I feel like I jumped the gun. My Obama piece was run a full five days before the inauguration. I feel like I should write about something new this week, but how could I offer up an informed opinion on another subject when everything has changed? It looks like my only option is to continue fanning the flames of Obamania. Fortunately, it’s easy for me to do so without being repetitive. I certainly haven’t exhausted all the Obama topics. Since I’ve already covered his race, I can now move on to something far more relevant to the duties of the presidency – his faith.
President Obama is a Christian, but his level of devotion pales in comparison to that of our newest former president. Bush could talk to God, and he did so frequently. Obama, on the other hand, is not as blessed. Despite this, he’s made it clear that his faith has always guided the decisions he’s made as a politician.
Obama’s most well-known remarks on faith and politics were delivered at Jim Wallis’s 2006 Call to Renewal Conference. What I found most interesting was his observation that our law is “by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.” The term “Judeo-Christian tradition” encompasses a lot of things, but it necessarily includes the Bible and the Torah. After all, they form the very foundation of Judeo-Christianity. Obama’s remark becomes even more interesting when it’s juxtaposed with something he said earlier in the speech – that our laws and our morality can’t be based on certain parts of scripture, like Leviticus, which “suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is abomination.” So, it seems that the “Judeo-Christian tradition” should include the Bible and the Torah, but only the nice parts.
That seems a little unsatisfying, especially considering that the two are nothing short of the inspired word of God; yet somehow we, despite being mere mortals, have the authority to decide what is and isn’t relevant. It may sound arrogant, but it’s widely practiced. I don’t know any Jews who follow every one of the 613 laws of Moses, a few of which advocate sacking villages and slaughtering idolaters en masse, and I don’t know any Muslims who refuse to befriend Christians or Jews, even though the Qur’an forbids it.
If anything has fostered this kind of selective worship, it’s the long, exegetical tradition of making excuses for the more questionable verses. Apologists have had centuries to explain them away. Christians have the “New Covenant,” which nullifies most of the Old Testament laws, and Muslims have “abnegation,” where an older revelation is replaced with a newer, better one (even though sura 2, verse 85 promises damnation to all those who follow certain parts of the Qur’an and not others).
Of course, the “nice parts” don’t require any complicated explanations. They’re timeless and meant for all mankind, but everything else has to be viewed through a historical lens and applied to a specific group of people. Is this how scripture was always meant to be read? Unfortunately, we’ll never know. We ran out of prophets a long time ago.
