Would Jesus occupy Wall Street? Not on your life

By Bryan Fischer

Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"

A CNN anchor asked earlier this week whether or not Jesus would occupy Wall Street.

That question can be answered with a categorical "No."

First, Jesus has no truck with rank, blatant hypocrites. The OWS crowd has now fallen to squabbling over who gets a slice of the $500,000 which has been donated to them, and which, by the way, they put in one of the evil, greedy banks they are out to destroy.

And the OWS crowd is thinking about incorporating! In other words, they're about to become one of the evil corporations they claim to detest, as the Occupy Portland folks have already done.

And they're royally hacked off at the vagrant homeless types trying to cadge free food from them. They'revgoing to feed them brown rice gruel this weekend instead of spaghetti bolognese to show them the depths of their compassion for the poor and downtrodden. No more soup for you!

So all of sudden that sharing the wealth business has lost its appeal. They're tired of people freeloading off of them and taking advantage of them. To which we say, welcome to our world. Now you know why we have lost patience with all of liberalism and the entire welfare system.

So the OWSers want the greedy, evil corporations to share the wealth with them, but they don't want to share their wealth with anybody, especially with the poor and needy flooding into their squatters' camps. I'm sure Jesus would be happy to address the OWS crowd, and he'd probably begin his remarks with the scathing use of the word "hypocrites."

Secondly, Jesus has no truck with those whose entire agenda is to flagrantly disobey two of the Ten Commandments of God.

God said, "Thou shalt not steal," a commandment Jesus affirmed on numerous occasions. Stealing is wrong, and it doesn't make it right when government does it under color of law.

But the OWS crowd wants to use the coercive power of government to take resources from some and involuntarily redistribute it to others. Namely, them. When government confiscates wealth by force from some citizens and transfers that wealth to others, that's not welfare and it's not compassion. It is nothing less than legalized plunder.

Jesus teaches the redistribution of wealth — as long as the transfer is voluntary. But he is adamantly opposed to the involuntary redistribution of wealth, because that violates the moral law of God and is profoundly wrong. His words to take care of the poor are not addressed to government, they are addressed to us.

And the OWS crowd is animated by a thoroughly ugly disregard for the 10th Commandment as well. God says, "Thou shalt not covet...any thing that is thy neighbor's." And yet the Occupiers are driven by a dark, bitter, resentful, angry and acquisitive greed for stuff that belongs to other people.

I submit that no political program that is predicated on a violation of twenty percent of God's moral law can possibly be right, can possibly work, or can possibly be good for America.

Jesus took a whip to the thieves and the covetous in his day. If he were to come back and do the same thing today, he just might start in Zuccotti Park.

In other words, he might occupy Wall Street after all.

(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)

© Bryan Fischer