What would Jesus occupy?

With all the #occupy protests around our country lately, it was only a matter of time before our main political parties started claiming divine inspiration. On CNN's Belief Blog this week, Republican Tony Perkins writes "My Take: Jesus was a free marketer, not an Occupier" and points to one obscure parable to support his obvious thesis. Not to be outdone, today's Kansas City Star sports a left-leaning editorial in rebuttal.  In "Sorry GOP, Jesus was probably an 'occupier'," Barbara Shelly uses even more parables to swing Jesus to the left. But later she sagely notes, "The creator endowed humans with an endless ability to conscript Jesus and his words for their own ends, so all of us will come to our own conclusions."

Well said, but I would argue that Jesus would have preferred to not choose sides.  His parables were simple illustrations of spiritual truths -- not of governmental machinations or capitalist societies.  Arguably, especially reading beyond the Gospels into Acts, one might deduce that God prefers socialism over all other forms of government.

This sort of thinking has pervaded professional sports for a long time as well.  Does giving God credit for a win garner favor for future success?  To wit: Tim Tebow, the NFL's latest evangelical phenom (and, arguably, one of the greatest college quarterbacks ever).  God help me, I just can't hate the guy -- but up until last week's astounding Broncos win over the Vikings, I thought his team was winning in spite of him.  

But, I digress.  In military contests, as well as professional sports, both sides claim God is on their side.  Even Napoleon said something about God favoring the side with the most artillery, and look where that got him.  Both sides in the War of Northern Aggression claimed God's favor, but it took the killing of over 600,000 Americans to decide who was wrong.  Even though they probably both were.

So, what would Jesus do? He'd probably tell the occupiers to "render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's," tell the bankers to play nice, and then feed all the occupiers with some little boy's lunch.

All that aside, I admit the #occupy movement does have a few valid points. But, perhaps they should be careful not to bite the hand that feeds them.  And the political punditry at large needs to stop co-opting God into their petty little right-wing and left-wing boxes.

All of this brings me to a perfectly valid excuse to play this clip from Monty Python's Life of Brian.