In a 2006 speech here, then-Sen. Barack Obama said Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was so “radical” the Defense Department wouldn’t survive its application. Earlier this month (April), the new president suggested the economy couldn’t get along without it.
In the middle of a nuts-and-bolts speech at Georgetown University on economic policy, Obama overtly cited the sermon’s parable of two men, one of whom builds his house on rock, the other on sand.
“We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand,” the president said. “We must build our house upon a rock.”
But….wasn’t the Sermon on the Mount about [url=http://derekpgilbert.com/?p=2577]homosexuality?[/url]. Hmmm…there’s a lesson here, but mentioning it might get my post Elf’ed.
The first problem here is that the figures of speech in this part of the Sermon on the Mount/Plain, to which Obama referred, are [i]similes[/i] embedded in a metaphor Jesus used to engage his listeners. Those who would heed him – those capable of apprehending parable or metaphor – have understood that by following Jesus’ words of wisdom delivered in the Beatitudes and accompanying teaching, the individual listeners would be establishing themselves upon a firm foundation of life wisdom – compared in the simile, using ‘like’, to a home-builder who sites his home on a rock, or solid piece of ground. This comparison is key here.
Obama would have to be inserting himself in the role of Jesus to deliver this Biblical teaching and mean something new for the American economy by it – which is why so many are concerned that he thinks of himself as messianic.
Rich Lowry wrote a good analysis at NRO about the implications of Obama’s seeming inability to root, or [i]ground[/i], himself in the history (including the economic history) of the country he was elected to lead:
http://article.nationalreview.co/?q=OTcyNzBkNzg4YWI3MWM4YzY1MjIyMzY1MDIwNDE5Mjk=
Dawn Eden blogged, more pithily, that Obama has conflated this part of the Sermon on the Mount with the story of the three little pigs, and I do not think she is far off the mark.
Given the degenerating standards of both language understanding and religious comprehension in the poor ol’ USA, I think this speech would make extremely good sermon material.
Nice that he places such emphasis on one passage of scripture. Now if he would only take the entire New Testament with such seriousness, and sought out Biblical scholars to counteract the radical interpretations given by Rev. Wright.