Obama, Our President

November 5, 2008 

    It  is now the day after the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama has defeated John McCain by a large margin. I was a McCain supporter and am quite disappointed. As many republicans my first reaction was why did the country elect this man. We may not like him or his policies, but he is our elected president and we should give him all the respect we would have given John McCain. The following is a letter written by Shayne Tucker, a fellow church member of mine. It sums it up the feelings of many of us. Mick Lindley

    On Tuesday night, as the state returns came in, I sank lower and lower on the couch, and as the result became obvious, I found myself fearing for the future of this country. What if we turn our backs on Israel? What if he signs the Freedom of Choice Act? What if he works to seek the protection of gay marriage? Then Ohio and Virginia were settled and I called to my wife, It's over, just as one of my girls passed through the room. I could not have chosen poorer words for the occasion.
    I followed my daughter who was visibly upset to the bedroom and found her in total despair. Distraught and on the verge of tears, she whimpered, I don't know if we can make it for four years with him as our president? I replied with the typical parental assurances that everything would be O.K. and that God would protect us, but then it struck me that I was to blame. I, in part, had constructed this idol in her mind and in my own. I am guilty of setting up this idol of politics and government because I had inadvertently, but undeniably, communicated to her that we depend on men rather than God. And now that idol lay smashed in pieces, as it needed to be.
    It then occurred to me that God is more concerned with his church and the hearts of his people than with who occupies the office of President of the Untied States. I do not propose that Obama is the president-elect today only because I had set up this idol and found myself trusting in man rather than God, but neither do I think I was the only one who had subtly, but unmistakably, made this shift. I suspect that God needed to smash this idol for a great many Christians.
    To be sure, same-sex marriage, abortion, support for Israel, and countless other issues are important and deserve our attention and effort, and we should continue to seek to elect Christian men and women to public office. But when we begin to depend on them rather than the God who guides them, we have set up idols, as pitiful substitutes for the only real source of our lives and liberty.
    So what will I tell my daughter? I'll tell her to respect the President because God has allowed him to be elected, to pray for him, to stand for what is right, but to place her trust and her faith in God alone.
Shayne Tucker