Rev. James also throws a little politics in with his preaching and any man who gives Chicago Mayor James Daley a hard time can't be all bad. Of course, I gotta admit I wouldn't be posting a preaching video instead of writing about politics if Barack Obama wasn't looking like such a sure bet for the White House while John McCain and Sarah Palin are looking like they're headed for the outhouse come Nov. 4. But that's the way it looks right now.
Or at least that's what the "experts" in the media keep telling us about the polls. Steven M. Warshawsky at American Thinker still stands by his prediction that Obama will lose. He explains why the "experts" might be wrong as he goes into detail on what recent polls really show. But let's just take a break from politics for a bit.
So let's talk theology a while. Theology is defined as "the study of God." Some famous atheist once described a theologian (by definition a student of theology) as "someone who's searching for a black cat in a coal mine that ain't there." Well I have no formal training in theology but I do know a little something about "the study of God" by reading and studying God's best-seller for 31+ years, The Holy Bible.
I got saved, born again, washed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, on Feb. 28, 1977, when I was 29. See my testimony page for the full story about what happened that day. And as a Christian, I have spent a fair amount of time daily since then reading and studying God's Word, because that's how I came to be saved, by reading and believing what God said about how to be saved in His Holy Bible.
Being an evangelical, fundamentalist, conservative Christian, I believe every single word in the Bible is truth, God's truth, from "In the beginning..." in Genesis 1:1 to the last "Amen" in Revelation 22:21. I've read and studied it from cover to cover several times -- I haven't kept count of how many times I've read it all -- but my study continues daily. I may not understand it all and as a fallible human I realize I never will until this corruptible flesh puts on incorruption and then and only then will I understand it all. But right now I believe it's all true.
My sort-of life verse is 1 Corinthians 13:12, from which I took the title for Bible study and social commentary columns, Seen Through A Glass Darkly, which I wrote for various newspapers I worked for during my 25+ years career in print journalism. I also write Bible Q&A columns.
The "then" Paul refers to is the day all Christians shall see Jesus Christ "face to face" clearly, not through a dark glass as now, but clearly.
OK, enough about my theology or my understanding about what it means to be a Christian who believes the entire Word of God is truth.
Let's talk about another fella's "faith journey" as the popular description today goes. This fella was interviewed in 2004 on that topic.
First question: "What do you believe?"
His answer:
"I am a Christian..." (he begins, then is interrupted in the cafe where the interview takes place) before turning his attention directly back to the question.
"So, I have a deep faith," (he) continues. "I'm rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.
The reporter reveals her own knowledge of the Bible with her reply to his statement as she asks him to explain his "unlikely" theology.It's perhaps an unlikely theological position for someone who places his faith squarely at the feet of Jesus to take, saying essentially that all people of faith -- Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone -- know the same God.
That depends, (he) says, on how a particular verse from the Gospel of John, where Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me," is heard.
That depends on how it is heard? Is that sorta like Big Bill's sworn testimony in court: "That depends on what the meaning of is 'is' is"?How else can you hear John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth and the life"? Jesus didn't say "a way, a truth and a life." "The" is exclusive. And if any doubt remained to the exclusivity of His statement, He clarified it even further by saying "No one comes to the Father but by me."
If there's some other way to "hear" what Jesus said about His way being the only way to salvation and to come to the Father, 'splain it.
OK, enough with the charade. You've probably figured out by now that I'm quoting a 2004 interview with Barack Obama by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cathleen Falsani. Obama had just won the Democrat primary for U.S. Senate and with only Alan Keyes for an opponent in the fall election he was a shoo-in to win. So he sat down for this interview with the friendly Chicago hometown reporter on his "faith."
Even the headline is revealing: Obama: I have a deep faith, Barack Obama credits his multicultural upbringing for his theological point of view
Obama's "faith" became an issue in June when the brown stuff hit the fan as his 20+ years pastor, the not-very-rev. Jeremiah Wright became a youtube celebrity. Obama expressed puzzlement at first over the controversy, describing black-liberation-theology as his "fairly conventional faith."
But after making "the most important speech on race since Martin Luther King Jr." defending his pastor and refusing to disown him, the Wright controversy refused to go away. So Obama chunked him under the campaign bus where he joined a host of others gone before, including his own white grandmother whom he chunked there during that "most important speech on race" which was also then disowned.
But let's get back to the interview.
Obama is unapologetic in saying he has a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." As a sign of that relationship, he says, he walked down the aisle of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ in response to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's altar call one Sunday morning about 16 years ago.
The politician could have ended his spiritual tale right there, at the point some people might assume his life changed, when he got "saved," transformed, washed in the blood. But Obama wants to clarify what truly happened.
"It wasn't an epiphany," he says of that public profession of faith. "It was much more of a gradual process for me. I know there are some people who fall out. Which is wonderful. God bless them.... I think it was just a moment to certify or publicly affirm a growing faith in me."
These days, he says, he attends the 11 a.m. Sunday service at Trinity in the Brainerd neighborhood every week -- or at least as many weeks as he is able. His pastor, Wright, has become a close confidant.
An epiphany is a moment of clarity, a moment when the light breaks through and you realize some significant truth. I don't want to quibble over another person's personal testimony, but when someone says he never had that moment, that raises a big red flag of doubt with me.
But let us move on (no political pun intended) past that.
Obama says he reads the Bible, though not as regularly as he'd like, now that he's on the campaign trail. But he does find time to pray.
"It's not formal, me getting on my knees," he says. "I think I have an ongoing conversation with God.... I'm constantly asking myself questions about what I'm doing, why I am doing it.
"The biggest challenge, I think, is always maintaining your moral compass."
So he reads the Bible and prays, but not formally on his knees, and sees his biggest challenge as "maintaining your moral compass."
So who helps him maintain his "moral compass" in addition to the not-yet-disowned pastor Wright, who "has become a close confidant"?
Obama cites two other pastor friends in Southside Chicago, "the Rev. Michael Pfleger" (remember the spooky white Catholic priest who ranted about Hillary in Rev. Wright's pulpit?) and another black-liberation-theology preacher in Chicago very similar to Wright and Pfleger.
Obama wraps up the interview with one more "unlikely" bit of theology. He doesn't believe in hell and he's not sure at all about heaven.
Obama admits it's not easy for politicians to talk about faith.
"Part of the reason I think it's always difficult for public figures to talk about this is that the nature of politics is that you want to have everybody like you and project the best possible traits onto you," he says. "Oftentimes, that's by being as vague as possible, or appealing to the lowest common denominators. The more specific and detailed you are on issues as personal and fundamental as your faith, the more potentially dangerous it is.
"The difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and proselytize. There's the belief, certainly in some quarters, that if people haven't embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior, they're going to hell."
Obama doesn't believe he, or anyone else, will go to hell.
But he's not sure if he'll be going to heaven, either.
"I don't presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die," he says. "When I tuck in my daughters at night, and I feel like I've been a good father to them, and I see in them 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."
In rebuttal to that, I'll go to the only source that's absolutely authoritative about the Christian faith, The Bible. Jesus Christ believed in hell during his earthly ministry here and preached about hell a whole lot more than he ever mentioned heaven, which he also believed in.
In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus tells the story of "a certain rich man," indicating it is not a parable but the truth about an actual person.
"...the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments... And he cried and said... I am tormented in this flame." Luke 16:22-24.
Hell is real and its flames are real, too, just as real as heaven is real. And we're all going to one or the other for eternity, politicians, too.
A Republican redneck church-lady I know here in North Carolina read Obama's "deep faith" article and wrote me the following question:
I tell Jeremy that these people worship the cows to which he responds, "Let me get this straight -- these people worship cheeseburgers?" Humanist fools.
My response to her question, "What does deeply spiritual mean?" (If you'll allow me to quote myself):
Hitler was “deeply spiritual.” He honestly believed a "spirit" had empowered him to take over the world. Really. He nearly did.
One of the more interesting books I read back in my college days was one I ran across entitled "The Occult History of Adolph Hitler." (Amazon has 67 books on Hitler and the occult. I'm not sure of the exact title of the book I read 37+ years ago in college.) I wasn't a Christian then, but that book scared me spitless. It certainly cured my stupid adolescent curiosity about Nazis and the Third Reich.It cited records of seances and pretty much outright devil worship by Hitler and the inner circle of his Nazi party leadership and tells a chilling story supposedly recounted by Hitler himself of a pivotal event in his life before he came to power as chancellor of Germany.
Hitler said he was visiting a museum in Austria where he saw a spear point that was supposed to be the head of the spear the Roman soldier used to pierce the side of Jesus Christ to verify his death while hanging on his cross on the hill of Golgotha, outside the walls of Jerusalem. (See also this weird, occultish site)
Hitler said a "spirit" entered him at that moment and he somehow "knew" he would become chancellor and would found "The Third Reich."
One of his first acts as chancellor was to "liberate" Austria and reunite it to Germany. And the book said the day he entered Vienna as conqueror, he took possession of the spearpoint from the museum and kept it in his possession right up until the day of his death in 1945.
Don't get me wrong now, I'm not calling Barack Obama "Hitler," even though the lunatic left has been calling President Bush that for eight years. The comparison I'm making is that Hitler could fairly be described as "deeply spiritual." Whether that's good or bad depends entirely on what spirit we're talking about. The Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Spirit, is always good. The spirit of the devil, Satan, is always evil.
I'm talking about theology here, not politics. And from the perspective of the Bible Belt, Obama's "faith" is not "fairly conventional."
And as we say down South (and probably up North, too) if the shoe fits, wear it.
Jan LaRue at American Thinker has more details in Obama's Faith, Family and Variable Values Tour in which she looks at Obama's record.
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