Obama Echoes Cain, Not Christ

By Alan Keyes

Wednesday, in a telephone conference call, Barack Obama spoke with faith-based groups in an effort to scare up support for his planned socialist takeover of the nation's health care system. In a telling illustration of his idiosyncratic Christian walk, he referenced the biblical commandment against perjury to call opponents of his plan liars because they assert that the takeover would lead to "death panels" curtailing care to the elderly, or to expansive taxpayer funding of abortion.

By and large, Obama's critics (like Tom Sowell in this recent WND article or FRCAction in this summary of evidence regarding abortion funding) have used facts and careful reasoning to substantiate their concern over the threat Obama's takeover scheme poses to seniors and infants in the womb. What's required to answer their concerns is an equally careful presentation of facts and reasoning. After all, the biblical standard is respect for truth. If you conscientiously seek and present reasonable grounds for your statements or observations, you may still be wrong, but you're not bearing false witness. But Obama couldn't help talking down to people of faith. He assumed that with them, bludgeoning his opponents with a little biblical rhetoric was good enough. Like so many socialist disciples of scientific materialism, he appears to assume that people of faith have abandoned rational thought.

By coincidence, on Wednesday I wrote and posted an article on my Loyal to Liberty site about the cynical aim of Obama's pose of religiosity. Though offered in the context of examining his stand on the issue of so-called "gay marriage," it focuses on the radical abandonment of Christian theology revealed in his absurd declaration that Californians who supported Proposition 8 were...

"...wrong to try to ban a practice that I also think is wrong, by changing a constitution that acknowledges God's in charge in order to prevent something God opposes."

I don't think I've ever seen a better illustration of the tangled web deception weaves. If he actually took the Bible seriously, Obama would keep in mind that the first of the commandments simply requires that we accept God as God. He would realize that this is not happening if we acknowledge God with our lips, but put idols in authority over our actions. He would remember the first command of love, that we love the Lord our God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength. He would remember Christ's admonition that those who love God, must strive to keep his commandments. Remembering these things he would reject the absurd notion that it's wrong to try to prevent what God opposes. The very idea of respecting the boundaries of action God establishes requires that we work to prevent action that goes beyond (transgresses) those boundaries. According to Christian belief, this is the essential purpose of human law, as it reflects the human mind's melancholy inclination to devise evil continually.

Law is first and foremost intended to restrain action. To restrain requires preventing an action that would otherwise occur. When someone in a position of governmental power forgets this essential goal of human government, it may result in a disastrous failure effectively to thwart the forces of evil and injustice. But when someone vested with unparalleled government power advances the notion that it's positively wrong to restrain action that contravenes God's will, he subverts the rule of conscience. He paves the way for the force of conscience to be mobilized against right action. By saying that people who seek to prevent what God opposes are in the wrong, he seems to authorize action against them. From anyone such a statement would be troubling, but coming from someone who now claims to occupy an office that makes him the embodiment of the whole executive power of the U.S. government, it portends the greatest possible peril to our civil order and peace.

God opposes the taking of innocent life. Barack Obama says that, on behalf of human offspring intended for abortion, it's wrong to interfere with it. Thus he already implements, even in its most extreme form, the literally ungodly principle of action he applied to criticize the people of California. Why is he surprised that people look with suspicion at provisions in the health takeover proposal that seem to marshal and encourage the old and infirm along the way toward dusty death?

According to our American principles of justice, God opposes the violation or surrender of unalienable human rights. Barack Obama scoffs at the unalienable right to life. And he advances socialist schemes that would destroy the right to economic liberty for workers in health care and God knows what other sectors of our economy. Why is he surprised that people greet with suspicion his pious offer to be "his brother's keeper"? If his faith were sincere, he would remember that this phrase was spoken by someone else who paid lip service to God, but in action denied his authority. It was in fact the perverse characterization of the obligation of love we would expect to come from Cain's rebellious heart. The keeper may be a compassionate guardian, but he may also be an armed guard. If, as his words and policies suggest, Barack Obama thinks it's wrong to prevent what God opposes, he should not be surprised if people of faith who conscientiously seek to ascertain and do God's will reach the altogether reasonable conclusion that he is on guard against them.

Related Links