@Rhakim could you go into detail regarding Jesus's strong position of nonviolence, which is untenable for authoritarian rule?
Martin Luther King Jr. was an amazing proponent of this belief in actual life, if he hadn't been murdered I believe he would have eventually written a book on it.
I won't write the full essay the subject requires because it deserves at least a good 15,000 words or so and I'm not certain it would bear fruit here. But the entire New Testament is imbued with the principles of nonviolence, from "Love your neighbor as yourself" to "Do to others as you would have them do to you" to "Love your enemies" to "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" to "Turn the other cheek" to "Do not judge" to "Put down the sword, for all who live by the sword will die by the sword" to the passage I already quoted, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant."
I could quote hundreds more verses that add context to the same message, but it all goes back to "Love your neighbor as yourself", which is repeated 7 times in the New Testament and repeatedly highlighted as the central command of Christian living under which all other commands belong. No one would kill themselves out of love, thus you are forbidden to kill your neighbor. Only a sick or delusional individual can say that they would kill an unwilling victim out of love for that person. And Jesus makes clear that even your enemy, even convicted criminals, are still your neighbor who you are commanded to love.
I'd recommend you read some books on the subject, just search for "Jesus" and "nonviolence" and take a look at what is available. I could mention "The Politics of Jesus" by John Howard Yoder, "Jesus Christ Peacemaker" by Terrance Rhynne, "Nonviolence: The Revolutionary Way of Jesus" by Preston Sprinkle, "Jesus and Nonviolence" by Walter Wink, "The Moral Vision of the New Testament" by Richard B. Hays, "Christ and Violence" by Ron Sider, etc. There are many many more than that.
If Jesus didn't want any of his followers to be a part of any power structure what would Jesus think about King David, King Solomon and the Israel monarchy that God created/established? Would Jesus be against that?
God explicitly told the Israelites in 1 Samuel 8 that they should NOT have a king. He gave them a king against his own better advice, and prophesized that a king would lord over them in a way they wouldn't like. Remember that? This is actually a great read because it shows God listing all the ways in which authoritarian power structures are abused and why you shouldn't seek them:
So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”
But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”
Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”
Sounds like God has a pretty shytty view of kings, eh? Note that God never says, "This is what kings do when they become corrupted", he is straight up saying, "This is what kings do." God himself apparently believes that authoritarian power cannot exist without abuses.
The entire history of the Israeli monarchy confirmed God's prediction. Saul was a disaster who tried to have his own successor killed on multiple occasions and ended up straight warring against him. David was the ideal choice, "A man after God's own heart", and yet committed horrific abuses and was judged by God to the point of having his own son killed. Solomon was the wisest man on Earth and yet totally lost in rule, building a harem of 500 women including taking multiple foreign wives, stockpiling immense wealth, and eventually going to war with his own sons and seeing the entire Kingdom of Israel fall apart under his rule. After that the Israel was permanently divided and, on both sides, the Old Testament record mostly tells how shytty 4 of out 5 kings were and why Israel and Judah both dissolved into a worse and worse state until God gave up on both as political entities.
Not exactly a shining endorsement for human political power. I don't think that every human norm from the Old Testament carries over to the New Testament, but "kings are a terrible way to run a Godly society" was clearly already there.
Also, what would Jesus have thought about the Israelite kingdom waging brutal war against the Canaanites? How could God be ok with waging war against the Canaanites and I'm guessing Jesus not be ok with it?
The New Covenant is not the Old Covenant. Was Jesus okay with granting divorce or polygamy? Was Jesus okay with separating the people of God based on ethnic descent? Was Jesus okay with us hating our enemies? Did Jesus tell Christians to follow the Old Testament practices of animal sacrifice, cleanliness and food laws, the sabbath, and did he condone executing those who failed to obey? What did Jesus think of executing a woman for adultery? All of those things were commanded in the Old Testament, but were rejected in Christianity, along with much else.
I mean, just look at how war was waged in the Old Testament, with the forces of Israel sometimes being directed to slaughter every single male child of the conquered land down to the smallest baby, but take the virgin girl children as their wives (apparently by force). Do you think Jesus would be okay with Christians doing that?
Jesus told the Jewish leaders that God had given them certain laws and commands "Due to their hardness of heart" (Matthew 19:8), but the Old Testament prophets had themselves prophesized that a new era was coming with a new covenant, under which God would make the people's hearts soft. (Ezekiel 11:19; Ezekiel 36:26-27; Jeremiah 31:31-34) It is very clear that the ethic of Christianity shocked the most rigid of the Jews while appealing to to the hearts of the masses. The character of God did not change between the ages, and all the directions in which Jesus took the community of God were foretold already by the prophets, but obedience looked very very different after Jesus came into the picture.
Finally, how do you think Jesus felt about the flood during Noah's time killing everyone except Noah and his family? Would Jesus have sanctioned the actions God took throughout the Old Testament?
The actions of God are not the actions of man. Personally, I think the flood is told as a parable, not as an actual historic event, just like the rest of Genesis 1-9 (which is why, for example, two different and somewhat contradictory accounts of Creation can be told in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 without any apparent problem). But even if it really did happen, God in his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence is able to take actions that we faulty, imperfect humans are not. In fact, as Paul says, one of the reasons we as Christians do not take power and violence ourselves is because we have faith that God has it all under control.
