OBAMA-NATION: How liars and misguided zealots try to shape an election

For the record, I'm a fiscal conservative who happens to be a registered Democrat. I don't see a problem with that. Being a Democrat doesn't automatically make one a liberal, although some of today's right-wing pundits still love to cram us into convenient categories so that it's easier to lob stones at us. Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh come to mind.

Additionally, being a Democrat doesn't automatically make me a supporter of Barack Obama, but that doesn't mean I'll stand idly by while radical right-wingers grossly distort Obama's words, or worse, make them up to fit their needs. I've always believed that if you have to lie about someone to make a case, you really don't have much of a case to begin with.

The rash of Obama-hating emails circulating around the Internet is appalling, especially since so many of them are outright lies, and a number of them are apparently from people who refer to themselves as Christians. Many of these Christians, I notice, also think the Iraq war is a just war and that we're fighting international terrorism there. It's not, and we're not. I won't go farther into that arena again except to say that you can read more about my stance on that subject here and here and here.

At first, I actually took the time to respond to some of these emails and go through them point by point, showing how each one was either an outright lie or a grossly distorted truth, and then presented the evidence to counter it. That really got a few people PO'd at me. I think they wanted to hang onto their unfounded biases, and I was asking them to consider that they've been buying into a batch of lies. How insensitive, unpatriotic and un-Christian of me for defending a black man with an Arab-sounding name who had a Muslim father. What was I thinking?

I think I hit the breaking point this morning when I opened an email from an older woman for whom I have a lot of respect, but question why she has also bought into the campaign against Obama. I suspect, sadly, that it's because he's black and she's a Southerner and I've heard her talk about the issue of race before. She considers herself a God-fearing Christian, but harbors an intense dislike of black people, a fault for which I forgive her, but worry about anyway as she seems to see no conflict between her perceived values and her actual ones.

The email in question was a video clip pulled from a speech Obama gave a few years back about faith in the public arena. It was an excellent speech, and I read the content in its entirety. In it, he asks that if we're going to have a Christian nation, whose version of Christianity are we going to follow? Right-winger Jim Dobson's, or left-wing Al Sharpton? He pointed out how people often take scripture out of context to slam others who don't agree with them. Obama then went on to point out that Scripture also calls for us not to eat shellfish, or talk back to our parents...just a sample of the commandments that we all break all the time. So which part of Scripture do we get to ignore, and which part do we hold others accountable for? Keep in mind that the Bible is very specific about what's known as "The Law," stating that if you break any part of it, you break all of it. Christ also tells us that not one single bit of the Law is considered invalid, and that it all stands until God's purpose is accomplished. So how is Obama taking Scripture out of context, as the narrator alleges? Actually, he's not...just read the speech in its entirety if you're so inclined.

I won't go on, as it simply gets me too riled up. I'll just post the link to the video and let you decide for yourself. I agree with everything Obama says in the video, and having read the entire speech, I know the context he's using. The maker of this film obviously had an axe to grind, and pretends to be a breathlessly indignant Christian as he spouts his obvious hate message. He claims that Obama has grossly distorted the context. I think Obama nailed it on the head, and wasn't mocking the Bible at all, as the narrator claims. It sounds more as though Obama's chiding people like the maker of this video, urging them to be better Christians.

In the end, the narrator convicts himself of breaking a number of commandments, including bearing false witness and failing to love others as Christ loves him, This is a perfect example of why Christians need to stop worrying about building a so-called Christian nation, and spend more time building the true church for Christ, which is for all people of all nations, regardless of color, creed or political affiliation.