Okay, 2 out of the last 3 blog posts have been about the Democratic Presidential ticket. And this now makes the 3rd out of 4. I promise not to make this a regular occurrence, but I can't just let this one go......Yesterday I received an email with a link to this video which--according to the email--shows Barack Obama mocking Christianity. It's an email I'd received before, but it came this time from someone I consider very intelligent, so that's why it ticked me off.
The problem is that the video is taken WAY out of context. It is an excerpt from a speech that Obama gave in 2006 at the "Call to Renewal" conference. Obama was the keynote speaker, and his speech is quite long. It is not, however, mocking of Christianity. Obama mentions several times throughout the speech that he is a Christian himself, and that he has deep and abiding respect for Christianity.
You can read the text of the entire speech by clicking on this link (Be warned, though. It's long).
If you don't feel like reading the whole thing, let me just provide my own block quote from the speech, one that will give the reader a completely DIFFERENT view of the speech. In the same speech above where Obama supposedly "mocked" Christianity, he also said this:
You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.
It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
Doesn't sound like someone mocking Christianity, does it?
So here's why I'm so mad. As I mentioned above, I've received information about this email many times before, but I've never gotten upset. I've always just dismissed the sender as "foolish" or "stupid" or "uninformed." This time, though, again as I said above, I have a lot of respect for the sender. He's not stupid, but to send this load of hogwash out he must have been one of two things: 1) Either he was lazy, too lazy to look into the context of these lines himself, or 2) He KNEW the lines were taken out of context and was TRYING to mislead me about Obama. Neither possibility is good.
I want an intelligent, honest, frank discussion about politics, not a lot of taking stuff out of context and trying to score political points. Maybe it's too much to ask. There's plenty of stupidity going back and forth in the Presidential campaign so far. For instance, here's what I would like to say to the people who create the 30 second b.s. ads on TV:
To Barack Obama's people: So John McCain doesn't know exactly how many homes he has. That doesn't make him any less a common man than Barack Obama. Obama is loaded, too.
To John McCain's people: So Joe Biden said Barack Obama wasn't ready to lead back in the Democratic debates? So what? He was trying to win the nomination himself, and he was contrasting himself against Obama. What did you expect him to say?
Okay, this is quickly turning into a rant here, so I'm going to stop (I'll save my venom for crafts stores and the Olympics). I'll just finish by saying this: I don't care whether you agree with me politically or not--I just want an honest debate. And lately I haven't been getting it.
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