Ok…. So I’ve finally sat down to write my response to the articles & blog entries. (Almost 3 months since Julia requested my response…sorry). So after a lot of reading and re-reading, pacing around, prayers for guidance & some dinner this is what I’m going to respond to. [I realize there are a lot of points in the article; I’m just picking up on a few].
So what do I think? Well I think Dave Sliker is mostly right on. The type of Christianity that Barrack Obama appears practicing seems to be rather humanistic sort of Christianity, that seems to basically just thank God for giving us good morals. But than again isn’t recognizing God as the reason behind our morality not a testimony to God’s power & influence? You see this is why I think Dave Sliker went to far in stating that this sort of Christian faith that Obama & to a lesser extent Clinton are practicing is “outrageously anti-messiah in spirit and in truth.” Their faith is severely lacking in many respects, yes it ignores the under lying causes of these problems & it looks to man for solutions (which is very bad), but in it’s own small way it can draw people to God. For example Obama repeatedly reiterates throughout many of speeches how his compassion for people and the solutions to these problems which he is addressing are because of God in his life. And this does eventually draw people closer to God. For example people may ask to themselves ‘Who is this Jesus person who leads people such as these to act in such away?’ or they may think ‘they care about me because of God in their life, that must mean that God does care about me.’ And at the very least this does leave people with a positive rather than negative about God & Christianity, and therefore more open to learning about Christ.
[In a side note about Obama, he gives God all the glory for that as well as just running for office, which hints at (which he may mean) that he wouldn’t be able to do this but for God, but this isn’t something that all Christians of this type do (I realize that I’m brining in outside information, but go on you tube or other video sites to listen to Obama’s speeches)] but this act also leads people to Jesus in a small way.
This leads me to a second point which Sliker raises and that is “In my opinion, the initial by-product of my faith in Christ should not be to stir men and women to good works and worthy causes… (but to be) …stirred to 1. Know Jesus (and study the Bible) and / or 2. Pray more.” I do agree that those should be the by-product of my faith, but I disagree with the insertion of the word “initial” there. For as stated earlier even if the initial by product isn’t those two things, there are many opportunities where it isn’t appropriate or maybe even harmful to act out your faith with an evangelistic message or intimacy based message, but just by championing righteous laws you will hopefully eventually lead people to want to know Jesus in a greater way.
Ideally a candidate should just trust in God and live out his faith completely directing people to God and trust that God will take him/her to where he wants them to be. But if we are using human methods to do God’s work the above strategy makes good sense. But I definitely agree Barack Obama’s faith from what I can tell is heavily compromised as he isn’t sure if he believes in the after life (pg. 3), but from what I can tell he is Christian, but I am not a good judge of such things. Clinton I have my doubts as to whether she is even a believer.
Anyway, tell me what you think!
~Kevin
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