I wake up this morning in the Obama Nation. What will the next four years bring? To listen to the Republicans, socialism and left wing extremism on an unprecedented level, increased taxes, more abortion clinics, the complete undermining of Biblical marriage, etc... Obamunism. To listen to the other side, Obama is, as Louis Farrakhan put it, "the Messiah." Seriously. Barak Obama is nothing if not charismatic, and his followers, in my experience, tend to elevate him to the status of religious figurehead. They wax eloquent about him to the point that you begin to wonder if he puts his pants on one leg at a time or if they just materialize around his waist. I suspect the truth is somewhere in between. He'll start out fairly centrist, then lean increasingly to the left. And there WILL be change. Of that there can be little doubt. The Dems not only took the Presidency, they also increased their leads in both houses of congress. That means that, for better or worse, Obama has tons of friendly support with which to accomplish whatever it is he sets about doing.Truthfully, I could care less what the man does. (And what will the NAACP do now that "The Man" is black, I wonder? You can't go blaming 'the man' when you are the man, right?) I mean, I'll have an opinion about government policies, and I might even share that opinion through an opinion piece in a newspaper, or an e-mail to my congressman or senator, but the reality I care about is much closer to home. As awesome as it must be to influence 300 million people with the strke of a pen, I'm much more comfortable talking to people face to face. And no matter what the president does from his office in Washington, I'll be ready here to help people deal with the reality of day to day living in a broken world.
Oh yes, the world IS broken, and no president, not even Barak Obama can change that. As Dallas Willard once wrote, "Human problems cannot be solved by human means." And that's the real problem here. Millions of people are looking to a new president to solve the problems in their lives, but what everyone seems to miss is that only Jesus can satisfy the lnging in their souls. Better health care, free gas and a winning lottery ticket in every mailbox just won't get it done. It might make you a bit more comfortable, but for how long? Until the next divorce? The next bankrupcty? The next human tragedy that touches your life? Jesus is the Messiah. The president is just a man. Unfortunately, I think a lot of Americans have forgotten that.
