The Berlin Wall Came Down 20 Years Ago Today

How Should Christians Respond to Obama’s Education Speech?

Obama’s speech on education, which he will give today, has caused quite a stir among Christians, most notably on the Desiring God blog.  There, John Piper expressed his excitment over what the President said.  Basically, Obama challenges students to work hard, be responsible, and have a positive attitude with school.  He said that students need to turn off the TV and get off the Xbox.  I couldn’t agree more.

Some Christians try to find a devil behind everything Obama says.  Some Christians will not give “honor to whom honor is owed” (Rom. 13:7).  I think that’s wrong.  I don’t agree with most of Obama’s policies, but I can commend a man when he speaks truth.

With that in mind, I think if you are one of the Christians who believes you cannot applaud something that Obama says because of his other policies/ideas (which very well may be moral failures), then you are ignoring an important theme in Scripture:

• Remember that King Cyrus was a pagan ruler of a pagan nation, yet he was the Lord’s “anointed,” who was used to redeem his people. God said, “I call you by your name, I name you, though you do not know me…I equip you, though you do not know me” (Isa. 45:1-13). It is clear that God can do good through people who don’t know him personally.
• Remember that God has common grace on all of creation: “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). This includes Obama and all the unsaved teachers who teach our children.
• Remember that God loves justice wherever he finds it because God is just: “A false balance is an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is his delight” (Pr. 11:1). And “A just balance and scales are the LORD’s; all the weights in the bag are his work” (Pr. 16:11). This applies even to Obama and education in the United States.
• Remember that Obama is a “servant for your good” if you are a believer (Rom. 13:4), whether you agree with him or not. Are some of his policies bad? Yes. Was there anything wrong with what he said in this speech? If there was, it was minimal.  Would you fault your non-Christian employer who demands his employees to work harder instead of showing up late, leaving early, and taking an extra long lunch because he didn’t mention Jesus? I doubt it.
• Remember, finally, that Paul quoted pagan religions in evangelism and teaching (Acts 17:22-34; Titus 1:12). There are commonalities that we can share with non-believers in order to point them to Jesus. Obama can’t point people to Jesus if he’s not a believer, so we can’t expect him to do that. The job falls on us Christians to find common ground in order to tell him (and others), “Look there! That’s Jesus. He made hard work. He created math and science and English and history. And he gives us strength to learn and write papers and do science projects!  To know this Jesus, that is what our children need the most.”

So we pray for Obama and beg God to let light shine in his heart. But we also give honor to whom honor is due. We don’t encourage our children to be like Obama or a teacher or anyone else (not even John Piper!!!). We point them to the cross, teaching them to be conformed to and led by Jesus. As we do that, we tell them to rejoice in truth wherever it is found because all objective truth is God’s truth. Education is good. Hard work is good. Addiction to TV and Xbox or anything else is bad. We praise God for these truths. He is the author of them.

*     *     *

Related Posts:

• Some Lessons for Conservative Christians
• How Should Christians (who didn’t vote for Obama) Respond to His Election?

Obama in Cairo

At the end of President Obama’s speech yesterday, he said:

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.

The Holy Koran tells us, “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”

The Talmud tells us: “The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.”

The Holy Bible tells us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God’s vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God’s peace be upon you.

No, Mr. President, we don’t have the power make the world we seek.  Only God does.  No, Mr. President, the Koran is not holy.  Only the Bible is.  No, Mr. President, the people of the world cannot live in peace together.  Jesus will always be the ultimate dividing point.  He always has been, and always will be.

Read President Obama’s whole speech.

Desiring God Senior Director Queries President Obama

Here is a great open letter to President Obama by John Knight, Senior Director for Development at Desiring God.  Knight asks Obama some very legitimate questions about abortion.  Here are his three main questions:

• When do we get to talk about how the behavior of men on virtually every measurable level has gotten worse since abortion was made legal across the United States? Men are more likely to leave women today, more likely to be abusive, less likely to care for the children they father, and less likely to consider the consequences of their sexual behavior. Up to 75% of marriages that have a disabled child end in divorce, and most of the time it is the man who walks away from his family. When do we get to talk about men being encouraged to act like men rather than petulant, irresponsible, selfish little boys?
• When do we get to talk about the cultural expectation that a mother is expected to abort her baby with an identified disability in the womb? Doctors, nurses, social workers assume a diagnosis of downs syndrome or spina bifida means a woman should terminate the pregnancy. What do you call a 90% abortion rate, Mr. President? If it were babies of any ethnicity, you would rightly call it genocide. What do you believe about families in this situation, Mr. President?
• Finally, Mr. President, you said yourself that “the strong too often dominate the weak.” Please explain to me, Mr. President, who is more weak and thus more worthy of your protection as the leader of the free world than a baby in his or her mother’s womb?

John Piper Addresses President Obama on Abortion

How the Swine Flu and Abortion are Related

Mike Huckabee writes why he’s not afraid of the swine flu.  Here’s a good chunk of his article:

I’ve watched the Obama administration tell us how much they care about protecting lives from the flu. If they really want to help make children safer, let me make a suggestion: Start doing all you can to move this country to being pro-life.

Almost a million unborn children will die in their mother’s womb because of elective abortion this year. These are not sick or unhealthy babies, they’re just inconvenient.

And by ending their lives because they represent an economic disruption or a social interference to the mother, we’ve created a culture in which a human life is expendable because it represents an inconvenience.

It happens a million times a year in the United States. Where’s the press conference by the president, or the warnings of the vice president, or the outline of steps to be taken issued by Homeland Security or the secretary of Health and Human Services?

There isn’t one, because they all support the notion that it’s OK to end the lives of perfectly healthy unborn babies because they are in someone’s way.

“The Truth”

Artist Michael D’Antuono’s painting “The Truth” about Barack Obama.  Here’s an excerpt from the story:

“More than a presidential portrait,” writes D’Antuono on a website touting the painting, “‘The Truth’ is a politically, religiously and socially-charged statement on our nation’s current political climate and deep partisan divide that is sure to create a dialogue.”

Like others in the news who have depicted Obama in Christ-like imagery, D’Antuono insists he isn’t claiming the man is Messiah, but only inviting “individual interpretations.”

“‘The Truth,’ like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder,” claims the exhibit’s press release.

Read the whole thing.

D’Antuono has encouraged viewers to email him and respond to the question, “What is your truth.”  I plan to work on my response sometime this weekend and then post it here on the blog.

South Africa Presidential Election

On Wednesday, South Africa will hold its presidential elections.  The favored party to win is the African National Congress (ANC).  Jacob Zuma, most likely, will be president.  Last year, Zuma was tried for the rape of a HIV-infected woman.  He was found not guilty.  Perhaps the ANC will win because it is the party of former-president Nelson Mandela.  This week, he publicly gave his support for Zuma.

We know that God’s will must be done.  You can pray for that, of course.  But more than that, pray for the hearts of the South Africans, that they might understand and embrace the fact that no human kingdom will satisfy.  Pray that they would receive the kingdom that cannot be shaken (Heb. 12:28), instead of hoping in a kingdom that can be ruined.

Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.”  God is sovereign.  Nothing will surprise him.  Whatever God ordains will happen and is right.  This election, and every other election, is a mere footnote in his grand story.  In God’s story, King Jesus will reign, and every knee will bow and tongue confess that he is Lord.

Dear President Obama…

Tom Foreman, an Anderson Cooper 360 correspondent, is writing a letter a day to President Obama.  They are being published on CNN’s website.

This letter, answering the question “If God loves everyone, why are there different religions?” shows the problem with mainline denominational Christianity.  Foreman openly says that he is a Christian, but you’ll see the problem if you read his letter.  Here’s Foreman’s answer to this question that his daughter asked him.  It’s the core of his problem:

“I think there are different religions,” I told her, “because adults, like children, disagree on things, and sometimes we focus more on those disagreements than on what we have in common. Imagine there was a girl named Katherine. She has a friend at school who calls her that. At dance class, another friend calls her Kathy. And at soccer, a third friend calls her Kate. One day all three of these friends meet, but they do not know they are acquainted with the same girl. One says, ‘My friend Katherine is the nicest girl ever.’ Another says, ‘You are wrong. My friend Kathy is better.’ And the third says, ‘Nonsense, my friend Kate is better than either of your friends.’ I think that is how it is with God. I think we are all praying to the same being, but we use different names and forget that God is big enough to love us all.”

Isaiah 45:5 says, “I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God.”  Anyone who says otherwise cannot claim to be a Christian.  Why?  The name Christian means “Christ-follower.”  It was Jesus Christ who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

That pretty much excludes anyone with the name “Christian” from saying that we can all pray to the same being, but use a different name.  If you want to say that, go ahead — just don’t call yourself “Christian.”

“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

Which U.S. City Has the Highest Murder Rate Per Capita?

The answer is surprising.