davintosh

While listening to the radio one day last week I caught some snippets from a stump speech Barack Obama gave over the 4th of July weekend at a church in St. Louis. In that speech, he was talking about his Christian faith, and going into far more detail than I’d heard from him before. But there were a few things I heard that made me a little concerned, so I dug a little deeper to find out exactly what he said. And it’s not just me; Cal Thomas wrote an article for Fox News entitled, Obama Is Not A Christian. Strong words, and I can’t disagree with what he wrote.

I found a video of that speech on YouTube which confirmed my concerns about Barack’s newly ballyhooed Christian faith; it’s just plain old-time salvation by works, nothing more.

Here are his words from that speech:

My own life has been a journey that began decades ago on the south side of Chicago, when working as a community organizer with other churches helping to build struggling neighborhoods, I let Jesus Christ into my life. I learned that my sins could be redeemed, and if I placed my trust in Jesus that he could set me on a path to eternal life. When I submitted myself to his will, and I dedicated myself to discovering his truth and carrying out his works, it was that newfound faith that fortified my commitment to the work I was doing in the community. Because it taught me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling the Lord’s will unless I am doing the Lord’s work.

“… if I placed my trust in Jesus that he could set me on a path to eternal life” sure doesn’t sound like what I read in the Bible about salvation being found in Jesus alone. Ephesians 2:8-9 says that, “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Salvation and eternal life is God’s business. Any good works that we do don’t earn us eternal life, they are the result of our faith.

While it’s true that faith without works is dead (James 2:26), it’s also true that works alone are just as dead. And from what Obama said in this speech and in an interview with Cathleen Falsani for her book, “The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People,“ he seems to be depending on his good deeds to earn a spot in the heavenly realm when he dies. Like many others, Obama’s faith is something of a mishmash of Christianity and popular secularism, so in his quest for redemption he focuses his efforts on fixing poverty, hunger, homelessness and other social ills.

The problem is that being a political animal, he sees the answer to these ills being solved best through political action. And when he insists that those ills are “moral problems rooted both in societal indifference and individual callousness, in the imperfections — in the sin — of men”, it’s pretty plain that if he’s elected to the Presidency, any remedies for those ills are going to be directed at all of us.

It’s natural that a man would seek forgiveness for his sins, and it seems somewhat logical that a man would see the need to atone for his own sins. So most people seek to follow Jesus’ example in order to earn their way to heaven. The problem for most is they only make a cursory examination of Jesus’ ministry on earth. Looking closer at Jesus’ ministry reveals that while he eased the suffering of a lot of people by healing them and relieving them of demon possession, that was not his primary focus. A good example of this is found in Mark 1:23-39 depicting a day at the beginning of Jesus ministry. In this passage, he ends his first day in Capernaum by healing many who were sick and casting demons out of many others. The next day, he got up “very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.” When the disciples finally rolled out of bed, Jesus was nowhere to be found.

Mark’s Gospel doesn’t say it in so many words, but I’m sure the disciples were awakened by the sounds of a gathering crowd; a crowd who had heard about the previous nights’ events and had come to be healed or to have demons cast out. I can imagine the people clamoring for the help they knew they could receive from Jesus, and the disciples looking all over the place for him while trying to placate the crowd… “I’m sure he’ll be back any minute!” When they finally found him, “Everyone is looking for you.” Likely they were more than a little anxious to get him back so that he could start work again, because surely, that was what he had come for.

But Jesus had other plans; “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” There was still work to be done in Capernaum, and Jesus knew it. But instead of continuing with that work, he went “throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.” He knew there were others who were seeking relief, but if that’s what his ministry was all about, don’t you think he would’ve stayed? Christ didn’t ignore the sick and needy, but neither were they his primary focus. And shouldn’t we as Christians take a cue from what our Lord did while he was here in the flesh?

The Bible and most mainstream Christian denominations are pretty clear on the point that we as humans are at odds with God, and that we can’t earn His favor on our own.

And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:23-26 (ESV)

Many people, especially those of the liberal left salvation by works crowd, focus on the first part of this passage where Jesus apparently condemns the rich. But I think the emphasis is rightly placed on the last part where Jesus admits that it’s impossible for us, but nothing is impossible for God.

So, while Obama claims he’s a Christian and even acts like a Christian, without right belief, someone like him falls prey to the “it sounds right to me” religion; they have reasons for what they do and what they believe, but those reasons aren’t based on anything concrete. It all comes from within themselves. Like so many others, Obama doesn’t have the assurance that his faith will result in eternal life when he dies; as he says it, “I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. When I tuck in my daughters at night and I feel like I’ve been a good father to them, and I see that I am transferring values that I got from my mother and that they’re kind people and that they’re honest people, and they’re curious people, that’s a little piece of heaven.”

Is it presumptuous to believe what the Bible says about going to heaven, that trusting in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is sufficient to earn God’s favor and protection from God’s wrath? I don’t think so, and neither should Barack Obama.

The Democrats appear to be putting forth a lot of effort to woo votes from evangelicals and people of faith, a voting bloc that tends to lean right in most elections. But some faith or faith in the wrong things isn’t going to help Obama or any other Democrat to win votes. At best it comes across like pandering, with a little condescension thrown in. And that doesn’t work for me. I don’t care much for Obama’s opponent, John McCain, so this election is for me is a decision between the lesser of two evils; Obama falls way, way short. And I don’t think I’m alone in that assessment.

Tags: 2008, barack, christianity, election, faith, obama, president, salvation, works

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Faith & Worship, Politics, The Deep. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.