Personal Faith Reflections: Barack Obama is not the Messiah

Say it with me: Barack Obama is not the Messiah.

(Neither is he, for our ardent Republican readers, the Antichrist.)

There is a tremendous amount of excitement around the election of our 44th President in this country and around the world - for what I think are a number of good reasons. Who could have imagined 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago, that we would have an African American President of the United States? For years, we've told our children that anyone can grow up to become President - with this historical election, that statement moves a little closer to actually being true, and that in my mind is a good thing.

You can't just say that a racial barrier has been broken - you have to break it and watch the pieces fall away in the light of day.

There is more I could say about this election, but this blog post is not actually about politics - it is about idolatry.

I've been disturbed for some time now about the messianic language used to describe Obama. I think that being a firm member of a "third party" might give me a slight outsider's view, since it is not in my interest to buy into Obama-messianism, nor am I really encouraged to believe that he "pals around with terrorists", or whatever other garbage the partisans of the other side come up with.

To me, Barack Obama seems like a human being, just like John McCain - a human being that I agree with on a few more issues than McCain, but just a human being. He has his limitations, his failings, his hypocrisies and self-deceptions just like everyone else. Sometimes these show, but he is as savvy as any national politician in allowing us to project upon him our hopes and dreams and highest aspirations. We can't possibly vote a human being into national office, so we vote a projection, we vote for the lies we tell ourselves about them, or the lies we allow others to tell us, believing they are somehow different from the everyday humanity that surrounds us.

They are not different. They are just like you and me. And that thought should terrify you around election time, just as it terrifies me.

This whole time, when I've had the chance, I've tried to talk about Barack Obama the man, the politician, because I already have a Messiah who I am comfortable naming as such.

Likely many who read this blog know that being Messiah has to do with being anointed - being the anointed one. I like to think of anointing as a catalyst, like a conductor which enables a charge to pass from one thing to another. There is no question that Barack Obama is the anointed one of the Democratic party and of what seem to be most of the liberals in America, as well as tens of millions of others - Evangelicals, moderates, etc. He is also, in a sense, the anointed one of the electoral college, and they will transfer power and authority to him by the authority of our Constitution.

In the Messiah's case, the anointing comes from God - it does not come from here. It does not have to do with our moral decisions, or our value judgements, or the ways we make meaning. It has to do with something happening that is for our highest good, for the salvation of the whole world, but which conducts its power from outside the world we live in. The Messiah is an invader from the un-fallen world, anointed by God for the purpose of making God's person and God's purpose known.

This Messiah has a lot to do with how we behave politically, with how we treat each other in every situation. This Messiah makes claims on our lives that limit what we can do, how we can act. This Messiah does not arise from any political machinery, and if we were all to vote "no" this Messiah would remain. This Messiah is not a referendum nor a proposition on a ballot; this Messiah is God's Messiah. This Messiah shows us who God is and who we are.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, like every national politician, arises out of political machinery composed of greed and fear and vice, of occlusion and deception and fabrication, of half-truths and messy logic and compromises. Barack Obama is not the Messiah of God - is not a Messiah at all. Barack Obama is a politician - an exciting one for some people some of the time, but that is all he is.

He will not save us. He will not make us whole. He will not restore us. He will not redeem us. He will not reconcile us to God and to each other. He will not bring us Shalom. He will not remake the world.

I urge everyone to think about this in their own way. Remember who the Messiah is, what the claims on you are, and remember the limits of any human being, even a President, even a historic President of which we can be very proud in many ways.

One more time: Barack Obama is not the Messiah.