Was Jesus a socialist?

Rather, the Kingdom taunts us with a way of being with no visible means of support in the manner of ethics or principles but is defined by face to face interactions with the other. Even the most heinous criminal has a human face and has been created in the image of God.

The Christian revolution can only grow by the reformation of character, of the conversion of the individual into a social person. For the rich, this would mean the elimination of tax avoidance behaviour, the end to seeking the bigger yacht or a more luxurious lifestyle. These are not behaviours of the social person but behaviours that reveal a desperate grabbing after life.

How do the properties of the Kingdom critique the contemporary Australian political scene? At the base of neo-liberalism, we find a moral stance that judges between the more or less abled. The latter need to be incentivised and to make choices so that they will become contributors to society. This is an absolute moral stance that does not account for circumstance, the fact that many come from impoverished and careless families that ensured that education was not completed. Many have been damaged by abuse or live in areas of high unemployment. Neo-liberalism does not see people face to face it only sees caricatures. At its centre we find, not individuals who are created in the image of God but factors in an economic system confronted by the absolute power of the market and its invisible hand; a kind of mysticism. We find members of society reduced to self-striving agents. Both elements are antithetical to the parable of the Kingdom.

It seems to be an inescapable conclusion, given the characteristics of the Kingdom, that Christians should lean towards a politics that places the social at the centre, in recognition that we are fundamentally social beings. Our true being is to be found in connection. This means that we act as a commonwealth in which resources are shared. If all are made in the image of God, then none can be left behind. The statistics that point to those living in poverty in Australia point to our heartlessness, our lack of community.

While I have tried to present a view that does not land on any particular side of politics, it must be obvious that I will support Labor at the next election. This is not to say that I do not have problems with the ALP, I have many. All political parties suffer from breathing the air of modernity with all its distortions; the shallow humanism, the rejection of the Christian tradition that itself has been reduced to "values". After attempting to be part of the ALP I realised that they were not my people. It felt like a secular church.

However this may be, I am appalled at the ideology of the LNP, its latest division of people between those who have a go and those that do not, Hockey's "lifters and leaners" rebadged. While I acknowledge that the market is an important and powerful actor in our society, I dislike how Liberals establish it as one of the universal and implacable forces of the universe. It seems to me that the parable of the Kingdom would overturn much Liberal ideology.

We in Australia have spent many years walking the Liberal road that has applauded the wealthy and turned its back on the poor. We are dazzled by the mansion and wealth beyond avarice. The only thing that stands in the way of this perverted view of human destiny is the parable of the Kingdom in which the first will be last and the last first.