Thursday, June 05, 2008

Is "Sin" Being Out of Alignment with Obama's Values?

We really need to get to know who Barack Obama really is.

In 2004, he gave an interview to Cathleen Falsani who was the religion reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times. Here's a very interesting part of it:

CF: Do you believe in sin?

BO: Yes

CF: What is sin?

BO: Being out of alignment with my values.

Now, this means either one of two things: 1) Sin is completely subjective and relative, or 2) He thinks that only his values are the correct ones, and that for a person to not be in alignment with his values is for that person to be in sin. The first one belies his statement that he believes in sin -- at least, anything one could reasonably call sin. The second one suggests that he has a Messiah complex. This would be very much in alignment with his being a Leftist, since Leftists to a person do not believe that there is anyone greater than themselves -- which is why they believe they should be put in control of everyone's lives and decisions. The first would make him a moral relativist -- which should disqualify him as President, since you have to be able to recognize some sort of right and wrong to be able to make reasonable judgments as a President, especially in relation to foreign leaders (though this might explain why he thinks it's possible to talk with Iran's President). The second possibility would make him a very, very dangerous, delusional person. Too many already think of him as a Messiah figure -- enough that they might convince him of it, if he's not already convinced. I do not want someone like that in any sort of political office.

2 comments:

liberty said...

No, I think you misunderstood what he meant. I'm not Christian, but I think what he meant was a certain Christian conception of sin, which is the "I've turned my back on God" conception, which means that:

1. Your values are Christian values, which are good because they are derived from understanding God and morality and all that--and they are widely held in society etc. These are the values Obama was raised with.

2. He sins when he goes against these values--because he knows they are right, and he consciously turns his back on God and does something that goes against these good values--that is what it means to sin.

When a Christian says that they sin when they turn against their values, I think this is what they mean. "Their values" are not their personal values they came up with one night when they couldn't fall asleep, or that they derived in philosophy class--its not subjective or relative or individualistic. They are taking the values as objectively correct, and hence when they turn their back on them they know they're sinning.

- p.s., you should delete the spam comments.

Troy Camplin said...

It's possible he meant that, but I've never heard a Christian talk that way. I was raised Baptist and I attend a Catholic church now. I have relatives who are Holiness and Pentacostal, and I have a friend from childhood who was a Methodist, and is now a Methodist preacher. My brother now attends a Lutheran church. None of them would talk about sin without mentioning God,and they certainly wouldn't talk about it in relation to themselves. So while I appreciate the generosity of your interpretation, I'm not sure I buy it. Perhaps part of it is that I don't buy that he's a believer, either. He joined the church he did in Chicago for political reasons, which means it was a calculated move. Everyone knows you cannot get elected in the United States if you're not a professed believer in something -- and this is especially true among African Americans. So I think he meant exactly what he said -- that he's not in alignment with his (rather than God's) values. (I wonder, though, if it is even a coherent statement, considering the fact that one is always acting on one's values, and one's values change over time.)