A check on how the visitors to this blog got here in recent days has shown a lot of google searches on the word Obama, Peace and Antichrist. One search has repeated several times: "Does Obama think he is the Prince of Peace?"
Well. I am happy that they found me in amidst a host of blogs that try to confirm the suspicions of those anxious about the times we live in. If the folk who write those blogs were my neighbours in geographical space I may well be inclined to move house, but I guess cyberspace is not quite so troublesome, for the proximity is only evident to those who ply the search engine databases that list me alongside the cyber-wonks.
However it leaves me profoundly troubled that people feel the need to even ask such a question. I can understand people being troubled by his policies and his un-testedness. I don't agree but they are asking a reasonable question. But the assumption that a desire for peace, especially in the Middle East, the adulation he has received from some followers ("his so called "Messiah complex"), his persuasive gift of communication, and his own background and story line him up to take on the role of bad guy of the end times is a logic I do not get.
Presumably the fact that Jesus is anticipated in scripture as the Prince of Peace means that he rules over a Kingdom of Peace? And didn't he call us to pray for his kingdom to come on earth as in heaven? And oh yes, didn't he say, "Blessed are the Peacemakers for they will be called children of God." Peace between God and man, Yes. But also peace between men - words even announced to the shepherds at his birth!
And the words are not just theory. He calls us to put things right when our neighbour has something against us. To forgive when others do things to us. To turn the other cheek when people do wrong to us. etc etc. ( see The call to forgive and the need to forgive , as well as Biblical Foundations of Peacemaking and Reconciliation and Peacemaking in the Early Church )
So does that mean that a desire to work for peace in this world is a Christian thing to do, and appropriate for a Christian president? Yes, yes and yes again! But somehow the logic gets twisted and before we kno it Barack Obama is a contender for the antichrist. Imagine the response to a a claim that a doctor was the antichrist, was presuming to be like Jesus - for healing the sick! I see no difference.
Yes, Jesus is one I call the Prince of Peace. No one can take that title from him. However I am not aware that Barack Obama has claimed that. It seems to have emerged somewhere as a title put on him by conservative religious bloggers. Nor am I sure he has claimed he can put the world completely to rights. He just plan to do what he can.
God bless you Barack Obama and may the world be bit better because of what you bring to your leadership.
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