"Raise your hand if you’re offended by politicians and church leaders using the Bible like a wax nose." So begins Mike Horton's latest essay on the misuse of holy Scripture for political gain. I was struck by this recently as I listened to President Obama talk at the presidential prayer breakfast--a tendency to twist scripture.
To be clear, people of all political persuasions do this and it is unfortunate. Here are some of Horton's thoughts:
[Regarding the Rich Young Ruler]--"The tragic fact of this story is that those who invoke it against
Republicans miss the point as badly as the rich young ruler. In fact,
we show ourselves to be uncomfortably like the rich young ruler when we
deflect the point to others—The Rich—and imagine that Jesus is suggesting that the Roman government should redistribute their income. The truth is, we
are the rich young ruler and if we’re looking for “the one thing” we
supposedly haven’t done to possess one more possession (eternal life),
the command is for us to sell everything we have and give it to the
poor. Have the invokers of this story done that? If they haven’t, then
they don’t have a right to use the story against the “bad guys."
[On socialism versus small government]--"It’s not just that Bible doesn’t give us enough data on small government
versus socialism; it’s not written to a society that would have known
what these economic arrangements were in the first place. It’s
completely anachronistic to expect the Bible to address economic systems
that would evolve through centuries of Western history."
Read the whole thing here.
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