Musings from the Christian Left: A Christian Cooperative Libertarian International Manifesto
Michael Gerard Bindner
Independently Published
2018
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The Christian Left emphasizes social justice rather than personal morality. It is more humanist than moralist and focuses on a just society rather than self-righteousness. When Jesus said that the rich find it hard to enter the kingdom, he was talking about their desire for a reward from self-sufficiency rather than faith and collective action. This book goes back to the original larger print format. This book has evolved into a separate three volume series, The Future is Calling: It Wants A Refund, A New God and Your Stuff. A careful reader will guess which parts went where, but buy the books anyway. Please note that upgrades were not made to this text, other than resizing. See the new texts for updates.Religious conservatives look at man as basically evil and fallen, doomed to hell without the church, which stands between man and an angry God. To reach heaven in this church, the anger of God must be satisfied. This has led to a self-important church focused too much on the things of this world, such as monetary success and political power.The Right's view of God as angry is a reflection of their own anger at those they disapprove of, but this anger has little to do with God. However, as long as we allow the religious right to define God in terms of their anger, that anger dominates public policy. It also leaves many that are otherwise saved by a gentler theology in the wilderness of unbelief. In essence, the harshness of the conservatives is counter-productive because it keeps people away from God. Many do not see a God of anger as a God of Love, which leaves them outside the comfort of God's mercy which the church provides in the here and now. The horrific vision of an angry God leads many to go so far as to deny the very existence of God.Let us redefine God as a lover of mankind, who rescues us from the self-imposed exile of suffering. Seeing God in this way allows a renewal in the relationship between God and people, justifying our call to constitute a polity of service to others and of human freedomI address some interesting questions that may help non-Christians understand Christianity from a different perspective. The Jesus I present is a humanist, rather than an absolutist, and His sacrifice is put in terms that the average seeker can understand, rather than as a grand mystery. My Christianity is infused with a healthy dose of humanism, which leaves room for liberty that the group dynamics of dogma do not allow. It is also infused with the Cooperativism of the early church, which was abandoned when it became the state church of the Roman Empire. Such an infusion defeats the atheism of Marx and Lenin and allows Christianity to reclaim the high ground in the battle for workers rights.The Cooperativism presented here is a free market alternative to state Socialism. It strives for the same type of worker equality that Socialism strives for, but attempts to surmount the allocation problem inherent in state control. My Libertarianism is richer than that which is practiced by those on the right. It is more than a reaction to governmental power; it is an affirmation of individual rights in all organizational settings, from the church to the office to the condominium association. My Internationalism is in the service of people, not national or economic interests. Current international bodies are collections of sovereigns. Internationalism is more than that. I stand for the exporting of the values of liberty, tolerance and human dignity.
