“If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.” So said presidential candidate Barack Obama to a crowd last Sunday in Nelsonville, Ohio trying to justify his strident pro-abortion support and efforts to legalize same sex marriage.
Well, OK. I love it when liberals refer to the Bible (or any reference for that matter) trying to substantiate themselves. Perhaps they think we won’t check or maybe there is something in the “living” Bible’s Sermon on the Mount the Catholic and Protestant faiths have missed all these years.
Checking the “The Sermon” in my Bible’s Gospel of Matthew I see absolutely no endorsement of abortion or homosexuality. I find the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, an endorsement of scriptural moral commandments (“anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven”), and condemnations of murder, divorce and adultery. It also includes a warning “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves.” Perhaps Senator Obama’s reaching for “Do not judge (condemn), lest you too be judged (condemned).”
I can understand why liberals like Obama seek to dismiss the “obscure” St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans containing crystal clear verses like: “While claiming to be wise, they became fools… They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator…Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another… They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice… They are senseless, faithless, heartless, and ruthless. Although they know the just decree of God that all who practice such things deserve death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” And that’s just in Roman’s first chapter.
Like past elections, religion continues to be a major issue for people as it reflects their values and who they will place their trust in. Look at the suspicions of Romney’s Mormonism, Huckabee’s evangelical Christian support, and Obama’s childhood affiliation with Islamic madras’s, his current affiliation with a controversial church in Illinois, and his endorsement by radical Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Obama claims “I am a devout Christian. I have been a member of the same church for 20 years, pray to Jesus every night, and try to go to church as much as I can…it is something that helps to guide my life and my values.” But Obama’s beliefs and values don’t match what’s in the Sermon he refers us to, nor the values of most Kansans.
When he was in the Illinois Senate, for example, he repeatedly opposed a common sense bill that would have defined as a “person” a baby who had survived an induced-labor abortion and was born alive. He argued that to call a baby who survived an abortion a “person” would give it equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment and would give credibility to the argument that the same child inside its mother’s womb was also a “person” and thus could not be aborted.
Two Thursdays ago, ignoring the “obscure” Romans Bible book, Obama published an “open letter concerning LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) equality in America” on his website. In it he states he favors same-sex unions that are equal to marriage–including adoption rights–and that he was open to states codifying same-sex marriages saying “As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws.”
Obama’s values are mainstream Democrat values, and the same positions supported by Obama endorser, potential VP running mate, and Kansas Governor, Kathleen Sebelius. I’m sure her version of “The Sermon” is the same as Obama’s as it comes from the same Democrat “Bible” playbook. It just isn’t the Bible version most churches in Kansas use.
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Greg Beck is a US Army retiree who teaches at the Command and General Staff School and resides in Leavenworth.
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