A Pew Research poll was released in August of this year showing that the majority of Americans are unclear about President Obama's religious persuasion or affiliation. The poll shows that 43% say they don't know what the President believes, 18% believe he is a Muslim, while 34% believe he is a Christian. Even Ann Coulter, a conservative columnist, declares that the President is in fact an atheist. Viewing and listening to varied segments of the media will leave you more confused than ever. So the question still begs to be answered, right? Why not go straight to the "horse's mouth"?
In March of 2004, then Senate candidate Obama, sat down for an interview with Cathleen Falsani with Chicago Sun Times.
When asked by Falsani, "What do you believe?
Obama answered, "I am a Christian. So, I have a deep faith. So I draw from the Christian faith. On the other hand, I was born in Hawaii where obviously there are a lot of Eastern influences. I lived in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, between the ages of six and 10.
My father was from Kenya, and although he was probably most accurately labeled an agnostic, his father was Muslim. And I'd say, probably, intellectually I've drawn as much from Judaism as any other faith.
So, I'm rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people. That there are values that transcend race or culture, that move us forward, and there's an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived.
(Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2008/11/obamas-interview-with-cathleen.html#ixzz0yNvsue2m)
Still confused about what the President believes? Well, according to his interview back in 2004 he is a pluralist. Oh sure, if he had to pick one to fill in the blank he would say "Christian", but really he does not believe that his Christian faith is exclusive. Rather than speculate I'll take his word for it. He said, "I believe that there are many paths to the same place,..." That is pluralism.
A pluralist is someone who describes religion as a wheel with us on the rim and God as the hub. Each spoke of the wheel represents a religious viewpoint, but with all spokes connecting the rim to the hub. In pluralism there is a plurality of paths or ways to heaven. Exclusivity is not a welcomed ideal.
The problem is that Jesus declared His exclusivity. In John 14:6 (NKJV), "Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." According to Jesus Himself, the way to heaven is found in Him exclusively, the truth of who God is revealed by Him exclusively and eternal life comes through Him exclusively.
One cannot have it both ways. In his book entitled Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote,
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."
Pluralism possesses far more danger than any of the false religions singularly, because it deals in subtly. It slowly erodes the truth and compromises one principal at a time. The proverbial slippery slope.
Not an issue of political party, just an issue of truth.
Pastor Bob
