2015’s NATIONAL PRAYER BREAKFAST AND
THE PRESIDENTIAL HIGH HORSE
By James Wilson
President
Obama actually said some good things at the National Prayer Breakfast.
He
spoke of the many times he – as President – paused to reflect on Eleanor
Roosevelt’s famous and oft repeated prayer, “Keep us at tasks too hard for us
that we may be driven to Thee for strength.”
He said as well – and wonderfully – that, “Our job is not to ask God to
respond to our notion of truth – our job is to be true to Him, His word, and
His commandments. And we should assume
humbly that we’re confused and don’t always know what we’re doing and we’re
staggering and stumbling towards Him and have some humility in that
process.” The President adds that we
should – on that account – speak up against those who misuse God’s Name to
justify oppression. In this he is right
on the money; one can only wish he had left it there.
Reality
is what Barack Obama said applies uniquely to followers of Yahweh and His Son
Yeshua – Jesus. His word is revealed in
the Bible, not in our agenda – however praiseworthy that agenda may be – and
not all agendas pursued by Christians are of equal value. (The Rev. Fred Phelps and any number of
televangelists come to mind.) Repentant
believers know we are staggering and stumbling towards Him; our very staggering
excites His sympathy like no other gift.
His strength is indeed perfected (2 Corinthians 12:9) in our
weakness. There is only one God; He is
worshipped under multiple names, but He is knowable and separable from the list
of pretenders in terms of His attributes, His behavior, and His directives.
This
Yahweh – ‘Io, as He is known to ancient Hawaiians; Sila, as He is known to the
Inuit of Alaska and Siberia; and Yah, as he is to many Native Americans of the
Lower Forty-eight – creates for no other reason than love. He sacrifices His Son for the redemption of
all mankind – all mankind – and calls on His followers to live lives of
sacrifice for each other as the best path to abundant life. He freely forgives sin and calls on us to do
likewise. He never demands obedience –
although He has surely earned it – preferring to stand at the door and
knock. He says His revelation is not
about things to know but about a Person to know, and He declares we can have as
many do-overs in this world as we need but in the next the jury is in by the
time we arrive. He stands in polar
opposition to alternative revelations that deny freedom of choice in favor of
karma, or say we are the result of a cosmic accident – as it is in most eastern
religions. He does not call His people
to force conquests, conversions, or vengeance on those who do not respect Him
or His dictates – as it is in Islam.
Yahweh is as recognizable as He is unique.
Yet
the President – in a display of monumental ignorance at best – went on to call
out American Christians. “And lest we
get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember
that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds
in the name of Christ. In our home
country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was (sic) justified in the name of
Christ.” Reality is that Christians have exhibited aberrant behavior in the
cases cited by the President. We do
remain sinners and we continue in the need of repentance. But aberrant is not normative.
The far greater
reality is that nowhere can there be found – in the sacred texts or the
tradition of the Church – even the remotest justification for these practices. The Inquisition flew in the face of
Christianity – even as it was known in the Middle Ages – and the Crusades were
in response to Muslim aggression that took the Holy Land by bloody conquest and
later invaded Europe. In their conquests
and subjugation of infidels the Muslims were simply following the dictates of
their religion to set up their worldwide Caliphate by force.
Another greater reality
is that when Christians across American saw the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow
they rose as one to condemn these perversions.
When Abraham Lincoln called on his countrymen in 1863 to observe a day
of prayer, fasting, and humiliation over our many sins – and especially for
condoning slavery – the tide of war turned toward victory in less than two
months. The Voting Rights Act of 1965
came on the heels of the Christians – black and white – who marched in prayer
from Selma to Montgomery under the truncheons of the segregationists. Their suffering was broadcast by television
into the living rooms of ordinary Americans and the resulting groundswell of
support was immediate and tremendous.
Praise God for
the untold millions of Muslims who seek only to live in peace with their
neighbors and are even beginning – in places such as Norway – to speak out
against the brutality of Islamo-fascists.
Sadly enough history shows these pacific attitudes evaporate – or are
purged – wherever Islam attains majority strength.
Truth is we
Christians – and for that matter we Jews – serve a Lord whose clarion call has
not changed since He wrote Micah 6:8, “He has showed you, O man, what is
good. And what does the Lord require of
you? To act justly and to love mercy and
to walk humbly with your God.” There is
no legitimate space – the operant term being legitimate – in such doctrine for
honor killings, beheadings, or forcing our faith on others, much less burning
people alive. No other religion can make
such a claim – at least not without blushing, and certainly not in truth.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
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