A radio thought (with crowd noise and star spangled banner added) for The Full Breakfast show on Pulse 2 in Bradford this Sunday morning, a few times between 730 and 10am. Also available for member download on Audiopot, the UK's online library of Christian audio.
Now unless you’ve been living under a stone or practising to be a hermit, you’ll know that something rather momentous has happened across the pond (and I don’t mean the one in your garden with carp in it). I’m talking of course about Barack Obama becoming head honcho of the United States. It’s all created a bit of a stir hasn’t it? (more than when we got a new president for the local darts club anyway). In fact, the last time I saw this amount of expectation surrounding one man, he was running out of a phone box in a red cape wearing his pants on the outside. Leader of the free world, for goodness sake. Imagine waking up on a Monday morning and suddenly remembering THAT was your day job.
Obama’s got a lot going for him. He’s also got problems waiting in his in tray that would make most of us reach for the valium. It's encouraging that he’s a man of faith, and that he sets such store on that little word HOPE. Hope is bigger than optimism, carrying on despite setbacks. It’s got a stronger foundation. But actually, there’s only one man who’s ever lived who CAN carry the hopes of the whole world. Jesus didn’t have laser vision or the keys to the White House. He showed that powerlessness, and a cross, were what’s needed to REALLY get things sorted.
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14 comments:
Why should we care what he believes? Like his colour it has nothing to do with his ability to do the job he was elected to do.
George Bush and Robert Mugabe are men of faith too. Please take a more rounded look at faith and stop attatching only good valued to it. Think of it like nuclear power - good and bad
britneybama ? I must say I'm not won over by a man whose political career has been as short as a cigarette butt. "Hope" in my opinion is more the cultural mileu in which he has been carried rather than anything he has dared to encapsulate in action. His great aunt Fannie mae speaks highly of him - but who else.
I'm afraid - I don't see him as a man of faith - he is no Ghandi, no MLK - there is something too hollow - too accomodating about him - he will listen - he can talk - but the question is can he direct - can he do ?
Is he really the great white hope. Or Is he just a blank screen for the projection of averaged demographic fantasies. With nothing else left to say in political debate - has colour simply become the issue with which to entertain our bleeding hearts - long after commerce has divorced colour from culture.
Is Nobama not more harvard than homeboy ? A statesman he is - certainly one of the best I have seen - but the great thing about him is the worst thing as well. I hope he has something in his locker. I hope he actually does something. I hope for his hope.
i pray and hope the best for my new president. however, he has the experience equivelant to a thumb tack and what he boosts in public appeal he lacks in knowledge. harvard educated sure but isn't there something to be said about experience?!
non the less i do hope the best for him and his family, heck, he might actually do good for this country. in the end i serve my God and no man can change that. Romans 13:1-7 is what keeps me pressing on in this time.
Is he really the great white hope.
Was that intentional? :-)
I do think he better than the alternative aka WWIII
Ryan,
He may lack experience, but I think he has been surrounding himself with "good" people. Sucessful people often work that way. 4 years of McCain and Pailin would have been the worst possible situation
did i mean "great white hope" ? probably...
online essay on "whiteness" from the atlantic - just read it - will quote what I thought was the best bit:
Consider the world of advertising and marketing, industries that set out to mold our desires at a subconscious level. Advertising strategy once assumed a “general market”—“a code word for ‘white people,’” jokes one ad executive—and smaller, mutually exclusive, satellite “ethnic markets.” In recent years, though, advertisers have begun revising their assumptions and strategies in anticipation of profound demographic shifts. Instead of herding consumers toward a discrete center, the goal today is to create versatile images and campaigns that can be adapted to highly individualized tastes. (Think of the dancing silhouettes in Apple’s iPod campaign, which emphasizes individuality and diversity without privileging—or even representing—any specific group.)
At the moment, we can call this the triumph of multiculturalism, or post-racialism. But just as whiteness has no inherent meaning—it is a vessel we fill with our hopes and anxieties—these terms may prove equally empty in the long run. Does being post-racial mean that we are past race completely, or merely that race is no longer essential to how we identify ourselves?
full essay is at : http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200901/end-of-whiteness
Glad to have at least sparked a bit of conversation. Strong views Rob, we'll just have to see. Billy no-one's pretending that some bad stuff doesn't get done in the name of religion. I'm more interested in exploring the good that can flow from faith when it's lived out the right way - or a healthy way if you prefer.
"There's only one ultimate source of hope – God and his goodness. Cos let’s face it, the Almighty is one dude who doesn’t need a red cape and laser vision to get things sorted."
There's so much I could say about this statement if only I had the time. Briefly: and how does he do these things? Often in a manner completely indistingushable from what would happen if he were not in fact there. Something good happens, "God has got it sorted". Something bad happens- ?
I'll have to echo what bruce said about arguments. Thanks for the article on africa billy - it was thought provoking. I take a cautious approach to missionary work - much can be lost in translation - good intention doesn't always equal a good outcome.
Sometimes it is a shame there isnt more dialogue between the organised camps of RReason and FFaith. I think having a brutal awareness of where your work is failing is essential to any organised religious work - from schools , to missions. Often people can see these issues clearer from outside their own group.
Were my opinions on Obama strong Bruce - I wouldnt take to much stock in them - sometimes I need hyperbole just to keep me awake.
Thanks for your post Ryan - its always good to get an insiders view - I have an american client at work who flew to berlin just to listen to Obama - this event seems to mean a lot to many of you.
I'm more interested in exploring the good that can flow from faith when it's lived out the right way - or a healthy way if you prefer.
The problem here Bruce is that witch hunters and homophobes think their faith is healthy too. What makes yours right? I would not trivialise the damage faith has done too.
If we can both accept that you dont need faith to do good, then why do we need faith at all?
Forgotto pick up on god the superhero - where was he in Rwanda, the trade centre or the boxing day tsunami?
Not a very good analogy if you ask me. What exactly does he do?
I would not trivialise the damage faith has done too.Nor would i trivialise the eviscerating influence of post enlightenment secularism - from hiroshima to britney spears - the horros are endless. The difficulty here billy seems to be that while bruce and i acknowledge the limitations of our approach you seem to have much more religious attachment to your own methods. I sometimes wonder who are the believers ?
In Rwanda Your "fairy-pet-dog-god" was where he always was, in an astral caravanette bemused by the problems of flan-making. The christian god was the rwandan victims - if you have no objection to my cooking esquivel and athanasius in the same pot...
from hiroshima to britney spears
Bad examples Rob, a christian president sanctioned the (needless) nukeing of civilians in 2 japaneese cities, and britney is a christian.
Still see no evidence of god the super hero - that's bruce's god you are calling a pet dog. not mine.
Just posted the edited version, which has quite a different ending. Hopefully helps draw out the upside down power through powerlessness kind of God that Jesus represents.
"Hope studies" - Is there an area of theology dedicated to this - elpistology ? I noticed recently N.T.Wright spoke of love and hope as ways of knowing that he put on a par with empiricism and history. Caputo I know speaks of the undeconstuctability of hope as being the foundation of all religion - hope springs eternal as they say - or in the words of our inter faith chapliancy - "it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness".
The strangest thing to me about arguments over faith - or perhaps the scariest thing - is the illusion that one could come to a position in which one believed one was wholly and demonstrably "right".
What is the verse in corinthians ? he who claims to know a thing does not yet know as he ought. Of course one could claim to know exactly what this means and then of course it would be a sure sign you didnt know it as you ought.
I remember a prayer once in church which was asking to see things as jesus did - I wonder how he would have looked on the world - what is it to see it through the eyes of hope - and to know it through the silence and quietude of love....
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