John Kerry On Religion: 'Something That Was Written Down a Thousand Plus, Two Thousand Years Ago'

    During a talk to the U.S. embassy staff in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at the first stop on his trip to Africa, Secretary of State John Kerry remarked about what he called the "different cross-currents of modernity" and the challenges they present on the African continent. The comments seem to contain a veiled reference to religion and the part that religion might be playing in some of the current conflicts in Africa:

This is a time here in Africa where there are a number of different cross-currents of modernity that are coming together to make things even more challenging. Some people believe that people ought to be able to only do what they say they ought to do, or to believe what they say they ought to believe, or live by their interpretation of something that was written down a thousand plus, two thousand years ago. That’s not the way I think most people want to live.

    The words "something that was written down a thousand plus, two thousand years ago" appear to refer to the Bible, or the Koran, or perhaps both.  More than one conflict in Africa today has either implicit or explicit religious connections:

• In Nigeria, the Boko Haram, which the State Department has called a "violent extremist organization with links to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb" has been "responsible for thousands of deaths since its conception in 2009, including large-scale attacks against Muslim and Christian religious communities."
• In the Central African Republic, the State Department recently expressed that the United States is "deeply concerned by attacks on both Muslims and Christians[.]"
• Further, the so-called Lord's Resistance Army with its leader the self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony has wreaked havoc in numerous African nations.  The State Department has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Kony's arrest or conviction.

    Besides military conflicts, other issues with religious connotations have come to the forefront in recent years, from Uganda's recent anti-homosexuality law to some Islamic groups' attempts to institute Sharia law in some countries.
    The press office of the State Department declined to parse Kerry's remarks, instead referring questions to the traveling party accompanying the secretary on his Africa trip.  An attempt to contact State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, who is with Kerry in Africa, to clarify the remarks has so far been unsuccessful.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Barack Obama: Sin 2.0

   Earlier this week in his Best of the Web Today column at WSJ.com, James Taranto wrote about a 2004 interview of then-Senate candidate Barack Obama by Chicago Sun Times religion reporter/columnist Cathleen Falsani.  The full transcript of the interview was published in 2008 by BeliefNet.com.  A reader had brought the interview to Taranto's attention, and one part in particular caught his eye:

Falsani: Do you believe in sin?
Obama: Yes.
Falsani: What is sin?
Obama: Being out of alignment with my values. 

This is a tad ambiguous. Is Obama declaring himself the ultimate moral arbiter, so that you are a sinner if you are out of alignment with his values?
That would be an uncharitable construction. It seems more likely that he is declaring himself his own moral arbiter, so that he is a sinner if he is out of alignment with his own values. To our mind it is not a recognizably Christian conception of sin.

    Taranto is indisputably correct as far as he goes.   An agnostic himself, Taranto's interest is, I gather, more intellectual than doctrinal.  But as a Christian for many years, I’ve had many opportunities to hear people explain their Christian beliefs, some with more success than others.  Especially without time to prepare, many who call themselves Christian struggle to articulate clear definitions of sin, the gospel, and other Biblical concepts.  However, Barack Obama’s answer of “Being out of alignment with my values” to the question “what is sin?” is particularly disturbing because it is actually the antithesis of a Biblical view of sin.
    Romans 3:23, a verse most children hear early in their Sunday School days, says “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  Sin is “being out of alignment” with God's values, not ours.  The president’s definition is more reminiscent of Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet telling Laertes, “To thine own self be true.”  Indeed, in the very next portion of the interview, Obama uses quite similar language.

Falsani: What happens if you have sin in your life?
Obama: I think it’s the same thing as the question about heaven. In the same way that if I’m true to myself and my faith that that is its own reward, when I’m not true to it, it’s its own punishment.

Being true to oneself is not necessarily bad advice (at least if one is a generally good person), but it’s no more found in the Bible than “God helps those who help themselves,” and it certainly misses the mark when trying to nail down “sin.”  Without a true understanding of sin, there is little hope of recognizing the need for a Savior.  As Paul put it later in his letter to Titus (3:5), "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy [God] saved us."  Our hope is in God being true to Himself, not us to ourselves.  "Let God be true though every one were a liar," says Romans 3:5.  That is a much more secure foundation that heaven is our reward than anything we could ever do on our own.