Food for Thought

One of my friends on Facebook posted this note earlier today.  I thought it was a lot of good things to think about.  I haven't quite gotten her permission to post yet (I think it'll be ok), but here is it.  By the way, it was written by Robin Givens.

"I stumbled on this website quite by accident. I was looking up a quote and had no idea what I was getting into when I clicked the link. The site is called Is Barack Obama the Messiah?. The site never actually explains itself. But from what I can tell, the site is trying to take this silly premise, and not prove it, but merely show that without context (or maybe even with), were an alien to visit the earth, he may think that BHO is a diety of the Democratic Party.

Below are some quotes I've taken from the sidebar:

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."
-- Barack Obama

"Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Obama on his journey, I mean, as he has said, the utter improbability of it all?"
-- Daily Kos

"Not just an ordinary human being but indeed an Advanced Soul"
-- Commentator @ Chicago Sun Times

"I'll do whatever he says to do. I'll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear."
-- Halle Berry

"I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event."
-- Chris Matthews
(See video here at Eyeblast)

"We're here to evolve to a higher plane . . . he is an evolved leader . . . [he] has an ear for eloquence and a Tongue dipped in the Unvarnished Truth."
-- Oprah Winfrey

The blog itself is full of quotes from famous and regular people alike that would give you the sense that, indeed, BHO is a god, or even a God. I must admit, that as a religious person, and definitely as someone who did not know she was about to read this kind of stuff, I felt extremely uncomfortable. I thought to myself "I wonder why Obama invokes worship of this magnitude" and then immediately closed the site, posted it a few places online (I thought people should know about it...), and tried to forget about it (...even though I didn't want to remember it).

I thought about the site again today as I was thinking about Obama's message of hope. I thought "will hope heal our economy?", "will hope bring the troops home?", "will hope fight terrorism?", "will hope create more jobs?" And then I thought, "no, all those things take some kind of action." I then it dawned on me, "hope" is Obama's non-religious version of faith. He's asking us to believe in him. Now, obviously, hope has a different connotation than faith. Obama can say things like "we need to have hope for America" or "we need to have hope for change", he doesn't even need to ask us directly to have faith in him. (Quite sneaky, I might add.)

Just imagine for a second, if I were to say "I heard Romney speak, and I felt this thrill going up my leg." Or if a born-again were to say "Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Bush on his journey?" Or if a Catholic were to say "Jindal is an evolved leader, he has an ear for eloquence and a Tongue dipped in Unvarnished Truth." We'd all be labeled religious nut-jobs. But Obama has taken the religion out of faith and worship, and replaced it with hope and, well, hero-worship (come on, English language, you're letting me down on this one). Can anyone really deny the sermon-like quality of Obama's speeches? Should we call his closing argument Sermon on the Canton Memorial Civic Center?

Think for a moment, if the Republican party or its ticket were to claim that people were worshiping Obama, even without including anything inflammatory like "idol of the Democratic party" or even "anti-Christ". I don't think that would be a positive course of action. So they did the next best thing - they called him a celebrity. This makes perfect sense even without considering the shoulders rubbed with Obama's and the fact that women will jump in front of his car as though he's Paul McCartney in 1964 (that doesn't really happen, I just made that up). Celebrities are often worshiped, so it was a great analogy, if not the truth.

The last thing I'd like to add is Biblical. If Obama has replaced faith with hope, then let's ask ourselves again, "will hope save us from the ills of our country?" I know that a lot of Christians ignore this verse or have some fuzzy interpretation of it, but as James tells us in chapter 2:

Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

So what does hope without action give us? Where is Obama's call for people to take responsibility (other than a slight nod to the word with no specifics) and action (besides voting, sorry VoteOrDie, voting will not find you a job, give you a raise, or buy you a house) along with hoping for a positive outcome? Does Obama truly believe that he will solve people's problems without any action required from them (a miracle-worker now?)? (Or does Obama think that when Joe the Plumber - yes I used the phrase Joe the Plumber - asks Obama why all his hope didn't buy him a plumbing company, that the answer "you didn't take personal responsibility" will actually satisfy Joe after listening to his promises?)"