We owe due credit to the National Jewish Democratic Council (double oxymoron, there is nothing about it that any decent Jew or Democrat would acknowledge) for the title. NJDC’s “Bubbie” videos, which portray Christians–not Republicans, CHRISTIANS–in a “This is the Enemy” context, feature a frame in which the Jews for Jesus proclaim that a vote for Bush is a vote for God.

Jews and Christians should focus on their numerous common beliefs instead of engaging in divisive hate speech the way the National Jewish Democratic Council and Barack Obama’s friend Allan Houston have done. Jews and Christians can and should agree on Jesus’ ideas of how people should behave toward one another, even if they do not agree on whether Jesus was actually an incarnation of God. What would Jesus do? 99 times out of a hundred, probably the same thing Rabbi Hillel would do.

(1) Was Jesus the actual son of God, and is he the ONLY path to God?
It is easy to envision the following one-upsmanship from another major religion:
Christian: Jesus died for all Mankind.
Hindu: Only once?

Hindus believe that Vishnu is the Preserver of the World, which makes his role in the Hindu Trinity very similar to that of Jesus in the Christian Trinity. When there is serious evil in the world, Vishnu takes human form to correct it. As such, he suffers and dies like any human. As Rama, he endures exile in a forest, separation from his wife, and finally death. As Krishna, he sees some of his best friends die before being killed in a hunting accident. Christians believe that Jesus will return to repair the world for good, and Hindus believe that the Tenth Avatar of Vishnu will do the same. Another Hindu figure, Jatayu the Vulture King, has long ago earned a place in Heaven, but he keeps returning to fight for justice in our world. Hindus are not, however, the only people to subscribe to this concept:

Through the travail of the ages,
Midst the pomp and toil of war,
Have I fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon this star.

…So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o’er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought.

In Through a Glass, Darkly, George S. Patton Jr. also speculates that he might have been the centurion who stabbed Jesus while he hung on the cross but, “I’ve called His name in blessing/ When after times I died.” Patton, who was himself a Christian, claimed to have taken human form to fulfill many missions for God, in contrast to Jesus’ single mission. In any event, Christians must recognize that their claim that God took human form to enlighten, or bring the Good News to, people in the Middle East requires them to acknowledge that God might have assumed other incarnations elsewhere.

Evangelist Jack Chick himself makes an excellent argument, although perhaps not the one he wanted to make; his pamphlets consign Jews, Freemasons, and even Catholics to Hell for not believing in Jesus as he does. Charlie’s Ants begins with the idea that, if a person wanted to communicate with ants, he would have to become one, and continues by saying that God took human form to bring His message to humans. It should therefore be quite obvious that, if God wanted to bring His message to Asian Indians, He would incarnate himself as the avatar of a Hindu god, and not as a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth. If C.S. Lewis’ Jesus-like figure Aslan sings in Narnia, he plays the flute in India.

It must also be pointed out that this “Our Way is the only Way” concept originated in an era in which most people lived their entire lives within ten or twenty miles of their birthplaces. People idolized travelers who brought any kind of news from the world outside their villages. Merchants, sailors, and similar people earned extra money by telling outrageous stories that no one could disprove–”Vas you dere, Sharlie?” as Jack Pearl’s Baron Munchausen often demanded of his doubters. Similarly, if a preacher showed up, it is quite possible that villagers took him for the only religious teacher in the entire world and assumed that his Way was indeed the only Way. Few people who heard Jesus message knew what a Hindu or a Buddhist was, let alone the fact that Hindus and Buddhists would agree with most of what Jesus’ ideas (and vice versa). It is past time to put this divisive “Our Way is the only Way” business behind us, and recognize that what Jews, Christians, Hindus, and even many Muslims have in common far outweighs the theological differences that divide them.

(2) “Jews killed Jesus” hate propaganda has been used for centuries to incite pogroms.
Barack Obama recently accepted money from a fundraising event that was hosted by an individual who promoted this “Christ Killers” hate propaganda. It is no more accurate to say “the Jews” killed Jesus than to say, “the Catholics” wanted to burn Martin Luther at the stake. Like Jesus, Luther was a reformer who upset a lot of people’s apple carts. Some Catholics whose apple carts had been upset, like the priests and bishops who sold indulgences for sins, wanted to burn Luther at the stake. Other Catholics who realized that the apple carts should have been upset became Lutherans, while most Catholics probably just wanted to be left alone. There would have been no Protestant religion without Catholics, and there would have been no Christian religion without Jews.

The historical facts are as follows:
(1) Some Jews, presumably including the money changers whom Jesus chased from the Temple, probably wanted him dead.
(2) Other Jews became Jesus’ disciples, and Christianity would not have existed without them.
(3) Most Jews probably just wanted to be left alone.
(4) Everyone involved has been dead for more than two thousand years.

Finally, were Jesus to show up today and start preaching the things he said 2000 years ago, no Jew would lay a finger on him. Neither would any Hindu or Buddhist, but we all know what would happen to him in Iran, Sudan, or Saudi Arabia. The same thing would happen to Jesus that is happening to Christians in those places right now, assuming that there are any left; Georgetown University donor Al Waleed bin Talal proclaimed proudly that there are no Christians in Saudi Arabia. Barack Obama’s friends should ask themselves who the real “Christ Killers” are today.

(3) What can we learn from Jesus?
Jesus’ life and teachings provide several useful ideas and principles. A recent Pew Research poll showed that 60 percent of young Muslims, including presumably those in the Muslim Student Associations that caused trouble at Penn State and Tufts University, consider themselves Muslims first and Americans second. In other words, their version of Islam calls upon them to owe their primary loyalty to something other than the country of which they are citizens. Jesus took care of this issue for Christians by telling his followers to render to Caesar what was Caesar’s, and to God that which was God’s. Or, as Shakespeare’s King Henry V put it, “Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.” Millions of people were killed, especially during the Thirty Years War, because Christians forgot one of Jesus’ principal maxims after the Reformation.

We also mentioned that Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple, and there are plenty of money changers or worse in today’s temples and churches. While the National “Jewish” “Democratic” Council accuses Christian ministers of proclaiming that a vote for Bush is a vote for God, it was actually the Union for Reform Judiasm’s Eric Yoffie who proclaimed that a vote for gun control is a vote for God. He did this while campaigning for Al Gore at the Million Mom March rally in 2000, for which the Million Mom March had raised 501(c)(3) tax exempt money. The Union for Reform Judaism (formerly Union of American Hebrew Congregations) is essentially MoveOn.org with Jewish holidays. The NJDC itself defiles the name of Judaism every time it promotes hatred of Christians, publishes anti-Semitic Jew-as-Christian-hater propaganda, or applies derogatory Jewish stereotypes to Jewish Republicans. There are also a few “pay to pray” televangelists without whom Christianity would probably be better off.

So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean;
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
John Godfrey Saxe’s The Blind Men and the Elephant

Everyone believes in the same Elephant, and the fact that they may perceive it a little differently does not change this. Jews can indeed be for Jesus’ principles (which are similar to Rabbi Hillel’s) about how people should behave toward one another. Jews must be for Jesus’ followers when they are persecuted anywhere in the world. While Jews cannot worship Jesus, we can affirm that the similarity between his teachings and those of every other genuine religion reinforce and validate all the religions involved. The fact that much of what Jesus taught can be found in Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism does not negate Christianity; it affirms it, along with the other three religions.