A poll stunned the news media last week, and its reverberations haven’t ceased. Fully one in five Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. Reaction from the White House and the news media has been identical: no, that’s mistaken—Obama is a Christian. Even conservative commentators and news media have taken up the same chant.
What’s the truth?
First, I don’t believe Obama is a Muslim. To be a real Muslim, he would have to be adhering to all the tenets of Muslim belief. Is he praying five times a day toward Mecca? I doubt it—unless he does it on the golf course. He’s obviously not an observant Muslim. Yes, he was raised as one as a child, but I don’t honestly think he is committed to that today. You can understand the confusion of the populace, however, since he definitely comes across as sympathetic to Muslim causes. He’s always praising Muslim influence in the world and, supposedly, in the United States.
But that doesn’t make him a Muslim.
So then he must be a Christian, right? After all, he went to a church for over twenty years. Is that what it takes to be a Christian? The problem with the political and media response—yes, he’s a Christian—is that it is based on externals only. And even those are abysmally weak.
What about that church he attended? Surely you remember the so-called Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of that church. He is an adherent of black liberation theology, which turns Jesus into merely a great man who came to set free those who are oppressed politically. He attempted to “save” them from the oppressor but was cruelly crucified for trying to do so. It’s a Marxist theology.
This is not the Jesus of the Bible. This is not the message of salvation.
Jeremiah Wright is a radical of radicals, devoted to the Palestinian cause, saying America, by supporting Israel, is sponsoring state terrorism. The terrorist group Hamas, on the other hand, has been given a voice in Wright’s church bulletins.
Wright’s other highlights: Jesus was black and was oppressed by white Europeans; the American government created HIV to commit genocide against minorities; America is worse than the Islamic extremists because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII; 9/11 was simply the “chickens coming home to roost” because America’s policies deserved that response.
This was Obama’s pastor for more than twenty years. There’s nothing orthodox Christian about him.
Obama himself, in a 2004 newspaper interview said, “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.” In other words, there is nothing unique about Christianity or the person of Jesus. All paths lead to the same place. That’s a direct contradiction of the Biblical dictum that Jesus is the only way and the only truth.
In that same interview, he stated,
The difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and proselytize. There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that if people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior, they’re going to hell.
Notice he calls this a “difficult thing,” something he clearly doesn’t accept. Consequently, he doesn’t really believe the Christian message because he doesn’t believe someone will be separated from God if they don’t have faith in Christ, nor does he believe in spreading the message.
Obama is not a Christian.
We’re also told by Jesus that you will know true Christians by the fruit of their lives. This doesn’t mean that Christians will always be consistent with their confession of faith; they will do things at times for which they need to repent. However, if one promotes continually positions that are at odds with Biblical morality, how can one really be a Christian? Let’s look at the record:
Obama, as a state senator in Illinois, vocally and forcefully fought against allowing doctors to come to the aid of children born alive in an attempted abortion. This is infanticide, pure and simple.
Here are more:
- He is one of the foremost politicians in favor of paying for abortions with taxpayer money.
- He advocates embryonic stem cell research.
- He advocates repealing the Defense of Marriage Act.
- He advocates repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military.
- While saying he opposes same-sex marriage, his actions indicate just the opposite.
These are the most obvious issues. There are others I could point to, but they are derivatives of these.
Based on everything I know about Barack Obama, there is no way I can consider him a Christian. Yet like everyone else, he is a potential Christian. The path is the same for everyone: recognition of sin, genuine repentance over one’s sins, faith in the atonement of the Son of God [not just a great man sent by God], and a life that shows the fruit of that faith. Nothing short of that qualifies as Christian.