Bryan Fischer
Is Obama's election the will of God?
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By Bryan Fischer
December 1, 2008

WorldNetDaily featured on online discussion over the weekend on the question of whether Sen. Barack Obama's election to the presidency represents the "will of God."

The answer to this question is a simple and unequivocal "No."

If by the "will of God," we mean "what God desires," then it is impossible to imagine that God wants the most powerful and influential man on earth to support infanticide and promote the normalization of homosexual behavior.

It doesn't take a biblical scholar to discern that the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches us that a pregnant woman carries a baby in her womb, not a clump of tissue (cf. Psalm 139:13-16, Luke 1:39, 44).

And it doesn't take a biblical scholar to discern that the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches us that homosexual behavior is "contrary to nature," that homosexual liaisons are driven by "dishonorable passions" and consist of "shameless acts" (Romans 1:26-27), and that marriage is the union of one man and one woman (Genesis 2:26, Matthew 19:4-6, 1 Corinthians 7:2).

Christian citizens and voters claim to believe that the Bible reveals to us the will of God on the most important matters in life, which certainly include the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage. It's irrational and logically contradictory for Christians to believe that God could be for the sanctity of life and marriage and at the same time want the leader of the free world to spend the next four to eight years subverting and sabotaging those ideals.

A God like that would have to be schizophrenic to a bizarre degree and unworthy of either admiration or worship.

Some Christians have argued on the basis of Romans 13:1 that Christians should passively accept the values of an Obama presidency since "there is no authority except from God."

The argument runs along the lines that, since all political authority comes from God, Obama therefore, ipso facto, must represent God's choice.

But that is not Paul's point in Romans 13. His point is simply that all political authority is delegated authority. God is the author of government, and those who hold political office possess a political authority that has been delegated to them by God.

So the authority a president possesses has been delegated to him by God. How he uses that authority, however, is a quite different matter.

It's perfectly possible for a man to possess God-given authority and at the same time misuse it. It happens all the time. Possession of authority and exercise of authority are two different issues.

Jesus famously told the parable of the talents, in which a man gave his servants delegated authority to manage his business affairs in his absence, but held them strictly accountable for their use of that authority upon his return.

Although God had provided in the Pentateuch (Deuteronomy 17:14-20) a provision for Israel to have a king, meaning that the authority of Israel's kings was delegated to them by God, Israel's historians are quite blunt about identifying the kings themselves as either "good" or "evil."

There was no naïve assumption that an evil king represented God's desire for the leadership of his people. In fact, quite the contrary. He sent his anointed prophets to speak truth to power and confront those who abused the authority God had given to them. Evil kings came under withering censure because they knew better.

Since the authority a president holds has been delegated to him by God, he is accountable to God, and will be evaluated based on whether his exercise of that office is consistent with the will of God.

It makes no sense on any level to think that God would delegate his authority to man and then have no concern about whether his delegated authority is used in a way that is consistent with his will or not.

No man would run a business that way, and God does not govern the world that way.

Two words are all that is necessary to refute the argument that whoever gets elected to office is the man God wants there: Adolph Hitler. Hitler was elected to high office by the German people in 1933, but no Christian can argue that he represented God's preference for the post, that somehow God was enthused and delighted about the prospect of a German ruler who would gas six million Jews and cause the deaths of 25 million people.

Hitler's elevation to power represented the will of the German people, not the will of God. And the German people paid a bitter and self-destructive price for choosing poorly.

God has given an enormous gift to the American people, the gift of choosing our own civic leaders. He has said to us, "Look, I'm going to delegate my authority to your president, but I'm taking the enormous risk of allowing you to choose him. One way or the other, you will have to live with the consequences of your decision since I'm treating you as adults. If you choose well, your nation will prosper as I have promised. If you choose poorly, don't blame me or 'my will.' You will have to accept full responsibility for that choice and all that follows from it."

As a side note, this reveals a fundamental problem with shallow theology: one of Satan's most effective schemes is to get people to blame God for things that aren't his fault.

This is not to say that God is not sovereign in human affairs. He is, and in the end, his will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Just as parents must allow their children at some point to experience the bitter fruit of poor choices, so God allows nations to learn lessons the hard way.

And so God's will eventually will be done in America. The only question is how much self-induced pain and suffering we will have to endure along the way.

God ultimately will hold all public officials accountable for the discharge of their duties (look at what happened to Hitler), and in many cases, he will hold them accountable simply by allowing them — and the people they lead — to experience the painful consequences of bad choices, all for the purpose of bringing his people and the citizens of a nation to the place where they will have the maturity to be guided by his will and not their own in choosing their leaders.

The American people will get to choose again in four years. Let's get busy with the task of doing everything in our power to see that we and our fellow citizens make a better choice in 2012.

© Bryan Fischer

 

The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)

 

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