as established by Jesus, and to not just support the system as it stands (I Peter 2:4-12; Galatians 5:19-23).

Jesus death, while a sacrifice for our sins, is not limited to that. The cross isn’t something that happened a long time ago, and we can rely just on Jesus’ work. We are to continually be living out Jesus’ cross, and we are to be the people of the cross—the work of the cross is something the church continues to this very day (Colossians 1:14; John 12:24-26; Mark 8:34-38). It is through this work that we do with Jesus as our example that we gain the kingdom of God (Romans 8:16-17; Acts 14:22).

Ultimately, conservative Christianity, just like their theological forefathers, Luther and Calvin, is simply not biblical enough. For all their upholding of Jesus as the great authority, they do not give him enough authority as the One True Teacher, and we are servants of each other (Matthew 23:8-11). If one is truly going to enter God’s kingdom, we must be more righteous than the conservative evangelicals (Matthew 5:20; 23:22-23).

Jesus is not just God, but our Lord and example.