It started when U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said on a cable news program  “This is Christmas time. We talk about good
Samaritans, the poor, the little baby Jesus in the cradle and all this stuff.
And then we say to the unemployed we won’t give you a check to feed your family.
That’s simply wrong.”

That got Bill O’Reilly’s dander up. The Factor host responding in a newspaper column:

Every fair-minded person should support government safety nets for people who
need assistance through no fault of their own.

But guys like McDermott
and his allies don’t make such distinctions. For them, the baby Jesus wants us
to provide, no matter what the circumstance.

But being a Christian, I
know that while Jesus promoted charity at the highest level, he was not
self-destructive.

The Lord helps those who help themselves. Does he not?

That provided perfect fodder O’Reilly satirist Stephen Colbert to weigh in on The Colbert Report — “agreeing” with Bill’s outrage over Mcdermott’s “flagrant injection of charity into the Christmas season,” adding that “It would be inconvenient to guys like us to repeat what Jesus actually said. For instance…rich people should sell all their possessions and then give the money to the poor.“

Colbert also took O’Reilly to task for implying that it was Jesus who said “The Lord helps those who help themselves”  when actually is was Ben Franklin.

From there Colbert went on to say “But as much as I’m a fan of Bill’s willfully-ignorant, borderline- heretical self justification, I gotta tip my hat to Bernie Goldberg who came on ‘The Factor’ call Jesus like he sees us.”

Cut to clip of Goldberg on The O’Reilly Factor: “As a matter of fact, you know, Jesus probably would be — except for one or two issues — a liberal Democrat if He were around today.”

Colbert went on to note that “Jesus was always flapping his gums about the poor but not once did he call for tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Romans even though they create all the good slave jobs. And, don’t forget, Jesus hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes — and no good conservative would be caught dead with tax collectors.”

O’Reilly responded on last night’s Factor in which he also took on Vice President Joe Biden for suggesting that failing to raise taxes on the rich is “morally troubling.” 

Conceding the Ben Franklin point and admitting that he’s not a theologian (though he does have 12 years of Catholic school under his belt), he responded to Colbert’s jabs by referring to a parable told by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.

O’Reilly: “Jesus tells the story of a man who gave three of his servants some money. Two of the servants went out and multiplied the cash, paying the man back with interest. But the third servant buried the money, doing nothing with it. That man was chastised…If Mr. Colbert takes the time to read that parable he might begin to understand that Judeo-Christian tenet of personal responsibility…Charity is a cornerstone of a good life. Mother Teresa is the best example of that. She didn’t quiz the poor about their circumstance. She helped everybody and that made her saintly. But Judeo-Christian tradition does not require blind largesse. We are not mandated to buy people gin or cocaine or pay someone else’s bills if they refuse to work. If you want to do that, you can in a free society but to force the responsible to pay for the irresponsible is immoral in my opinion…Our government does not have the right to seize anyone’s assets in pursuit of an impossible social nirvana.”

A actually waded into this area recently in a blog about Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz signing onto the Giving Pledge, the document put forth by Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren
Buffet to encourage fellow billionaires to commit publicly to giving away most
of their wealth the charitable causes.

In praising the generosity of Zuckerberg, Moskovitz and other rich folk willing to commit the bulk of their considerable resources to help others I wrote “That’s, of course, fantastic. True giving, not government confiscation. Chances
are these guys will be more wise and innovative about how to invest their own
money to help others than the politicians would be.”

That thought led one commenter to cite Jesus’ admonition about rendering unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s — the suggestion apparently being that it’s unbiblical to be oppose higher taxation.

So, all this, I guess, leads to the question of where Sen. Jesus Christ would stand on taxes and government spending. Would He be a tax-and-spend liberal Democrat focused on using the power of government to help the poor or a tax-cutting conservative Republican arguing for smaller government and personal responsibility?

Your thoughts?