Mr Fish

He’s low on the list for sure

[Mark 12:17] is clearly about taxes

It is about that in the surface, sure. But when you look at the context, it’s one of many times the pharisees tried to get Jesus to either go against the Roman empire, so they could get him killed for it, or go against God, so they could exile him for it.

taxes are a pretty popular socialist repellant

Clearly one of us is misunderstanding socialist ideals, because I would say socialists tend to be the ones pushing the hardest for the highest taxes. Please explain why socialists, the community focused people who know no one can stand alone, would be against making sure everyone pitches in to help the poorest people.

[Jesus] just cared if people were following God’s orders

You should really actually give the gospels are serious read before making that kind of claim. Not saying you’ve never read any of the Bible, but I am saying that I don’t see a way to have genuinely read the gospels and come to the conclusion of “yeah, Jesus is all about the legalistic religion”.

the money changing was Babylonian money magick, of which was the reason they were thrown out

A. Where did you hear that it was Babylonian money? Babylon had fallen ~500 years earlier, so I doubt there’d be any of their money left in use. B. Jesus talks about the temple become “a den of robbers”. That doesn’t sound like the only issue was the choice of currency

the whole point was to accept handouts for those who didn’t work

Ignoring for now the fact that that’s far from the point, what’s so bad about “handouts”? Sure, if you refuse to work you shouldn’t expect to be given a mansion or something, but that’s not what anyone is seriously saying. The “handouts” that leftists talk about is stuff like food and basic housing. The idea is that your right to live is based on your value as a person, not your productivity as a worker.

Especially when you compare the effects in Lord of the Rings to the Hobbit. You can really see when the studio is overworked and underpaid, even when it’s a studio as good as weta.

Plenty of people here have talked about potential success or failure, and the economic side, but here’s my take. Despite Marx equating religion to an opiate, and especially despite the “no religion” stance of the USSR, Christianity (probably the other Abrahamic religions as well and maybe Hinduism and its offshoots, I’m not exactly sure please correct me if I’m wrong) should be massively in favor of communism over capitalism. In Christianity, we are called to be stewards of creation for God, we run it and manage it but it’s not ours. This doesn’t work with capitalism, which is focused on the concept of ownership. That’s not to mention the equality side of things, which is very much a Christian concept.

I’ve brought this up with some of my Christian friends, and it’s unfortunately not a popular idea. Probably because of lingering cold war attitudes of “communism is atheist”.

Also to be clear: yes I’m Christian, no I’m not pro theocracy, yes this is based on my knowledge of the Bible and on communist philosophy.