http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/62715Hillary: Jesus’ loaves and fishes thing was his way of teaching us liberal policies
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By Dan Calabrese Monday, April 28, 2014
A good rule of thumb with Hillary Clinton is this: If it comes out of her mouth, it’s insincere. You will never lose money taking that bet 100 times out of 100. And a good corollary to that rule is this: When she tells you what something is supposed to mean, that’s not what it means at all. Especially when she’s talking about the Bible.
Pay attention: When a liberal who “rarely mentions his or her faith” suddenly shows up in a church quoting Scripture to you, it’s a pretty good bet that liberal is trying to pervert the Scripture in question to make it look like it supports Democratic Party policies. So it was this past week when Hillary showed up at a conference of United Methodist women, claiming to have just loved church as a young girl, and offering this rather interesting take on the miracle of the loaves and fishes:
Clinton said she struggled as a young woman between her father’s insistence on self-reliance and her mother’s concern for compassion. She reconciled those in the Biblical story of Jesus instructing his disciples to feed 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fish.
“The disciples come to Jesus and suggest they send away the people to find food to fend for themselves. But Jesus said, ‘No. You feed them,’” Clinton said. “He was teaching a lesson about the responsibility we all share.”
It was a personal speech from a woman considered the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president. And while the speech mostly steered clear of politics, she made the case on moral grounds for increasing the minimum wage and equalizing pay for men and women — two issues that have polarized Congress in the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections.
See? Jesus was a socialist! The disciples were selfish, uncompassionate Republicans who wanted to make the people “fend for themselves,” but Jesus - surely in preparation for a speech at the DNC - wants the disciples to operate a makeshift food pantry. It’s all about “the responsibility we all share.”
Not. Even. Close. As if there were not enough reasons to keep this woman as far away from the presidency as possible, we can now add complete and total ignorance of what’s actually going on in the Gospels. Let’s go back to the original text in Luke 9:10-17:
10 When the apostles returned, they reported to Jesus what they had done. Then he took them with him and they withdrew by themselves to a town called Bethsaida, 11 but the crowds learned about it and followed him. He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing.
12 Late in the afternoon the Twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here.”
13 He replied, “You give them something to eat.”
They answered, “We have only five loaves of bread and two fish—unless we go and buy food for all this crowd.” 14 (About five thousand men were there.)
But he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15 The disciples did so, and everyone sat down. 16 Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to distribute to the people. 17 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.
Now there certainly Scriptures about helping the poor (although none that assign that task to government), just as there are also Scriptures that warn those who will not work will not eat. But the story of the loaves and the fishes is neither of those.
Jesus had withdrawn to a secluded place but the crowds had managed to follow Him, and as He always did, He spent time teaching them. As the day grew late, the disciples became concerned that the crowd would not have an opportunity to eat because they were still quite far from any town where they could buy food, let alone get lodging for those too far away from home. The suggestion that the crowds be sent into town to buy food was simply a practical one. Imagine if you were off in the wilderness somewhere and it was getting late, and you hadn’t brought any food with you (let alone other supplies). You’d think about heading in before it got too dark and you got too hungry.
When Jesus instructed the disciples to feed the people, it wasn’t about societal responsibility to one’s fellow man, and it certainly wasn’t intended to rebuke the idea of personal responsibility or “fending for yourself.” It was designed to test their faith in Him as provider. The only food available was a few barley loaves and fishes, and that would obviously not go far in feeding such a massive crowd - at least if you restricted your thinking to what can happen in the natural world. Jesus knew perfectly well that the disciples would overlook His divine capacity and limit their thinking to the possibilities of the carnal world. There wasn’t enough food, they said. And even if there was a place close enough to buy food, it would cost a fortune to even make a small dent.
But if they had been operating in faith, they would have understood that simply following Jesus’ instructions would be all they needed to do. He used this situation to teach them that lesson. It was part of their training to learn to operate in faith in their ministries and in their lives.
I’m not sure which is worse - the fact that Hillary tries to use this passage to back up the Democrats’ “Jesus was a socialist” crap, or the fact that she completely misses the real meaning, which is the necessity of trusting in God’s divine power even when you can’t see a way. I suppose there’s no harm done as long as everyone remembers that every word out of Hillary Clinton’s mouth is insincere nonsense. So as soon as everyone is clear on that, maybe we’ll stop reminding you quite so often.
In the meantime, however, I have more on attempts by Hillary and other politicians to misuse the words of Jesus over at my site.
