There are a lot of people who assume that Sen. Obama, because of his heritage, will have an advantage in dealing with other countries. Part of that, as John Kerry noted, is that if he wins in November, “it would have a powerful message all across the world about the American story. About our making real the words that we live by. That all men are created equal.” Part too, I think, is the idea that because he doesn’t “look like the guys on the money,” non-European leaders around the world will find him more appealing and accessible.Kerry’s certainly right about the symbolic value of an Obama victory—for Americans. What’s somewhat questionable is the underlying assumption here that anti-black racism is only an American problem. That’s simply not the case: anti-black racism is in fact a significant problem in many of the countries who pose us the biggest challenges, including China and much of the Muslim world, in which slavery of black Africans was never forbidden and continues to be practiced. As such, in dealing with countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, or with the Israel-Palestine conflict, Sen. Obama could actually find his African heritage a disadvantage. That said, it should also be noted that his heritage should be an asset for him in dealing with sub-Saharan Africa, where the US is already generally popular thanks to Bush Administration policies and which should assume increasing significance for American policy going forward.There’s another issue as well for Sen. Obama in dealing with the Muslim world, this one potentially more serious: whether he considers himself that he was ever a Muslim, on Muslim terms, he was, and he clearly isn’t now (regardless of what some people might like to tell you, he’s definitely a practicing Christian), which makes him an apostate, a murtad. As longtime student of the Muslim world Daniel Pipes points out, that’s no small issue. Technically, this would make him subject to religious-based assassination, though it seems probable that prudence would prevail over any such impulse; but as the Christian Science Monitor realized, for the US to elect an apostate Muslim to the White House would be a huge propaganda windfall for al’Qaeda and other jihadist organizations. That, obviously, would create major foreign-policy challenges for an Obama administration.Do these things disqualify Sen. Obama to be President? No, certainly not, nor do they mean he couldn’t have a successful administration—I’m doubtful such would happen, yes, but that’s for other reasons. They do mean, however, that the facile idea that electing Sen. Obama will be a boon for American foreign policy is in fact quite dubious.
Monthly Archives: August 2008
The things you find by following links
There’s a pro-Hillary Clinton website out there that is trying to prove that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fraudulent—that it is in fact a forgery to hide the fact that he’s an Indonesian citizen.Wow.I have two reactions to this. One, though I’m no expert, from what little I know about the forensic analysis of documents (from reading textbooks and the like a number of years ago), the evidence behind this argument (as presented by its partisans) looks difficult to refute.Two, the whole idea’s completely insane.Oh, and three: whether this is in fact legitimate or (more likely) the product of the fevered brains of a small group of disappointed Hillary backers, it just goes to show how far people will go these days to try to win an election. If I had to make a prediction, I’d expect this will go the same way as most of the crazy stories I’ve read over the years. (“Did you know Bill Clinton was running drugs out of the governor’s mansion in Little Rock?” Yeah, that kind of crazy story.) Still, every once in a while, one of those stories proves out . . . if this happens to be one of them, the next couple months are going to be a real roller-coaster ride.
The evangelical heresy and the gospel antidote
It’s been said by someone, I forget whom (though it may have been my old theology professor, the late Dr. Stan Grenz—it sounds like him), that the evangelical heresy is believing in our creeds rather than in Jesus. We affirm our creeds and our confessions as expressions of what we believe, and as expressions which unite us with other Christians, but we don’t believe in them, only through them. Our belief is, and must always be, in God as revealed in Jesus Christ.When we lose sight of that fact, we get into trouble, as the Rev. Dr. Ray Ortlund points out, because “no matter how well argued our position is biblically, if it functions in our hearts as an addition to Jesus, it ends up as a form of legalistic divisiveness.” This is what he dubs “Galatian sociology,” the sociological error of the Galatian church. Even if you believe all the right things, if you believe in those things rather than in Jesus, then you are in effect adding those things to Jesus (the error C. S. Lewis called “Christianity And”); the inevitable consequence of that is division from other Christians, and the exaltation of ourselves and our own positions at the expense of others. In contrast to that,
What unifies the church is the gospel. What defines the gospel is the Bible. What interprets the Bible correctly is a hermeneutic centered on Jesus Christ crucified, the all-sufficient Savior of sinners, who gives himself away on terms of radical grace to all alike. What proves that that gospel hermeneutic has captured our hearts is that we are not looking down on other believers but lifting them up, not seeing ourselves as better but grateful for their contribution to the cause, not standing aloof but embracing them freely, not wishing they would become like us but serving them in love (Galatians 5:13).My Reformed friend, can you move among other Christian groups and really enjoy them? Do you admire them? Even if you disagree with them in some ways, do you learn from them? What is the emotional tilt of your heart—toward them or away from them? If your Reformed theology has morphed functionally into Galatian sociology, the remedy is not to abandon your Reformed theology. The remedy is to take your Reformed theology to a deeper level. Let it reduce you to Jesus only. Let it humble you. Let this gracious doctrine make you a fun person to be around. The proof that we are Reformed will be all the wonderful Christians we discover around us who are not Reformed. Amazing people. Heroic people. Blood-bought people. People with whom we are eternally one—in Christ alone.
The heavy yoke of self-justification
At the Synod of the Church of England at York Minster last month, just before the Lambeth Conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury preached a brave and important sermon—brave and important because he sought to apply the truth of Scripture to the situation in which the Anglican Communion finds itself. In so doing, he offered some characterizations of different parties within Anglicanism with which I don’t agree, but any such quibbles are secondary; the core of his message was wise and deeply biblical. This is in keeping with what I’ve come to expect from Dr. Rowan Williams: even when he arrives at positions with which I disagree (as he fairly often does), he consistently gets there for the right reasons. That’s as true as ever in this sermon, which is at heart a meditation on the ways in which we try to replace Jesus’ well-fitted yoke with (in the words of one of the Desert Fathers) “the heavy yoke of self-justification.”
There’s a phrase to ponder—a heavy yoke of self-justification. That’s the law, that’s the curse. That’s the waterless pit indeed—where we struggle ceaselessly, unrelentingly, to make ourselves more right, and to lay hold upon our future. We lay upon ourselves a heavy yoke, from which only the grace of Jesus Christ can deliver us. In a nutshell, we lay upon ourselves the yoke of desperate seriousness about ourselves.
And Christ’s promise is so difficult because it’s so simple. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, as the novelist says, that is what Christ offers to us: receiving it is hard. Naaman of Assyria when he came to Elisha to be healed of his leprosy, could not believe that the answer was easy. There must be something complicated for him to do. There must be some magic to be done. The word alone, “release” is not enough. We long for, we are in love with the heavy yoke of self justification. Naaman wanted to go away from Elisha, able to say, “Well I had some part in that—I did the difficult things the prophet asked me”. And Elisha, in the name of God, tells him to do something simple, to immerse himself in the mercy of God. And when Jesus says, “Our yoke is easy and my burden is light”, that is what he says, to all of us as individuals, to us as a Synod, to us as a Church, to us as a society, to us as a human world: lay aside the obsession to possess the future, receive the word of promise, here. And that’s why, as Jesus himself says in the gospel, that’s why only some people really do hear the word easily—only the tax collectors and the sinners. . . .
He alone rests in that eternal, unifiable life. That is why he says, “Come to me and I will give you rest; I will give you sight; I will bring you hope.””My yoke is easy; my burden is light”, which is why we need to be where he is, nowhere else, where he is with the Father.
This is a sermon to read (or listen to; video is available below and on the page with the transcript) with our hearts wide open, that the Spirit may use it to bring us to repentance, and to greater wisdom.
HT: Alan Jacobs
Photo: “Strongman Event: the Yoke Race,” 2010, Artur Andrzej. Public domain.
The way the future used to be
It’s an interesting thing to go back and read American popular fiction from the 1970s—especially, in my experience, near-future science fiction of the period—and see the view presented there of America and its future. What you find, or at least what I’ve found, is (to use Jimmy Carter’s least favorite word) a deep malaise, a sense that the US had become (to quote one of Spider Robinson’s characters) a “tired old fraud” whose decline was inevitable. Across various genres, from liberals like SF’s Robinson to conservatives like the political novelist Allen Drury, the theme and tone is the same, varying only between “woe is us” and “good riddance”: America is fading, decaying, declining, its time at the peak of its success near its end.It’s interesting, as I say, because the actual 1980s ended up looking so vastly different from the 1980s envisioned by novelists in the 1970s, the era of Watergate, gasoline rationing, the hostage crisis in Iran, and, yes, the famous “malaise” speech; rather than ongoing economic collapse and a continuing loss of influence abroad, the decade saw the reassertion of American strength and power, both economically and diplomatically/militarily. By 1984, “It’s morning in America” would be a potent campaign theme, and the decade would end with the fall of the Berlin Wall and talk of America as the world’s only superpower.Why? A change in leadership. The election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980, bearing a message of optimism about America’s future and confidence in American strength, combined with economic policies which have set the terms for a quarter-century of economic growth and prosperity, was a major part of this. In Britain, which was having similar problems in the ’70s, it was Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power in 1979. And though his authority and influence were largely of a different kind, it’s surely no coincidence that around the same time Bishop Karol Wojtyla took the throne of St. Peter as Pope John Paul II; he made no economic policies and wielded no armies, though he had many wise things to say about both economics and the world scene, yet surely there have been few people in recent decades who have done more to inspire people and give them a sense that there is reason to hope than he did.It is a telling thing that the Democratic Party has now nominated a presidential candidate who gives us the vision of Jimmy Carter in the visionary language of Ronald Reagan. Whether it’s telling because it means that liberalism has changed, or because it means that we’ve forgotten that it hasn’t, remains to be seen.
The myth of choice
As I’m continuing my “catch-up tour,” I dove back into Confessing Evangelical, John Halton’s blog, this afternoon; John’s a British Lutheran, and his blog is one of the deepest I know, especially but not only theologically. It’s really not an easy one to catch up on—far better to stay abreast of it, really—but I’m enjoying getting back into it. I particularly appreciate his newest post, “I choose, therefore I am,” in which he addresses “the myth of personal autonomous choice—that our decisions are free, conscious, independent, entirely ours alone”—and the difficulty we have in combating that myth. I think his conclusion is particularly important (it’s something I tell my congregation fairly often):
I am not denying that we make true choices, and that those are truly our choices. However, what I am saying is we need to be more suspicious of our choices, and more aware of the forces that are at work in influencing them.
Wise words. I encourage you to read the rest of it.
The Dark Knight of the soul
“My subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.”—Flannery O’ConnorI have not seen The Dark Knight, nor did I ever really intend to; I don’t watch all that many movies (though it’s nice to be able to see them in the theater again), and I’ve never been a Batman fan. It does sound like a remarkable movie, though, judging from the reviews—and, no less, from the arguments over it in the Christian blogosphere. I know Thinklings Phil and Jared loved it, and I know Brant Hansen hated it, and their reactions seem to be pretty much representative. The most interesting response, though, has to have been the question Grant Thomas asked:What would Flannery O’Connor think?As he points out, given her artistic philosophy and her view of what it takes to communicate the reality of sin and grace to an unbelieving world, there’s good reason to think that she would have approved of the movie.
I think Flannery would say that Joker shows us that the world we are living in is in the territory of the devil. . . .I think in light of what I’ve been reading from Flannery O’Connor, that she would applaud the film for showing evil for what it is. Not only does it make evil look evil (rather than funny like in the old Adam West TV series), but I think Flannery would say that we need the Joker to realize how much we need grace. We need him to wear make up to realize that this kind of person should seem out of place in our world when most of the time we simply think this sort of thing is normal or at least tolerable.
As I said, I haven’t seen the movie to be able to judge, but what Grant says here makes sense to me. Read the whole post, including his several quotations from Flannery O’Connor, and see what you think.HT: Joyce
Sooner or later?
There’s a bit of a debate going on (in the comments on this post, for instance, where it’s obviously among those pulling for Sarah Palin) as to whether John McCain should name his running mate before Barack Obama or wait until after Sen. Obama has made his pick. Personally, I don’t see the advantage to waiting. I stand by what I wrote earlier in my open letter to Sen. McCain, that I think he needs to act and force Sen. Obama to react; he needs to set the agenda, the standard and the tempo so that Sen. Obama needs to play catch-up, rather than dancing to Sen. Obama’s tune. Given the dynamics of this election, I do not believe Sen. McCain can afford to be seen as secondary, an “anything you can do I can do better” candidate with no ideas or initiative of his own; he can’t let Sen. Obama drive the bus, he needs to take the wheel and drive it himself.This is not an election for the conventional approach. That’s one of the reasons why I think Sen. McCain needs to name Gov. Palin as his running mate, and why I argued in my open letter that he should take an unusual approach to selecting his cabinet team: if Sen. McCain is going to win, he needs to shake up the conventional wisdom and cross up people’s expectations. Fortunately for him, he’s good at that.
From politicians to squirrels
I think it’s an upgrade. Certainly, this is too funny for words . . .
HT: Joyce (Like I said, I’m getting caught up.)
Head falls off hatchet—news at 11!
CNN announced today that Anderson Cooper would be doing a story on Sarah Palin and the Monegan affair—news which of course raised the question of whether it would be a fair story or a hatchet job. It would appear that it was intended to be the latter, because after a number of people connected with Adam Brickley’s blog e-mailed CNN with some pertinent facts about the case, Cooper dropped the story. Taken all in all, I’m inclined to agree with Adam’s conclusion on this:
Maybe they’ll try to go back and rework the story using better facts, but I’m guessing that there won’t be any new attempt now that they know just how bad this story would have made them look. “Troopergate” is one of the most poorly executed hit jobs I’ve seen in my life, and this proves that it has no legs.