Obama Suggests Jesus Not Only Way to Heaven →

marco said, ”Shocking.

But he also believes Jews and Muslims and non-believers who live moral lives are as much “children of God” as he is, according to The Associated Press.

As an example, he spoke about his late mother who was “not a believer.”

“[S]he was the kindest, most decent, generous person that I have ever known,” Obama said, according to the Times. “I’m sure she is in heaven, even though she may not have subscribed to everything that I subscribe to.” (via Newsvine)

In other news equally relevant to our country’s leadership, Hillary Clinton’s favorite color is navy blue, while Obama prefers forest green.

The McCain campaign is still reeling from the gaffe earlier this week when McCain angered his maroon-loving base by revealing that he had briefly enjoyed a mauve phase in college.”

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The subtle bit here is reliance on ‘heaven.’ While you can shoe-horn most popular religions’ aims into at least one denotation of that term, the word, and it’s associations, may affront those with different soteriological conclusions in mind.

While hard-line comments accompany this article, including “This is in contradiction with the Bible and therefore false,” (In 2008? Really? ugh!) others exemplify the subtle bias noted above: “Who am I to judge if a Muslim or a Jew isn’t allowed into the kingdom of heaven? Isn’t that God’s job?”

A fairly liberal person may read that as open-minded (relatively speaking, it is). Yet it assumes all others operate with respect to a Christian telos. Whatever means brings them to salvation - must bring them to the Christian salvation; no other being valid. Is it too radical to think others could achieve a different, but likewise viable ‘heaven?’ [As I have before, I again recommend reading Different Paths, Different Summits.]

4 years ago  /  24 notes  /  Source: marco