Obama's theological Chinese menu

Sometimes I feel like the Court of Appeal judges must have felt in the case of Hall v. Brookshire, circa 1935.

In the closing argument, the plaintiff's attorney made this memorable statement: "You may remember that when Christ was preaching the gospel, in the Holy Roman Empire that Julius Caesar was emperor of Rome. As Christ was making his way toward Rome, the Mennonites and the Philistines stopped him in the road and they sought to entrap him. They asked Christ: 'Shall we continue to pay tribute unto Caesar?'"

In response to this gibberish, the court pointed out: "The Holy Roman Empire did not come into existence until about 800 years after Christ. Julius Caesar, who was never emperor of Rome, was dead before Christ was born. Christ was never on His way to Rome and the Philistines had disappeared from Palestine before the birth of Christ. The Mennonites are a devout Protestant sect that arose in the 16th century A.D. This phrase is noteworthy only because of the ease with which the speaker crowded into one short paragraph such an abundance of misinformation."

I thought about this interchange recently upon reading a 2004 interview about faith with Barack Obama, conducted by Cathleen Falsani.

"I am a Christian," said Obama. "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 6 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."

What Obama reveals about his brand of Christianity is that it has little in common with what Jesus had to say about salvation in John 14:6: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

There aren't many paths, according to the Bible – just one. And it tells us even that one path is very narrow. Obama makes the mistake of many who believe themselves to be Christians – that they can pick and choose what they like about the Bible as if were an oversized Chinese menu.

In the interview, Obama says he was raised as a Christian by his mother and grandparents. Yet, his mother, who married two Muslim men, permitted him to be educated in a Muslim school in Indonesia. Then he describes his grandparents as practicing universalists.

The only church he ever attended regularly was the one presided over by Jeremiah Wright – a subscriber to liberation theology, an ideology more in line with the beliefs of Barabbas than Jesus.

And who is Jesus to Barack Obama?

He laughs nervously when asked by the interviewer, then responds: "Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he's also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher. And he's also a wonderful teacher. I think it's important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh and also teachers in history."

Of course, Christians believe Jesus is the bridge to God for all willing to accept Him and His substitutionary sacrifice for their sins.

Obama admits in the interview he seldom read the Bible, but relied on spiritual guidance from Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger. He said he had "enormous respect for" Wright and described Pfleger, from whom he has also distanced himself this year, as "a dear friend and somebody I interact with closely."

"This is something that I'm sure I'd have serious debates with my fellow Christians about," Obama says, leading up to another shocker for believers. "I think that the difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and proselytize," he said. "There's the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven't embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they're going to hell."

The interviewer asks: "You don't believe that?"

"I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell," he says. "I can't imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That's just not part of my religious makeup."

But, of course, that leaves us with the question of why Jesus chose to die for the sins of mankind if, indeed, there was another way to avoid hell.

Then again, see how Obama defines sin.

Interviewer: "Do you believe in sin?"

Obama: "Yes."

Interviewer: "What is sin?"

Obama: "Being out of alignment with my values."

Where does all this spiritual confusion lead? Does it suggest Obama will not win the presidency?

Who knows?

Remember that mixed up lawyer back in 1935? Despite the agonizingly humiliating spiritual and historical confusion expressed by that plaintiff's attorney, amazingly, he still managed to win his appeal.

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