As Obama is settling in to doing his thing, a couple of observations.
The first is that Obama is a very different kind of slick than Bill Clinton was. Clinton’s was more a function of greasiness than anything else. Obama is disciplined, sharp, shrewd, and fully capable of coopting thin veneer conservatives. And all the Clinton-haters who were gearing up for a rerun of the nineties are going to have a tough time of it because the target will not present itself in the same way. Bill was intelligent and a natural political genius, but about as undisciplined as a billy goat on Viagra. Obama is focused and disciplined. Hillary was and is a harridan, but Michelle carries herself very much like a gracious lady. Now make no mistake here — I am not urging anyone to be fooled by any of this. The thuggeries of Chicago that birthed Obama far surpass the jitney chicaneries of the Arkansas mafia that gave us Billary. I am not defending anybody here — just identifying the more serious threat. Bill was slick the way a local greaseball is, and comparatively easy to get at. Our current president is a slick Diamond Slim Obama, shooting his cuffs at us.
Second, Christians need to be alert for literary ironies because we are smack in the middle of a fin de siecle novel written by a master of layered ironies. The fact that Obama, as pro-abort as it gets, was able to sit through that prayer service after he was inaugurated, the one where the choir sang, “He’s got the whole world in His hands . . . the little, bitty baby in his hands” was a feat of extraordinary discipline or cluelessness, or perhaps both. Thoughtful Christians need to be looking around, wondering when the comet is going to hit North America.
Third, this spectacular financial implosion (and resultant leftist dominance) was accomplished by . . . I don’t want to say by conservatives. But I do want to say something very close to that. Let me put it this way. The implosion occurred at the end of eight Bush years, a Republican president, and he had a Republican Congress for much of his time in office. Bush was not a conservative president, but he was allowed by the mainstream conservative movement, in their standard lesser of two evils move, to call himself a conservative president. He was not a free market president, but he was allowed to talk as though he were. And that is why we must also call this a disaster of conservative governance. Conservatives who have had anything to do with any of this must not be entrusted with any responsibilities higher than head stapler at party headquarters until they learn to speak the language of repentance. But Obama is barely in office, and we have already retreated to the standard Democrat/Republican Punch and Judy show. Gecchh.
Fourth, as Christians look at their options, we need to fix this in our minds: there is no political solution to any of this. Politics is no savior — politics must get saved. And in order to be saved, politics needs to get baptized, and start attending church along with a good mid-week Bible study. I would also want to suggest some AA meetings. This means that as we look at the various ways Christians want us to engage with the culture, we must rule all the most popular ones out. We must rule out the Jim Wallis sob sister approach, top to bottom, front to back. He must have learned his idea of what prophetic means from a high school sociology class taught by an angry, overweight feminist in a mumu. We must rule out the middlin’ Republicans who always want to do what the Left is doing, only slower. If we are going to be governed by Leftists, at least let it at least not be by retarded Leftists. And last, most important because most tempting to us, we must rule out the hard-line, hard right, secular conservatives. It would be a drastic mistake for us to think that secular conservatives really ought to be Christians (if they want to go to heaven), but in the meantime they can certainly do a better job governing without Jesus than the liberals. But they can’t. You are not a better driver just because you always hit a different telephone pole than the other guy. No one can govern without Jesus.
So what should Christians who love their country do? Pray that God would raise up an army of preachers, preachers of the gospel. Pray that they would have a high view of God, a high view of His grace and His law, a modest view of themselves, a backbone, and an open Bible.