President Barack Obama delivered a stirring eulogy Friday for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney and eight others who were murdered in their church earlier this month by a white racist who hoped his act of terror would ignite a racial war. The first part of Obama’s remarks were a fitting and inspiring tribute to the victim, whom he knew personally. The second half was a regrettably political speech that exploited the pulpit for partisan ends–and claimed the murderer had been “used by God.”
Obama said that the murderer had committed “an act that he imagined would incite fear and recrimination, violence and suspicion, an act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation’s original sin. He continued:
Oh, but God works in mysterious ways.
(APPLAUSE)
God has different ideas.
(APPLAUSE)
He didn’t know he was being used by God.
(APPLAUSE)
Obama went on to list a set of causes: taking down the Confederate flag, passing gun control, opposing voter ID, and fighting white racism in general, all of which Obama described as expressions of “God’s grace.”
In other words, the murders were a good thing, because they help advance the left’s political agenda.
And presumably, God’s grace is being withheld from those of us who oppose Obama on some of these issues.
What a grotesque abuse of religion and mourning.
Religious people often say that everything that happens on earth, even terrible things, are God’s will. But Obama presumes to know what God’s will actually is–and that it lines up, of course, with the political priorities of the Democratic Party.
Of course, on the same day as the funeral, Obama praised the Supreme Court for declaring gay marriage a fundamental right–a position that, in 2008, he said he opposed as a Christian.
To Obama, God’s word is just a political tool. And those who invoke God–sincerely–to defend their political views are religious bigots.
Only the Party faithful shall be Saved.