The Persian Empire was what it was, but it still mattered whether Hamaan had the emperor’s ear or Esther did. In that case, Hamaan was bad for the Jews, and in ours Obama is bad for the unborn. On that front, we are still in a plot line waiting for the eucatastrophe.
But for those who were in a panic that a President Obama would just wad up our empire for consumers and throw it away, no fears. Obama certainly has been a leftist thug from Chicago, but he will “grow in office,” just like the ostensible conservatives always do. William Ayers will no doubt show up in a black tie at the White House sometime, with “Bomberette” Dorn on his arm, but he will not become the Director of Homeland Security anytime soon. Obama will be sworn in this coming January, and the Empire will have him fully digested by July. A glance at his cabinet appointments, especially Treasury, demonstrates that Obama is driving hard toward the center, even as we speak, and our kennel-fed Republicans in the Congress are promising to support him there. We have a two party system the same way a football coach in a preseason practice scrimmage has two teams on the field.
As my son-in-law Luke pointed out to me last night, our secularist system of governance is a system designed to allow everybody to buy and sell whatever they want. That is the central point of it. The cost for this system, as he pointed out, is that everyone has to agree to the radical privatization of whatever faith they claim to have.
Taking the next step, this means that Christians are invited to participate in this great fire sale along with everyone else, buying cars, iPods, computers, clothes, boots, and other trinkets, but with the central requirement that we agree to the commodification of our faith as well. We may “have” our faith, but only in the same sense that we possess our other stuff. Our faith is not authoritative over the market (which the Jesus of Scripture most certainly is), but is rather just one more product that we purchase in the market and consume at home. If we agree to treat our faith in this way, then our secularist mammon-monkeys promise to stock it. That central idolatry will continue on, no more molested by President Obama than it was by President Bush.
Does that mean the election was irrelevant? On this issue it was — but remember Hamaan and the Jews.