What would God do?
August 31st, 2009 - 6:23 pm
How is religion faring in the public square? Three videos after the Read More illustrate what is and isn’t cool under the Obama administration. Do they constitute “a victory of hope over fear” or “a triumph of hope over experience”?
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It’s just too bad they could not have gotten Rev Wright to speak at that God and Country Rally. That would have made it truly bipartisan.
For months and months I had thought that the idea that Obama was anti-American was simply hyperbole. It’s taken awhile to sink in, but I’m now quite convinced that that is very close to the truth.
I am my brother’s keeper. Therefore I will confiscate money from some of my brothers in order to give it to my other brothers.
Being my brother’s keeper means I can rob and shame the many in order to show that I care for the few!
“Why was not this costly perfume sold and the money given to the poor?” Judas Iscariot
“He only said this not because he cared for the poor, but because he was in charge of the treasury and often took from it.” John the disciple
Satan is very persuasive. There he goes, enlisting the help of the simple but well meaning in his long-running scheme to steal human freedom. He will use the religious for his own ends every chance they give him.
Wilde had it that 2nd marriages were the “triumph of hope over experience.” Most of us here at BC were never under any illusions in re: BHO.
Obama’s faith is on display
He shows it in the manner
In which he says that we all may
Display the Muslim banner
But God forbid that air force jets
Show honor by our flyers
Reminding those who have regrets
For voting for these liars
That in November 2010
You’ll get another chance, sir
To run them out of town and then
That horrid boil we’ll lance, sir
The finish of Obama’s term
Will see him isolated
With impotence he’ll surely squirm
As his lame duck is plated
Then we’ll regain our country, pal
And we can stop our wailin’
As we vote in that strong, tough gal
The beauteous Sarah Palin
God’s gift to God also downplayed the National Day of Prayer this year by issuing a paper proclamation rather than hosting an event at the White House:
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs defended the Obama administration’s plan to recognize the National Day of Prayer on Thursday with a paper proclamation, rather than a public event at the White House.
“We’re doing a proclamation, which I know that many administrations in the past have done,” Gibbs told reporters Tuesday.
But that is a major change from the way the day was recognized during eight years of the Bush administration, when prominent evangelical and other spiritual leaders were invited to attend an event in the East Room.
“Prayer is something that the president does every day,” Gibbs said. “Privately, he’ll pray as he does every day.”
The event comes as reporters continue asking the White House about the Obama family’s search for a church in Washington.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/05/obama-mark-national-day-prayer-privately/
Rene Girard writes that concern for victims is a crucial teaching of Christianity. Jesus unmasks the powers-that-be who are only too willing to conduct a lynching to preserve their game. The passion and crucifixion of Jesus unmask these powers and their game that have been with us and “hidden from the foundation of the world.”
But the powers-that-be have figured out how to game the system. They have exploited Christianity’s near-ultimate concern for victims, posing as victims to leverage unlimited Christian guilt and charity, even to the point of leveraging Christians to believe that they (Christians) are engaged in a final fulfilling of the teachings of Christ in ministering to these “victims.” There is no end to this game, except the one that ends in a new scapegoating and lynching, this time perhaps of Christians, many of whom will provide the rope, no doubt.
Satan was a murderer from the beginning. Whoever perpetrates violence against innocent victims is his tool. Whether Satan is a being or metaphysical process . . . who knows? But the violence against victims is real and ongoing worldwide, as is the new gaming of the system by the new “victims.”
As for Ted Kennedy, I say with e. e. cummings:
“and what I want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death.”
Again we are indebted to Wretchard for finding and presenting in dramatic juxtaposition two items that clarify the magnitude of betrayal being perpetrated in the grand bait and switch.
In 1987 I purchased a copy of the Qur’an, thinking it was time to begin learning about the religion that seemed to be at the root of the vast majority of terrorist attacks going on around the world as far back as I could remember.
I have learned, yes, that the holy verses call for the faithful to show mercy and generosity -
to other believers.
Seeking out internet fora moderated by learned Muslim clerics, with questions and statements posted by Muslims from around the world, I have learned that the prescribed punishment for the apostate is execution. Also for infidels attempting to convert a faithful Muslim to any other faith. These punishments may be tempered by a sufficiently compassionate ruler.
Most of the things I have learned from studying translations of the Qur’an and commentary by learned academics can easily get a body fired to repeat them in conversation in the workplace. Those who have not bothered to study Islam – who have done nothing beyond passively taking in the pap that our useless news organizations present – simply refuse to believe any information about Islam that contradicts their fragile delusion of Islam as “a religion of peace.”
Peace is of course allowed under Islamic rule.
That’s worth repeating: under Islamic RULE.
Primarily as a result of my employment by various universities and Silicon Valley software manufacturers, I have had the privilege of knowing a number of Muslims. Without exception, those I have known have been gracious, gentle, civil, cosmopolitan, well-educated… in a word: Westernized. This is because they are among the fraction of the greater Muslim population that self-selected emigration away from their own culture to a NON-Muslim culture.
I don’t doubt that there are many tens of millions of similar Muslims in their respective countries about the world. But I cannot dismiss the ideas I have seen in the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Islamic websites which present information for English-speaking Muslims, and for people interested in the religion.
It is not possible for this writer to reconcile the dramatic contradistinctions between the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and those of Mohammed the Prophet.
Anyone who would disparage his own Grandma so he could look better by comparison would not hesitate to use religion and God for purely mechanical advantage. He compares his efforts to God in deciding matters of life and death, and to Jesus in wanting to build the economy not on sand (boom and bust) but on rock (i.e. a mountain of debt).
He seems the epitome of the hypocrite of the gospel who prays and fasts in public for the sake of his own reputation, rather than as an address to God.
He is canny concerning the mechanics of guilt and atonement. He campaigned to a flawed and tragic nation: “this time it can be different.”
You can unload your race and class guilt or prove yourself innocent by voting for the black man! Yes you can.
In this he appeals to other self styled prophets of social “just us” who need to do penance for their class guilt through rituals of patronizing charity to the less fortunate. (But with other people’s money.)
Beyond this audience, however, his ambitious words have the sound of clanging brass. His moral over-reaching is all pride. He doesn’t long for salvation himself, but needs to play the savior to others; he is America’s big brother and everyone’s keeper. He doesn’t know how hollow and even blasphemous this sounds. I hope he keeps it up.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” was Cain sarcastically asking if he kept his brother locked in his pen. It seems that quite a few Washingtonians want to be their “brother’s keeper” in that sense. Considering the hordes that voted for them, I guess quite a few of us don’t worry about the implications of that, so long as we get our goodies.
Why does the United States recruit and commission chaplains for the Armed Forces? While it is true that there are Jewish and Moslem chaplains the majority are Christian. There is a Buddhist and a Hindu organization on the list of sponsors but I do not know if they have any active duty chaplains. It would not surprise me if the administration agreed with Christopher Hitchens and sought to remove the chaplains over time. My prediction is that this will be done in a multi-staged campaign. First push to broaden the recruitment criteria to increase opportunities for Moslem, Wiccan and other under represented communities of faith. Second seek out and promote stories of people who feel pressured by those of the traditional faith while in uniform or of any inappropriate conduct by any chaplains or service-members tied to a Jewish or Christian identity. Third for efficiency and uniformity and to save money merge the services chaplain corps, as well as other staff units, and keep them in central locations. Finally remove them from the uniformed status.
Many years ago as the only Jewish officer aboard my ship I was appointed the Jewish lay leader. The position came with a bottle of wine. That briefly made me popular but when I made it clear that the bottle would remain unopened the interest in religion on the part of the crew ended. The collateral duty came with another collateral duty attached. In a breathtaking expression of institutional discrimination the command decided that as a Jew I would have to know something about retailing and therefor they put me in charge of selling the cruise book, which was like a high school yearbook for the deployment. The ship’s chaplain was a character, a full Commander and a Lutheran he had personality. One day we were chatting and I knew a little about theology and church history from my undergraduate studies. The next day the chaplain told me that he had read some of Luther after talking to me and said he hadn’t actually looked at it about 20 years. “Amazing stuff isn’t it?” My fondest memory was when the fundamentalist chaplain assigned to the Marine Rifle Company for the Battalion Landing Team brought his entire flock up to the ship’s foc’sle to meet me. It took some delicacy to respond to the earnest private from someplace so far back in the hills that they had to pump in sunlight when he asked me, “But Sir, why did you kill him?”
Jim Wallis, the guy featured in the MSNBC Youtube clip, is a perfect fit as Obama’s “spiritual advisor.”
He has communist roots going way back, beginning with his student days at Michigan State University as president of the SDS. At the end of the Vietnam War, he was quoted as saying, “I don’t know how else to express the quiet emotion that rushed through me when the news reports showed that the U.S. had finally been defeated in Viet Nam.”
I’m sure everyone here remembers the Students for a Democratic Society. They were the youth arm of the League for Industrial Democracy, the American counterpart of the Fabian Socialist Society of Great Britain. These organizations seem like quaint relics of the past but their goals of destroying capitalism live on in people like Obama and Wallis. Originally, they were atheistic but apparently they’ve decided to infiltrate Christianity instead and infect the Church with their poison by substituting the welfare state for the Kingdom of God.
James Wallis’s magazine, Sojourners, supports all the leftist causes – social justice for the poor, global warming, the global war on AIDS, the Castro regime, etc., etc. – and includes, as one of the contributing editors, James Cone, the Black Liberation Theology guy who was such an inspiration for Jeremiah Wright.
Obama’s “spiritual advisor” is a snake. The long march through the institutions has not overlooked the church.
11. Lifeofthemind:
“It took some delicacy to respond to the earnest private from someplace so far back in the hills that they had to pump in sunlight when he asked me, “But Sir, why did you kill him?”
Oh my gosh! That’s a really funny condescending story! You could get a job with the administration.
12. Karen Yvonne:
Ditto Karen, every time I hear Wallis speak I can’t help but think of Ripley’s little girl (Newt) caught up in that wall of Alien slime.
Matthew 7: 15-16 – “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?”
Yeah, some do…
Obama has always wanted to be viewed as kindred to Abraham Lincoln. Sadly he’s looking more and more like an American Robert Mugabe.
Kierkegaard’s take on it: what is meant to have the effect of truth must not be true.
What would God do? Selective flood, I’d hope.
The contrast between Lincoln and Obama couldn’t be more stark and neither could it be more reflective of the times we live in.
For Lincloln “All men are created equal”, that no man could have dominion over another, actually meant something. Not because he thought it might but because “nature’s God” required it.
Obama tells us that “Some men are more equal than others” and I decide because I’m POTUS. There is no higher authority.
In his 2nd inaugural Lincoln said “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces…” Obama tells us that it’s not so strange after all as long as it’s done with “compassion” and for the “right reasons” and by the “right people.”
Lincoln and Obama are as opposite in Weltanschauung as people can be.
Remember, Peter, how Obama told us what was up so audaciously in his inaugural address? He said, “. . . all men are equal,” which was, in and of itself, a declaration of war on freedom.
Whenever president Obama refers to his Christian faith I have to ask, What Christian Faith?
The BLT blend with nation of Islam doctrine preached by Rev Wright? That is not Christianity. It is not even Islam. Does the president believe in Christ? Or is he lying? Telling untruths to distort the image of America to one that will, in his mind, be more palatable to Islamic nations. the signals are too many, the nuance lost in a sea of inflection and double entendre.
The message president Obama, is clear.
if you are christian, your’s is a faith of convenience. If you have a personal faith, your’s is religion of expedience. And so I ask again the question that has remained unanswered since you first entered the Illinois legislature. What do you believe?
LOTM
Your scenarios seem likely, but will run into a unavoidable Christian concept: The priesthood of the believer. The troops will become their own chaplains. And Ill warrant they’ll do better than some.
Justice Dept. to Recharge Enforcement of Civil Rights
The Obama administration is planning a revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies that disproportionally affect minorities.
Times Topics: Eric H. Holder Jr.
WRT post #22:
Strikes me that the push to emphasize enforcement of civil rights policies might possibly be based on an actual sense of “righting past imbalances.”
Still, there are monumental questions as to whether (a) the perceived imbalances are based on intent, and (b) to the extent that they are real, a better society can be brought closer by intrusive, coercive, and necessarily discriminatory government action.
To me this is a reminder that there’s been for decades a theory hung over our culture that insists:
(1) The only way people can be rich is that they stole wealth that belonged to someone else;
(2) There is a vast amount of wealth, enough for EVERYONE to be rich if only it weren’t being stolen by bad people;
(3) If anything goes wrong, it HAS to be someone’s fault;
(4) The person responsible for something that goes wrong can always be identified; and
(5) taking money from someone who has a lot of it is perfectly okay (see item #1) especially if it is given to someone who is NOT rich and has suffered some injury, injustice, indignity, or inconvenience (see item #3.)
In other words, our culture has taken up the magical thinking of the most primitive tribesmen of the rain forests of Borneo and New Guinea. In those forests, a common belief system posits that all sickness and disease are the result exclusively of curses placed on the sufferer by another human, who can be divined by a shaman. Once that person is identified, the punishment is death. Of course, the victim may die anyway, but justice has been done. The continued worsening and death of the victim even after the execution of the one identified as the offender merely show how potent the original curse must have been.
Then there is the “Cargo Cult” – the quasi-religion that sprung up in response to isolated tribes’ early contacts in the 1930′s and 40′s with representatives of “modern” civilization. They had come the form of great gleaming silver birds carrying outlandish people with white skins and fabulous wealth.
A number of tribes began worshiping and trying to summon the return of those Gods, setting up totems of the birds in tiny clearings. Shamans to this day perform elaborate ceremonies where a few coins from a supplicant are placed in an enamel bowl, shaken and stirred with much ritual and smoking of sacred herbs and murmuring of sacred names of sacred spirits.
In a while the supplicant who brought the original coins is told to look in a particular palm or among the titanic roots of some forest giant, and – Mirabile Dictu – there are some more coins! Or a hatchet, or a steel knife, or a bit of machine-woven cloth.
What the hell, at least the shamans are learning to precisely calculate the worth of the coins in relation to the Cargo they plant for the switch. Otherwise, the whole thing would have long ago fallen apart.
Maybe we should pray our own people could be so smart.
Mad Fiddler,
(1) The only way people can be rich is that they stole wealth that belonged to someone else;
(3) If anything goes wrong, it HAS to be someone’s fault;
(4) The person responsible for something that goes wrong can always be identified; +2 more.
There is a name for the priests of this modern Cargo Cult. They are called Lawyers.
RCM,
As anyone who knows me even from my presence on this blog would be aware the issue is not my opinion of non-rated deck seamen or straight leg infantry privates. If I was not concerned about being tossed into moderation and if this was my house I would simply give the gentleman’s reply suggesting that you attempt a ballistically improbable form of self gratification. Your slap at me does bring up an issue that is covered in a following thread, that of PC control of speech. My objection to your reply is that it was not really directed at me. It was more an effort to subvert a genuine witticism with an ad hominem before an audience. That is to say it was a form of preening to establish control over a narrative. In doing so it was no different on your part then are the acts of those on the Left that I know, from your comments here, you do not wish to be associated with. My point is that I know that you are better than that.
What would have been a more effective response? After all I am capable of giving offense and making an error in fact, judgement or taste. You could have directed a response directly and not displayed to the audience an effort to lower my standing by associating me with the administration. You could have said “As a Marine )or the son nephew or uncle of one), or as a person from Appalachia, I found your reference hurtful or misdirected.” The only reply I could give to that would be “My regrets, no offense was intended.”
My hope would be that you and others would find in my story an opening for your own tales of encounters with “The Other” or memories of equally clueless, or equally of surprisingly sophisticated, junior officers and country enlistees.
“Strikes me that the push to emphasize enforcement of civil rights policies might possibly be based on an actual sense of “righting past imbalances.””
—
In Holder and Obama’s cases, this includes imbalances in their psyches, and deficiencies in their character.
LOTM:
I’m 2/3 of the way through James Carroll’s “Constantine’s Sword”. A worthy read for all. Written through a Catholic prism, it is a thorough self examination and must read for all Christians.
As a descendant of ‘New Christian’ Jews, it confirmed much of what I thought I understood about the relationship between post-exile Jews and post-Constantine Christianity.
Yadah Yahweh
#17 bob – What would God do, indeed? I assume that you refer to the Satanic cult that masquerades as the “Religion of Peace” when you mention a selective flood.
First of all, according to the Bible that would break the covenant with Noah. Secondly, this reminds me of the old story of the devout old lady that refused rescue from a flood three times, saying each time “God will provide” – and eventually died, and rounded on God saying “Why didn’t you help?” only to get the reply “I sent two boats and a helicopter; what more do you want?”
God has already done it. In fact, She did it fifteen billion years ago, or thereabouts, when She locked the fires of Hell into the heart of matter, and so arranged things that eventually sentience would arise. Our side has the cleansing Fire in its hands. All that is missing is the will to let it free.
“And the smoke of their burning shall rise unto heaven”.
“”"” The contrast between Lincoln and Obama couldn’t be more stark and neither could it be more reflective of the times we live in. “”"”"
Nothing illustrates the stark contrast between the two men than this Lincoln quote:
“Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
“
17/Herb. Definitely. As one sees here at BC, people of like minds will support each other. It does make me ponder rebinding my prayer book so it resembles a cookbook, just in case.