How Prager U Lies About Christianity

I was recently directed to a video entitled "Is Jesus a Socialist?" published in July 2019 by not-a-real-Univeristy-but-actually-just-a-Youtube-channel PragerU, run by talk show host and (EDITED) rape-advocate and enthusiast Dennis Prager. Despite their nearly 3 million subscribers, PragerU is perhaps most famous for their baseless accusations, lies, inaccuracies, and misleading videos that spread ignorance, falsehood, and hatred.

This particular video has a special concern for me. In contemporary American culture, so many people hate Christianity because of what we, sinners, incorrectly make it out to be. In other words, the fools, hypocrites, liars, and conmen of American Christianity have made sure that no one has any interest in coming to know and love Jesus Christ, because they have replaced him with whatever makes them the most money (in Prager's case, slavish devotion to the Koch brothers and their money).

Let's took a look at this video, spoken by Lawrence Reed, tellingly, a man without a single theological, philosophical, or religious credential to his name. Bit strange that Prager U would not consult any one of the thousands and thousands of people who have dedicated their lives to studying and following Jesus, but, okay, let's see what they have to say.

In his opening paragraph, he says that "kindness" is compatible with capitalism, citing the fact that Rockefeller, Buffet, and Gates have all given away more money than anyone else in human history. This is directly countered in the famous story of the widow's mite, wherein Jesus proclaims that the woman who gave out of poverty gave more than the rich who may have contributed a larger amount of money. Or, as far as "charity" goes, it's not how MUCH you give, it's how much of yourself you give, thus eradicating his first point entirely.

Reed next defines socialism as "the concentration of power into the hands of government elites," which is obviously wrong, but not an explicitly theological point so let's move on and come back to it.

He next claims Jesus never called for "the redistribution of wealth" which is true as long as your Bible doesn't have Matthew 19:21. He also says that Jesus never called for tax money to be used to help the poor, but surely this argument is an obvious non-starter: Jesus never addresses governmental policy because he had a LOT of more important things to do.

Next, Reed takes the story in Luke 12 as an example of a man who wants Jesus to redistribute wealth. The man asks Jesus to command his brother to divide the inheritance left him by his father. This is not what "redistributing wealth" means. Jesus tells the man to not be envious of his brother, which Reed takes to mean socialists should not want to improve society somewhat. The unspoken leap must be that if you want peoples' lives to be better, you must somehow be jealous of people like Reed. Well perhaps Reed would do well to read the very next saying of Jesus, which he conveniently elides: "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' "This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God."

Amazingly, we then get the stupidest reading of the parable of the talents I've ever heard. He seems to not be aware of what a parable is, and thinks this is Jesus straight up endorsing capitalism. But if this is capitalism, it's actually even more cutthroat, brutal, and violent than our current system. Does Reed think Jesus wants people who don't make much off of investments to be thrown into hell (actually he probably does)? No, of course the parable of the talents is no more about economics than the parable of the wedding banquet is about men's fashion.

Now Reed tries to deal with the "difficulty of a rich man entering heaven," but brushes Jesus off by saying "rich" here means "loving money." Uh. Okay, sure. He then tries to deal with the expulsion of the money changers from the temple but misses the point entirely, saying it was just because it was in the temple. Sure, but how can you not think critically about what sort of system would lead to that in the first place. Hello?

He then falls back on an argument I've heard zillions of times: charity is OUR responsibility, not the government's. The problem with this is...who "is" is the government? Reed, the government is US too! That's the whole point! They are representative of us, that's why we go through this rigamarole called elections! "The government" are not a separate race, are they? A separate species? No, we are all humans, all of us have souls, and all of us make charity our highest goal. So this weird idea that the government can have nothing whatsoever to do with morality, well, of course they must: the government is that which we are all involved in, we are all in some way connected with governing. Reed asks us if Jesus would prefer that we give money ourselves or have the gov't do it. Well, again, this only works if you think governing is a sphere of human life disconnected from morals and the gospel. No, if, at the end of the day, we have given 20 dollars from our wallet, but voted for a system that strips them of food, housing, schooling, and fair wages, we haven't really given at all, have we?

He claims that "render unto Caesar's the things which are Caesar's" has absolutely nothing to do with taxes, but it does, in context, Jesus says that a coin, bearing the image of Caesar, belongs to the state. So yes, this does mean that states can raise taxes and as Christians, we are to pay them.

He finishes with another misunderstanding of what a parable is, about the workers in the vineyard. Again, a parable is not an economics lecture.

And, yes, this is not a joke, he finishes with a short video of Jesus taking a homeless man and giving him n olive oil market stall so he can WORK. A story that does not happen in the Bible. Instead, Jesus heals, gives, and calls for radical care and compassion. Lawrence "We Have no God but the Koch Brothers" Reed ought to take note.