Okay - I'm through saying what I normally don't do since apparently there's no rhyme
or reason to what I do do. But usually, I leave politics alone. This one, however,
could not be avoided. When politicians begin to engage Scripture abusing it to meet
their own ends, I'm bound by my calling to speak out against it. Read the quote below
and you'll understand.
Barack Obama made these comments during a question-and-answer session with voters
in Nelsonville, Ohio. A local pastor asked Obama how he plans to win the votes of
evangelical voters when they disagree with him on moral issues.
"I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a
hospital or transfer property to each other," he said, referring to unions that
grant all the legal benefits of marriage, minus the name. "I don't think it should
be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that
is recognized by the state. 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. That's my view. But we can have
a respectful disagreement on that."
The Sermon on the Mount is found in Matthew 5-7, the passage in Romans is found
in chapter 1, verses 26-32.
For Mr. Obama, that "obscure" passage in Romans is just as authoritative and
binding as the Gospel of Matthew. When you begin to divide it up, picking and
choosing what you'd like to believe and what you don't want to believe, it
demeans the entire corpus of Scripture. I'll not tell you how to think
politically - don't let a politician tell you how to read the Bible!
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