Politics

Media revenge tactics are quite interesting to follow. Ever since the radical political rantings of Rev Wright hurt Sen. Obama to some extent they have been waiting to play “Pin the tail on the Pastor” to get at John McCain.

So first they said that Sen. McCain had a pastor problem with John Hagee. So somehow Obama siting in a church for 20 plus years listening to Rev Wright was the same as John Hagee whose church Sen. McCain has never attended. He became his “pastor” because he endorsed Sen. McCain. This didn’t really work out to the media hope so next they tried Pastor Rod Parsley’ another person who is not actually John McCain’s pastor or part of a church he attends.

So none of this really stuck so next they went after Gov. Palin and those “strange” Pentecostals. The fact that Gov. Palin does not attend an Assemblies of God church anymore didn’t matter. But it seems like a pretty stupid political move to make fun of Pentecostals considering how many their are. So they went after the sermons of the so-called non-denominational “Bible” church she attends. No red meat there other than pretty much normal Evangelical beliefs (still odd to the left though). Now the headlines is “Palin once blessed to be free from ‘witchcraft’.” She was prayed over by a visiting preacher from Kenya so now this person instantly becomes a pastor and other headlines include “Palin’s Pastor Problem.” The idea of spiritual warfare is of course alien to the media.

Obviously the media needs a lesson on whose one pastor is. It does not include people who endorse you or happen to visit your church. They also need to learn the difference between a pastor who makes political claims such as the U.S. created AIDS to kill blacks and a particular church’s theology. We have had many presidents with not exactly an orthodox understanding of theology. It would be a rare case when a candidate’s theology is actually relevant concerning presidential office. Obviously if someone belonged to some doomsday cult their theology would be quite relevant to their performance in office.

But the media and the left love gotcha politics, especially if it is in response to a gotcha.

If I hear the "Jesus was a community organizer and Pilate was a Governor" meme one more time I am going to scream. In fact while writing this I just heard it again on the radio – arg. But I guess it does say a lot about those who are willing to use it. They say it as if it was actually a slam against Sarah Palin. I have heard some stupid Democrat inspired religious memes in the past such as the "Holy Family was homeless" but this surely takes the cake.

To start off Pontius Pilate was not a governor he was a Prefect of the Roman Judaea province. But even if it was a governor then what they would say would prove too much since it would include any Democrat who was a governor. Now if you are going to do a Pilate comparison which candidate most fits the mode? Mark Hemingway at the Corner said that when it came to Jesus that Pontius Pilate merely vote "Present" Jay Anderson asks "Between Gov. Palin and Sen. Obama, which do you think would be more likely to utter the question "What is truth?" I think when it comes to washing your hands because of condemning innocent blood surely this is the modern Democratic party. When it comes to abortion, cloning, ESCR, Euthanasia, and even some cases infanticide then surely you hear the sounds of washing hands from the likes of Obama and company. State Senator Obama determined that it was more politically expedient to let children die that were born alive after a failed abortion to protect abortion. Pilate would have understood Obama’s politically expediency since he did the same thing.

The idea of Jesus as community organizer proves that they know nothing of who Jesus is and that they don’t know what a community organizer is in the first place. But I guess they can’t help themselves in continually comparing Obama to Jesus. Some people have the idea that a community organizer is kind of like a volunteer community helper in the Jimmy Carter Habitats for Humanity mode. When it reality a community organizer is a paid political position that does little if any actual good in communities. Habitats for Humanity is something that actually does good and their is a reason Obama doesn’t brag about his accomplishment during his time as a community organizer. But I can’t blame people for not knowing what this is since even Sen. Obama mentioned in one of his autobiographies that he didn’t know what it was when the job was offered to him. Community organizer came to us from Marxist agitator Saul Alinsky in a work called “Rules for Radicals” and is really a model for grievance-mongering. In fact it was some of Alinsky’s former students that hired Obama in the first place.

It seems the modern liberals seem to have almost the same view of Jesus as the zealots did. That he would serve a political purpose and a change in government. When the truth is that Jesus did everything he could to avoid being seen in these terms. The community that Jesus died for on the cross was for the whole human community and the sins of our community. Jesus was not limited to helping out in a community in temporal terms in Nazareth or Jerusalem, but in eternal terms by dying for our sins and enabling us to live with him forever. The organizing he has done is to order all things for our good. His job title is Messiah not community organizer, though Obama seems to aspire to both. Jesus taught us who are neighbor is and that we needed to broaden our definition of who are neighbor was and that besides loving them, that we must also love our enemies. That we are to administer to the poor and the sick, not that we are to agitate for the government to take care of our responsibilities towards our neighbor. At our judgment Jesus will ask us what we did for the least of these not what government program we supported. Son of God, son of man, prince of peace, Messiah, and even carpenter are all on his resume, but community organizing is not.

It is a rare thing to see Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body brought up in a political column, but everyone’s favorite Paragraph Farmer does so in this column a the American Spectator.

The religious left often makes me laugh;
this time on McCain’s “The One”
ad.

At best, this ad implies that those who
plan to support Senator Obama are looking for a new savior or a
replacement Messiah. But many are reading it even more darkly as an
attempt to portray Obama as an anti-Christ figure.

I guess we need the left’s secret decoder
ring
to find that hidden message.  The ad pokes fun at how he
portrays himself, the language that he uses, and the language and
posters that his followers use to describe him. My blog-friend
Christopher Blosser has been chronicling this for awhile on the popular
Is
Barack Obama the Messiah blog so the McCain ad is not showing
anything new.  As for Obama being the antichrist well St. John
described that there are many antichrists and not just the figure
foretold at the end of the world. Those that oppose Christ are in
effect an antichrist.  People that support infanticide,
abortion, ESCR, cloning, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage are
opposing the will of Christ.

The biggest thing that annoys me about the
whole Obama messiah business is how he has reacted to it and even
played it up.  Obama being a Christian this whole messiah
thing should really bother him.  It should upset him that
people talk about him in this tone.  John the Baptist when
confused with Christ said “I am not the Christ” and “He must increase,
but I must decrease.” Obama seems to have gotten that last one
backwards.  St. Peter when he saw people seeing him wrongly
said “Stand up; I too am just a man.”  Sen. Obama has done
nothing to discourage such comparisons.  Obama should be
embarrassed by such treatment, instead he revels in it. In fact as the
McCain
ad shows Obama said: 

“A light will shine down from
somewhere.
It will light upon you. You will experience an epiphany and you will
say to yourself, ‘I have to vote for Barack’,”

Besides Obama is too much of an amateur to
be “the” Antichrist. Though form over substance will certainly be an
attribute of the Antichrist and the fawning largely uncritical reaction
will likely be there also.