Good morning,

It is quite fashionable to describe Jesus as someone who hated wealth. Fashionable, but completely unfounded. What Jesus did say, and do, is actually pretty inconvenient to the modern Woke Jesus crowd.

I’ll get to that at the end of today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Friday, November 5, 2021
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Biden Vax Mandate Moves To  1/4/2022

• President Joe Biden has given companies until Jan. 4, 2022, to impose a “vaccine” requirement on their employees or face severe fines. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will begin inspecting companies for compliance, and fines can range from $13,653 to $136,532. 
      
• Please show me where the Constitution explicitly gives the executive branch the ability to impose such a mandate. I’ll wait.
      
• In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican-dominated Legislature have refused to address the situation – despite thousands of Texans now facing federally-mandated unemployment.
      
• As Brandon Waltens reports, the Republican Party of Texas has renewed its call for a special session.
      

• “Tennessee has already completed a three-day session to address mandates, and Florida is calling a five-day session later this month. Texas must help lead the way,” said the party’s state chairman, Matt Rinaldi. “We know our elected officials are tired of being in Austin, but there is no reason why the Texas Legislature can’t get this done in as little as four days.”
      

• Newly elected State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) is calling on Gov. Abbott to “immediately” convene a special session to address the issue. “Sadly, there is no vaccine against tyranny,” Harrison posted to social media. “Liberty is at stake and Texas should be leading the fight. ”

• Actually, there is a vaccine against tyranny. Our founding fathers in 1776 (and in 1836) utilized it quite effectively.

Whistleblower: CRT At DFPS

• According to a whistleblower, Texas’ Department of Family and Protective Services has been using Critical Race Theory in their training materials. That assertion was made yesterday by Republican gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines. Check out Sydnie Henry’s report.
     
• A required condition of employment with DFPS, a state-funded agency with more than 13,000 employees, is a course entitled “Knowing Who You Are.” This course is chalk-full of Marxist ideology, and employees are required to agree with acknowledging institutional racism, white privilege, and the inherent victimhood of minorities. The agency sits under the direct control of Gov. Greg Abbott.
      
• The candidate has already sparked change at DFPS. Earlier this year, his campaign unearthed a website funded by the agency that promoted child-mutilation and transgender ideology. Amidst an angry backlash from Texans, that website was taken down.
   
• Huffines’ assertions about the whistleblower’s report have been independently verified by Texas Scorecard in conversations with DFPS employees working in different regions of the state. They say the courses exist as Mr. Huffines and the whistleblower describe them.

Austin Socialist Announces Congressional Bid

• Austin City Councilman Greg Casar – a self-proclaimed member of the Democratic Socialists of America – is officially trying to take a newly opened seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, which spans from Austin to San Antonio. Jacob Asmussen has the details.

Two Opposing Cyrier

• Two candidates have announced campaigns to challenge State Rep. John Cyrier (R-Lockhart) in the 2022 Republican primary election for Texas House District 17. Jeramy Kitchen breaks down the race.
   
• A close ally of House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont), Cyrier was first elected in a 2015 special election and serves as chairman of the Sunset Advisory Commission.
   
• Tom Glass and Jen Bezner will be challenging Cyrier’s record in the March 1 GOP primary for a district that was significantly changed in redistricting.  Bezner took issue with the lack of action by the Texas House of Representatives on Texas GOP legislative priorities, while Glass is focusing on the federal violation of Texans’ rights and executive overreach.

• On today’s edition of The Headline, Brandon Waltens will chat with Jeramy Kitchen and Jacob Asmussen about the latest news, cover the numerous legislative retirements and resignations and touch on Tuesday’s election results. Watch them live at 11 a.m., or check out the podcast and video archive later today.

Candidates And Campaign Loans, An Explainer

• With the political spending season rapidly approaching, Sydnie Henry explains why political campaigns take loans from themselves and their donors.  
   
• According to Transparency USA, “Loans are still public record, and their support is certainly not a secret. But because loans don’t show up in donation totals, lending activity won’t land them on the top of any Texas donor list. For someone who is interested in contributing to a race in a significant way, while keeping their public profile lower, loans are an appealing option.”

Looking for a speaker to address your club, organization, or community group? Texas Scorecard would love to be there! Learn more by clicking “request a speaker.”

Friday Reflection:
Self-Dealing Rulers’ Ill-Gotten Wealth

It’s become all the rage in Christian circles to present the Messiah as a woke social justice warrior. To lean into this crowd-friendly lie, pastors routinely misquote Scripture and take words out of context to show Jesus as a card-carrying Marxist. It certainly appeals to our self-centered sense of greed, but it rejects the real life of Jesus.

One can only make the case that Jesus was opposed to wealth by completely and willfully ignoring both of the words of the Bible and the reality of the era in which He lived. 

To make their case, the Woke Jesus crowd shoves a well-known story out of context by ignoring a simple word. The story you hear is that a rich young man approached Jesus and was told he had to give away everything to go to heaven. … Ok, you know the rest.

One word, often ignored, provides crucial context. That word is “ruler.” The Bible describes the young man as a “rich young ruler.” This is critical. This wasn’t the son of a businessman; no, this is someone whose family profited off the governing mistreatment of the people at the Temple – the place where Jesus would later overturn the tables of those men preying on the people with the full approval of the governing elite. 

For a modern approximation, think of Hunter Biden. You know … a guy with no marketable skills or talent, yet whose family is insanely wealthy because daddy has been immorally amassing wealth through political largesse his entire adult life.

Like Hunter Biden, wealth and political status were intertwined for the rich young man in the New Testament story. This young man wasn’t a ruler because he was rich, he was rich because he was from a family of self-serving rulers. Self-serving? He was told to give away everything that served him and his lifestyle, and he apparently chose not to.

For those who push the “Jesus hates wealth” line, there is also the subtle problem of geographic context.

On this count, I highly recommend Jerry Bower’s excellent book, “The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics.” In it, Bower explains that Jesus’ condemnations of wealth come only in southern Israel – in the environs of the capital city, Jerusalem. There, all the personal wealth is concentrated in the political leaders. Like Washington, D.C., Jerusalem was a company town – and the business was fleecing the citizenry.

As Bower notes, Jesus only criticizes wealth when He is in and around Jerusalem – and not around the centers of trade and industry.

Consider the city of Zippori, in northern Israel. Archeological ruins dating to the 200 years before and after Jesus’ birth show a very wealthy city – rivaling Jerusalem and most anywhere else in the Roman empire. It is just a few miles from Nazareth, but Jesus never criticizes the wealth there.

Lastly, we know also that Jesus was surrounded and supported by some very wealthy people. The sisters Mary and Maratha were exceedingly wealthy, owning a home that could accommodate Jesus and the disciples. Toward the end of the Gospels, we find this same Mary owning perfume worth a year’s salary. This wealthy, influential woman was later allowed to be a witness to His resurrection.

Again and again, we find Jesus was surrounded by, and comfortable with, wealth – but it was wealth generated by people who worked hard and served others. His condemnations of wealth were universally directed at the ill-gotten gains of people abusing their positions of trust and power.

Like Jesus, we must absolutely condemn those men and women today who use the power of government to enrich themselves. But, also like Jesus, we should celebrate those who have done well by providing valuable goods and services to their peers. 

Quote-Unquote

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

– Sam Adams​