Barrack Obama is not God, or Jesus. He might well be one of the many prophets of our time though.
What’s a prophet though? Someone who can speak profound truth about the state of the world and warn against what will happen if something is not done (as opposed to the common mis-conception of someone who can forsee the future).
I’ve been working through The Audacity of Hope over the last couple of months. I’ve just finished his chapter on faith. Throughout the book I’ve been struck repeatedly by the carefully considered views that are always balanced and fair. I was particularly struck by the way he expresses his faith - a faith that seems far removed from the right wing evangelicals that seem to form much of the republican voting base. Rather than a ‘faith’ that condemns and tries to implement biblical moral ideologies perfectly into reality with cast iron certainty; Obama tells us that:
Faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts. The typical black sermon freely acknowledged that all Christians (including the pastors) could expect to still experience the same greed, resentment, lust, and anger that everyone else experienced. In the black community, the lines between sinner and saved were more fluid; the sins of those who came to church were not so different from the sins of those who didn’t, and so were as likely to be talked about with humor as with condemnation. You needed to come to church precisely because you were of this world. You needed to embrace Christ precisely because you had sins to wash away-because you needed an ally in your difficult journey.
For much of his book there are indications of the finger prints of Jesus. No extremism. No excuses. Good practical ideas. I continue to watch with intrique and can wholeheartedly recommend his book.
this is so much the message that church needs to be getting across to the ‘rest of the world’ to counter the (mistaken) idea that Christians think they are somehow better than everyone else. I was finding this book hard-going when you left it here for a while, but suspected it was worth persisting with - I should definitely give it another go!
Indeed - it is a mistaken idea. Unfortunately I think it is often more a mistake on the part of Christians, thinking they somehow are superior; as opposed to the world thinking that Christians think they are better than everyone else (because a lot of them do - me included for a significant part of my life).