Going "Dark Side" - President Obama on "Completing the Journey"

While the media elites drooled all over themselves at the second Inauguration of President Obama, the presidential speechwriters were beaming over their glorious creation - the inaugural speech itself.

It was intended to be somewhat of a story - a journey - begun early in our history and continued by our founders, but now the journey must meet and conquer new challenges in changing times. 

One particular paragraph stood out to me:

It is now our generation's task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm. 

Let's see, that kind of rings a bell, "Our journey is not complete..." where have I heard that before? Hmm, Barney? Nope. Veggie Tales? Don't think so. Or maybe it was Han Solo? No, but that's getting closer. Oh, that's right, it was in a Star Wars film. Not Han Solo, but old wrinkly-face Emperor Palpatine, AKA Darth Sidious. When Luke is wanting to pick up his lightsaber and slice up the Emperor, Mr. Dark Side himself smiles with glee and says:

Good. I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete.

Ok, is it too much of a stretch to think that maybe the speechwriters had Return of the Jedi playing in the background while they were staying up late writing the speech?

Well, the dark side and the uh, light side (other side? they never really call it anything) of the "force" is a terrible, terrible illustration of the good of God's law and the evil of rejection of God's law. I've heard that in sermon illustrations, and it just wants to make a devoted student of the Bible want to chew his arm off. 

However, I just can't help but think that with this Presidential speech, the U.S. has officially gone "dark side." 

One of the three uses of God's law is that nations are to use it to have a standard by which to judge what evil is, and to use its force in government to restrain the evil within all of us.

Romans 13:1-5  Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience.

But instead of holding up God's law as the glorious, absolute standard of morality, President Obama went "dark side" in this speech, and especially in this paragraph. There are two overt denials of God's law in here (maybe three if you think about the second sentence a little bit). 

The first:

Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.

Now the President didn't use the word "Marriage," but I think it is pretty obvious what he is saying here. Let's back up to the first, second, and third paragraphs after his introduction:

Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional — what makes us American — is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

The President of the United States is stating clearly here that our journey is not complete in our quest to treat all people as equal Creations of God with certain rights, like "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" until gay people have secured the right to be married. And by extension, that the law of the land must be changed to protect that right.

So, that means marriage, as defined by God as between one man and one woman (Genesis 1 &2) at least 6000ish years before any colonial rebel started firing musket balls at red-coats, is to be pitched out into the garbage and a new definition determined. By us. Because we are so smart. Because we can. Because we have "progressed" to a new understanding of human interaction led by "science" and "education." 

So God's law, His definition of marriage, His word, His created order, is tossed out like the space junk trash ejected from an Imperial Cruiser.

The second:  

Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm. 

Yeah, there's one, teeny, tiny location that he didn't mention. It happens to be the place where more children are murdered every single day than perhaps all the children ever killed by guns in Detroit, Appalachia, or Newtown. It is the womb of an American woman. Oh, but I forgot. President Obama doesn't want his daughters to be punished with a child. So the simplicity of the sixth commandment is also discarded like so much trash. 

The only possible way that God's law can be honored and every child would know that they are cared for, cherished, and always safe from harm is that they, first of all, have to be allowed to be born. Children must be under the protection of the law, or surely our nation is made up of the worst of terrifying barbarians.

To quote the Declaration of Independence, claiming God himself is the creator of rights, and then to turn around and say that obviously we know better than God what rights people should have is the ultimate in futile and darkened, alienated from God thinking:

Ephesians 4:17-24  Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!-- 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

I would say that if the journey to the dark side is not complete in the United States, President Obama took us a large leap forward with this speech.