In President Obama's mind, religion serves one purpose: to push political ends. Today's prayer breakfast farce was no different, save that this is an election year, so Obama's political trespasses are ever more blatant and offensive.
Jake Tapper of ABC reports:
At the annual prayer breakfast this morning, President Obama suggested that his proposed tax increases on the wealthy are in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ.“In a time when many folks are struggling and at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone,” he said. “And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually thinks that’s going to make economic sense.”
Digression: is this not more awkward, halting rhetoric for someone hailed as a great orator of our time?
The president continued: “But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’ teaching that, from to whom much is given, much shall be required.”
It does? How does raising taxes on just the wealthy coincide with Jesus' teaching?
Please notice how Obama has lifted Jesus' quotation out of context and telescoped it to sound very much like Marx's maxim "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
Jesus' teaching comes in Luke 12:42-48. Here is that passage from the New International Version:
Recommended
42 The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? 43 It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. 44 Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 45 But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. 46 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.47 “The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. 48 But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
In Jesus' teaching, the master has given his manager much responsibility to see to it that his will is carried out in his absence — namely, that his servants are cared for and fed properly. If he carries out his duties faithfully, then when his master returns, the manager finds great reward, greater elevation and responsibility.
The improper manager, however, tyrannizes the servants, making himself fat and drunk on the food and drink the master set aside for them. What the master gave him — and demanded from him — was knowledge of the master's will and responsibility to carry it out. If he thwarts his master's will, his reward will be a heavy beating.
In Jesus' parable, the servants are our fellow men. Each individual hearer is a manager — do we choose to be faithful managers or wicked ones (who get cut to pieces and assigned to a place with the unbelievers)? The master is Jesus.
How, then, does that teaching coincide with Obama's desire to tax the rich? Quick answer: it doesn't, not by a long chalk. But let us try to see it as the president does.
Who are the servants the master wishes the manager to care for? That one is easy; the poor.
Who is the manager? Also easy: the rich.
Who is the master? Well, there's the thing. It has to be Obama, doesn't it? Or perhaps just the government. Either way, in Obama's mind, the rich have been given much — not responsibility; riches — by the government (oh, no, they didn't earn those riches on their own). Now, much riches are required — by Obama.
Who are the hearers to identify with? Why, the poor servants, of course. We are to root for Obama to take much from the rich. And we're supposed to think something about how Jesus would've wanted it that way.
But who gets the money? The government. We the poor get nothing other than the consolation that Obama the master isn't going to ask us for any more.
There ends the usefulness of Jesus' teaching to Obama. If, however, we are to keep the parable decidedly grounded on earth and kept away from spiritual matters, then is not the president himself the unfaithful manager?
Consider: We the people have given him much responsibility. In return, he has given Americans much tyranny, he has pursued policies that have not only plundered this present generation but several future ones as well, and he has handed over power to his big corporations and union allies.
In short, Obama has been an exceedingly wicked manager, and when we return to the polls in November, may we give him a heavy beating.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member