Each day, I pass the Indianapolis campaign HQ of Barack Hussein Obama on my way home from work. One cannot help but observe an interesting poster hanging in the window. It is a sketched image of Obama with one word underneath...Hope. Really? Does this man really believe that he, a mere mortal, embodies hope itself?
Now it is one thing to suggest that a particularly inspirational leader may help people discover hope or find reason to hope. But Obama is suggesting that he IS hope, and that's quite another thing. History is full of people who have made this claim. In every case but one, the results have been disasterous. Let me recount a few.
I'll skip Alexander the Great, Herod, Caesar Augustus, Nero, Attila the Hun, Ivan the Terrible, and Napoleon. I'll start with the more modern incarnations.
First, we have a man named Vladamir Lenin. The Russian peasants had suffered greatly at the hands of the Czar and the Russian nobility. Along came Lenin promising hope through revolution of the masses against the elite. The Bolshevik Revolution introduced communism to Russia. Rather then delivering the hope it promised, communism produced more oppression, suffering, and untold misery than the Czar ever dreamed of.
Next, we move to Germany in the 1930's. The Allies had forced Germany to pay heavy war reparations which along with a worldwide economic depression led to the total collapse of Germany. Adolph Hitler was their Savior. He did not merely offer to show Germany the way out of their mess, he claimed to BE their hope. In their despair, the poeple made him their God. As a result, millions of men, women, and children died at the hands of the Nazis.
I could talk about Josef Stalin, Hirohito, Abdul Gamal Nasser, Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Ho Che Min, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Koumeni, Slobodan Milosovic, and Osama bin Laden, but you get the idea.
The truth is that only one human being has ever been able to claim to be hope incarnate without being an imposter. That's because he was not only a human being, but he was God in the flesh. Jesus of Nazareth did not offer hope in the form of material prosperity, enlightenment or revolution. He shunned those things even when they were offered to him. Rather, he offered hope in the form of himself...on the cross. He rose from death so that we may have hope of spending eternity in right relationship with the God who created us.
I don't know who is going to win the presidential election this year, but as I see the crowds in Berlin chanting and swooning over the Senator from Illinois, I can't help but feel a cold chill running down my spine. The bottom line is, regardless of whether or not Barack Obama would be a good choice to lead the United States, he most certainly is not the embodiment of hope. That position has already been filled.
