AnthonyFlood.com
Philosophy against Misosophy
From anti-state.com. The author describes himself as “young born again Christian who was converted from atheism by a direct revelation from Jesus Christ” and a “scientific rationalist who considers that the Omega Point (i.e., the physicists' technical term for God) is an unavoidable result of the known laws of physics.” He also has a website which has taken up the cause of 9/11 truth. According to Redford’s eschatology of divine retribution, God will one day take off the gloves of libertarian persuasion and don the brass knuckles of coercion. Despite that flaw, I commend his essay's “no-compromise” de-fense of the goal of a Stateless society against those who raise superficial theological objections to it.
Jesus Is an Anarchist
James Redford
Introduction
The above title may seem like strong words, for surely that can't be correct? Jesus an anarchist? One must be joking, right?
But you read correctly, and I will demonstrate exactly that. At this point you may be incredulous, but I assure you that I am quite serious.
If you are a Christian and find the above title at all hard to believe then you of all people owe it to yourself to find out what the basis of this charge is. For if the above comes as news to you then you still have much to learn about Jesus and about the most vitally important struggle which has plagued mankind since the dawn of history: mankind's continuing struggle between freedom and slavery, between value producers and the violent parasitical elite, between peace and war, between truth and deception.
This is the central struggle which defines mankind's history and, sadly, continues to do so. As Christians and as people in general, what we choose to believe and accept as the truth is equally as vitally important, for ultimately it is people's beliefs about the world that will shape and determine what outcomes transpire in the world.
If the mass of people believe in political falsehoods and deceptions then mankind will continue to repeat the same gruesome mistakes, as it does presently, and the aforementioned struggle will continue to be no closer to a desirable resolution. Genuine change must first come by changing one's mind, and if what one had believed before was in error then one cannot expect good results to proceed forth from it.
And all change starts with the individual. You can help change the world by simply changing your mind. All I ask of you is to believe in the truth – know the truth and the truth will make you free (John 8:32).
It is the purpose of this document to demonstrate the above claim, and if you are a Christian then I submit that it should be your task to honestly consider what is presented here, for if the above claim comes as a surprise then I will show that what you thought you knew about Jesus was not the whole story: Jesus is far more radical than many would have you believe, and for good reason – it threatens the status quo.
For the consequence of this truth becoming understood and accepted by even one-tenth of the population would be quite dramatic indeed: governments would topple like so many dominoes.
For as the 16th century Frenchman Étienne de la Boétie observed in The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (see bibliography), all governments ultimately rest on the consent of the governed, even totalitarian dictatorships.
Now this "consent" does not have to be in the form of active promotion and support of the State, it could simply be in the form of hopeless resignation, such as accepting the canard "nothing's as sure as death and taxes."
All governments can only exist because the majority – in one form or another – accept them as at least being inevitable. They believe in the deception that even though government may be evil that it is nevertheless a necessary evil, and therefore cannot conceive of a better alternative.
But if such were true then Jesus Christ's whole message is a fallacy. But such is not the truth, there is an alternative: liberty. And I will show that Jesus has called us to liberty, and that liberty and Christ's message are incompatible with government.
You may wonder where I got the one-tenth figure from in the above if all governments require the acceptance of their rule by the majority of their population. Again, the reason is because this acceptance doesn't have to be active support but merely resigned, as it usually is. If just one-tenth of the population strongly believed that government was itself the greatest moral evil and that there was a better alternative it would be enough to turn the tide.
Since most people are followers and uncritically accept the reigning political opinions, those who do not accept the status quo and who are able to form and articulate a critical alternative will come to be the intellectual leaders by default when the popular regime suffers a crisis and people begin to look for alternatives.
If the history of governments teach us anything it is that such crises is a regular occurrence, for governments by their nature tend toward instability. If it be asked Why then do we still have government?, it is here answered that it is because no viable alternative to government has been articulated by a critical mass at such a crisis, in that most people throughout history have accepted the deception that government is a necessary evil and could not conceive a better alternative.
Now I will articulate that better alternative, the one that Christ commanded us. I will show that Jesus and His message are necessarily anarchistic. And what better place to start than in the beginning?
Table of Contents
1. Jesus’ Very Life Began in an Act of Defiance to Government (And Would Later End in Defiance to Government)
2. The Golden Rule Unavoidably Results in Anarchism
3. Jesus Does Not Respect the Person of Men
4. Jesus on Taxes: Nothing is (Rightly) Caesar's!
5. Tax Collectors are Sinners!
6. On Paul and Romans 13 and Titus 3:1
7. On Peter and 1 Peter 2:13-18
8. Jesus Defended the Right to Freely Contract and Private Property Rights
9. Greatness is in Serving
10. Slaves Obey Your Masters?
11. Jesus Supported the Collecting of Interest (Usury)
12. Cleansing of the Temple: Righteous Libertarian Vigilantism
13. Jesus on the War on Drugs (and all Forms of Prohibition)
14. Woe to Lawyers!
15. Jesus on Government Courts: Avoid Them!
16. Jesus on the Rich
17. Jesus Engaged in Conspicuous Consumption When He Could Have Provided for the Poor Instead
18. Jesus Has Called us to Liberty – Yet Those Who Pay Taxes Are Not Free!
19. Jesus Will Overthrow All the Governments of the World and Punish All the Rulers in the Time of His Judgement (i.e., His Second Coming)
20. In Closing and Bibliography