Thursday, November 03, 2011

God helps those who help themselves

Did he really say that? Yes, he did. (see here for text). To be fair, it wasn't the president, it was his spokesman. And he corrected it later in the day. And many people use this same mis-quote much of the time.

The president actually said "God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work." I think it's interesting that he thinks God wants us to help ourselves, but by that he means the government helping us. But then I've always said that we're not electing a theologian in chief. I occasionally had problems with the previous president's theology and I'm sure I'll have problems from time to time with the next president as well.

This all brings me to my point. Over the next year, many of the candidates will say things that they don't have a chance to think through. Look beyond that. What is he really trying to say? What does his record say? What does he say in position speeches and papers? Those really determine what the person will do if he reaches office.

I'm not surprised that President Obama thinks that God wants the government to step in and help people who need jobs. This has been his approach all along. You may agree with the idea and you may disagree. But you shouldn't be surprised.

3 comments:

Glenn E. Chatfield said...

Yes, but Obama's god isn't the God of the Bible!

Randy said...

Glenn, I've talked about Obama's faith a number of times before and covered it in detail in a 3 part series three years ago. That's not my point here, my point is that everyone is going to say (or has already said) things that just aren't true. Too many people excuse that in their candidate of choice and highlight it in the other candidates.

This was President Obma's mis-statement and more correctly his spokesperson's statement. I don't really put much credit in it as it really doesn't change anything about the President.

Glenn E. Chatfield said...

I understand your point, and saw your post in the past. I just just making the point that it really doesn't matter whether it was a spokesman, because Obama has indeed appealed to his "god" in the past, and his political worldview is based on the god he follows. His 20 years in probably the most apostate denomination - the UCC - as well as being a member of an assembly which teaches the cultic Black Liberation Theology - demonstrates biblically that he follows a god who is not identified by the one in Scripture.