Church And State: President
Obama has taken a very powerful name in vain in defense of his class
warfare economic policies. In fact, Obama encourages a sin Jesus Christ
repeatedly admonished: envy.
Attending the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Obama
declared that raising tax rates on higher incomes “coincides with Jesus’
teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.’”
It is disgraceful enough for a president to use a religious event to
push an economic agenda that has already insured his place in history as
the food stamp president.
But Obama began his remarks by claiming there was nothing political in what he would be saying.
He was there, he said, so that he and the attendees could “come together as brothers and sisters and seek God’s face together.”
After getting “caught up in the noise and rancor that too often
passes as politics today, these moments of prayer slow us down. They
humble us,” the president said, adding that “we can all benefit from
turning to our Creator, listening to Him, avoiding phony religiosity,
listening to Him.”
This from a president who has conspicuously neglected attending
religious services during his time in office — until recently, that is,
with his re-election campaign revving up.
It looks to be a cynical manipulation of those who hold deep religious beliefs, little more.
Sanctimonious talk about “turning to our Creator, listening to Him,
avoiding phony religiosity” from a president leftist comic Bill Maher is
convinced is really a secular humanist just like his mother, whom Obama
described as having “a healthy skepticism of religion as an
institution.”
Considering that the rest of Obama’s prayer breakfast speech was all
politics, how can he not be judged guilty of “phony religiosity”
himself?
The president said televangelists “come by the Oval Office .. . and we’ll pray together.”
Imagine the media clamor if a Republican president said this. But
don’t expect a peep in the news raising church and state issues about
this.
According to President Obama, Jesus’s “command to ‘love thy neighbor
as thyself ‘” is behind his expansion of government and regulation, and
his tax increases.
Everything his administration has been doing, from foreign aid to
Uganda to Dodd-Frank making “too big to fail” a permanent fixture of
financial institutions, is apparently based on the teachings of Jesus
Christ.
Then, a moment later, he shamelessly pivots and quotes C.S. Lewis — a
conservative who would be appalled by Barack Obama’s ideas — saying
that Christianity has no “detailed political program.”
In fact, Christ repeatedly warned against exactly the kind of class
envy Obama has made the foundation of his economic policies and campaign
rhetoric.
When asked if the Jews should pay taxes to Rome, Jesus famously asked
to be shown the tribute coin bearing the image of Tiberius and replied,
“Render therefore the things that are Caesar’s to Caesar and the things
that are God’s to God.”
The left would like to interpret that as, “pay your taxes and shut up.”
But it has throughout most of the history of Christianity been used
by the church as a restriction on state power — especially as relates to
interfering with religious practice.
In the Parable of the Generous Employer, Christ condemns the worker
who complains to his boss that “thou hast made them equal to us that
have borne the burden of the day” by paying other workers more.
“Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” the
employer asks in response, in a Gospel passage that eloquently champions
private property.
Jesus Christ was no socialist.
In fact, unlike the utopians who lead the Democratic Party today, Christ realized that “the poor you will always have with you.”
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