They have everything to do with following Jesus who himself might be called a communist. He's the one who said, "Every one of you who does not renounce all he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:3).
Jesus, not Marx, is the one who set concern for those in need as the final criterion for judging the authenticity of one's life. He said, "I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink, was a stranger and you took me in, was stripped naked and you clothed me; sick and you visited me, imprisoned and you came to see me" (MT 25: 35-36). Everything, Jesus insists, depends on recognizing his presence in the poor and oppressed and responding accordingly.
Common Objections
Of course, it's often pointed out that the Christian experiment in communism was short-lived. Jesus' followers soon backed off from their early idealism. That observation is supposed to invalidate their communistic lifestyle as impossibly utopian and therefore no longer applicable as Christians' guiding North Star. In fact, this objection is taken as justifying the persecution of the communism the text idealizes and recommends!
But the same argument, of course, would apply to the Ten Commandments in general or to the Sermon on the Mount - or to the U.S. Constitution for that matter. In our day (and in the course of their histories) all those statements of ideals have only sporadically been lived out in practice. Should we then throw them all out? Should we persecute those espousing the Sermon on the Mount ideals or observance, for instance, of the Fourth Amendment? Few in the Christian community or in the U.S. political world would make that argument.
Others anxious to distance themselves from the communistic ideals of early Christianity would point out that the communal life adopted by Jesus' first followers was voluntary not imposed from above. In doing so, they point to another passage in Luke's Acts of the Apostles. That's the one involving Ananias and Saphira - a couple whose life is exacted for claiming to have sold their property while keeping some of it back for themselves.
Referring to their property, Peter says to Ananias, "Was it not still yours if you kept it, and once you sold it was it not yours to dispose of?" (Acts 5:4) But (again as Miranda points out) what was optional was not selling their property - Christianity's indispensable condition. What was optional was the choice to become a disciple of Christ. Choosing the latter option required practicing communism!
As for economic systems imposed from above. . .. Can you name one that isn't?
How many of us have really chosen to live under capitalism? The answer is that none of us have. That's because to make an informed choice, one must know the alternative. However, our families, schools, churches and civic organizations, our films and novels and news programs mostly conspire to vilify alternatives and keep them hidden.
Besides that, our government and military have made sure that experiments in alternatives (like the one implemented in China) are consistently portrayed as failures - lest their "bad example" undermine capitalist claims to be the only viable system.
Even worse, our church leaders (who should know better) jump on the anti-communist band wagon and present Jesus as a champion of a system he would despise. Church people speak and act as if Luke's passage from Acts had read:
"Now the whole group of those who believed lived in fierce competition with one another and made sure that the rights of private property were respected. They expelled from their midst any who practiced communalism. Consequently, God's 'invisible hand' brought great prosperity to some. Many however found themselves in need. The Christians responded with 'tough love' demanding that the lazy either work or starve. Many of the unfit, especially the children, the elderly and those who cared for them did in fact starve. Others however raised themselves by their own bootstraps and became stronger as a result. In this way, the industrious increased their land holdings and banked the profits. The rich got richer and the poor, poorer. Of course, all of this was seen as God's will and a positive response to the teaching of Jesus."
When are we going to stop this bastardization of Christianity?
Conclusion
The emphatic answer should be RIGHT NOW - beginning today on this Second Sunday of Easter!
To do so, we must before all else face it: Jesus' followers practiced "communism with Christian characteristics!" Yes, they did!
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