To be candid, I am not one of those Christians with a visceral disliking of the President. I believe we can't "pray FOR rulers" and talk AGAINST them. That being said, when the President steps out of his office into commentary on faith at a prayer gathering he engages a different kind of conversation...and response.
ENTER the President at the National Prayer Breakfast this week. In case you missed it, after criticizing ISIS with appropriate remarks, the president said: "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."
PRAYER BREAKFAST CHRISTIANS ON A HIGH HORSE?
Here is where the President started drifting.
First, do American Christians need to "get off their high horse" in their response to Islamic barbarism? At that prayer gathering Mr President was worried. That's not a high horse it's high anxiety!
Obama is actually spiritually tone deaf. The people he spoke to didn't exist in that room.
Second, does he still believe Islam does not have a problem? For 6 years Obama has forcefully tried to separate Islam from what terrorists do, in the name of Islam. He has a sweet spot for Islam and sees the Jihadists as frustrated extremists who have been made so, largely because of America. To him the terrorists are giving beautiful Islam a bad name.
ISIS is bad he says, but this week he associated these atrocities with Christian history, sighting the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition.
CHRISTIAN AMERICA AND THE INQUISITION?
"Crusades?" Really? Didn't that happen 700 years before America was formed? But that does not matter to the guest speaker.
Let's explore this linkage in an Obama wired brain:
the Islamic quest for a Caliphate is what Christians did once also. Just like ISIS is trying to create, by conquest, a unified Islamic State, those prayer breakfast Christians tried to create the same thing. Oh how you forget. Yes you, my friend, are guilty of the Medieval Popes' Crusades and the Inquisitions.
This point must have really hit home to the crowd, three-fourths of whom are Protestant and in fact would have been persecuted by the Inquisition. Times have changed and so has the Catholic church. Can you imagine how brain dead you would have to be to remind your Catholic friend about his culpability in the Spanish Inquisition?
THIS is the progressive left psychology many of you have been warning me about. The President helped me. Honestly. I had an awakening.
SHAME ON YOU!
The "Progressive Left" professors have been shaming American kids through the University and education system for over two decades. The Left points out everything wrong with America and nothing right. By shaming our history, we lose our patriotic love for country and along with that the balanced truth about our history.
The left shames the whites about slavery.
The hetrosexual is shamed for not being "open" to gay marriage.
Feminism shames men for wanting girls to be girls.
The productive people with money are shamed into giving more and more back "of their fair share", as Obama puts it.
And this week the left shames Christians for their connection to the Crusades, Inquisition and Slavery with its aftermath in Jim Crow laws.
And now I am ashamed I didn't see this earlier. The Left Progressives by feeding the young and the discontented with a narrative of "resentment" toward America and its Christian roots, have been simultaneously shaming all the opposition into submission.
WHAT ABOUT THOSE CRUSADES?
Bishop E.W. Jackson said last night on FOX NEWS in response to the President: “I would remind the president that the Crusades began in 1096 as a response to Islamic aggression, and the fact was they had conquered the Holy Land and they were oppressing eastern Christians. And there was a response to that, so if the President is even gonna cite that as an example, then he ought to get his history complete.”
Obama didn't stop with comparing today's Jihadists to Christian sins of 800 to 1,000 years ago. He spoke about Jim Crow laws. True. Here are some high carb fat facts:
1. There were Christians in the South fighting to defend the abominable institution of slavery and they resisted Lincoln's post war Reconstruction.
2. There were Christian abolitionists in the North who agitated the nation into war.
3. There was a Christian named Wilberforce who eradicated slavery in England.
4. Christianity on the whole is history's most civilizing agent and the greatest foundation for a free and prosperous society.
Should THAT not be the message a Christian leader makes on an occasion such as this?
By reminding us of what happened 900 years ago or with Jim Crow, Obama is saying in effect - you prayer breakfast Christians of all people should be humble in "assuming you have all the answers" or a direct line to divine revelation.
Man. Talk about edifying the brothers at a national prayer gathering. If you were a guest hearing this (as many world leaders were) would you be inspired by the President's faith in the Gospel? I'd sooner have hired Jack Kevorkian as a wedding DJ than have this President marketing America or the power of faith.
WHY CHURCHILL IS HAVING A RESURGENCE
The WEEK had this to say: "Churchill, in summoning the British people during the existential threat of World War II, didn't dwell on their faults — in fact, he talked about defending "Christendom" and western civilization. As Joe Scarborough said today, Obama's comments are "the equivalent of FDR, when giving a speech against Nazi Germany, going, 'Now, of course, what we did to the Indians...really bad....so we really have no room to talk about what Hitler is doing."
So the President linked the misdeeds of Christianity past with the misdeeds of Islam today. And where does he fit in this continuum? He is not numbered among those pompous Christians in that room. He is the enlightened humble statesman.
By linking the worst of Christianity past with the atrocities of Islam today you get a glimpse into the Obama worldview about religion and faith and public policy.
IS ISLAM IN TRANSITION?
See the problem? Forget theology. Forget the fact that Catholicism had a Reformation and Islam needs one. Does this President see the militant threat for what it is? No. He sees Islam in transition and Christian (right wing) America he sees as its haughty critic. Hence his history sermonette this week.
He does not understand the issue. Islam desperately needs its Reformation and no Martin Luther has stepped up to the plate. Until l that happens the link between the radical and the Koran is unchecked and the threat increases.
The equating of radical Islam to Christianity is an error in metaphor and policy.
This isn't a right wing / left wing editorial response. It's a moment of clarity into how this President sees the world's single greatest threat in a nuclear age. Praying his successor is less Neville Chamberlin and more Churchillian.
TO BE FAIR TO MY PRESIDENT
Let's not misquote the President. He did say this: "Our job is not to ask that God respond to OUR NOTION OF TRUTH -- our job is to be true to Him, His word, and His commandments.... And that means we have to speak up against those who would misuse His name to justify oppression, or violence, or hatred with that fierce certainty. No God condones terror. No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives, or the oppression of those who are weaker or fewer in number."
That's a good speech ending - but not entirely true. This president DOES act on his "notion of truth" and has advanced it in the gay agenda and policy toward not arming Jordan, removing troops when they were needed in Iraq to keep ISIS from coming into existence, and his attitude toward working with Israel right now. He manages our 18 trillion dollar deficit based on his notion of truth. If nothing else, this leader has very high opinions of his notions and an equal consistency in their pursuit.
It's "his notions" that are problematic.
May God give him great wisdom as he sets the stage for the next act of American history, and may we find a leader who can speak at a prayer breakfast and inspire the world to know Jesus! Hopefully someone that actually likes America.
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