GODSTUFF

I HAVE FAITH THAT OBAMA HAS FAITH

Who is a Christian?

It seems like a simple question, but when I typed my inquiry into Google earlier this week, the answer came back in 20 million hits, each of them a little different from the other.

I’ve always understood a Christian to be someone who believes Jesus was who he said he was and tries to live the way Jesus said to live. Period. But there are many people who find that answer lacking, apparently.

What got me thinking about this question was a recent commentary by the syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, based in part on an interview I did with Barack Obama about his spiritual life back in the spring of 2004.

Analyzing what Obama had to say to me, Thomas concludes that Obama is not really a Christian. He says, “Obama can call himself anything he likes, but there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian, and Obama doesn’t meet that requirement.”

This puzzles me. When I asked Obama to describe himself spiritually, he said he was a Christian, that he has a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” and that he believes Jesus was an actual man (a “historical figure,” is how he put it) who is “a bridge between God and man . . . and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher.”

What I think stuck in Thomas’ craw was Obama’s elaboration when I asked him whether he was a “born-again Christian.” He said, “Yeah, although . . . I retain from my childhood and my experiences growing up a suspicion of dogma. And I’m not somebody who is always comfortable with that language that implies I’ve got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others.”

Thomas singled out another of Obama’s answers as an indication of his falling short of Christian orthodoxy when he said, “The difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and proselytize. There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that if people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior, they’re going to hell.”

It’s fascinating to me how two people can hear or read the same thing and come away with diametrically different interpretations. I sat with Obama and listened to him talk about his faith and came away believing that he is very much a genuine Christian believer.

Much has been made of Obama’s statements about his faith, and I think the interest in his spiritual life is not only warranted but a good thing. A man’s faith should have a bearing on how he conducts himself, makes his decisions and leads.

But the level of scrutiny of Obama’s faith has surpassed what is helpful and veered into dangerous territory. At the end of the day, no one really knows what transpires between a person and his God. We must depend in large part — trust, really — what the man says about his beliefs.

When Obama was in Israel last month, he visited the Western Wall, one of the most sacred spots in the Jewish tradition, and prayed. As is the custom, he wrote a prayer on a piece of paper and stuck it in the wall. Very much against tradition, someone pried the piece of paper out of the wall and distributed it to the media. Was it an invasion of privacy? Probably. Was it a spiritual faux pas? Absolutely.

Still, while Obama’s private prayer is none of our business, what he said was, of course, enlightening. His prayer was:

“Lord — Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.”

Forgive my sins. Show me what to do. Make me an instrument of your will. Doesn’t sound like someone flailing about lost in a spiritual morass to me.

Now, the cynical among us — including one of my editors — might wonder if the prayer wasn’t written by committee (or by Obama’s campaign manager), a calculated move to capitalize on what was already a great publicity opportunity.

I’m not that cynical. Sorry. That prayer sounds exactly like the man I sat with four years ago to talk frankly about Jesus and faith and doubt and living the faith when he was running for the U.S. Senate, well before he was the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

Someone once said to me that trying to prove you’re a Christian is like trying to prove you’re not a pedophile. You can’t “prove” it. It’s a matter of faith, not (political) science.

I asked Scot McKnight, a professor at North Park University and author of, among many titles, The Jesus Creed, to answer the question: What is a Christian?

“A Christian is a person who trusts in the redemptive work of God in Christ and seeks to live that out,” McKnight said. “I do believe that there is an existential relationship with God that transcends even what we say.”

Though Jesus never uses the word “Christian” in the biblical accounts, he answered the question many different ways, which can be summarized as, simply: “Believe in me. Follow me. Abide in me.”

Obama says he believes, abides and is trying to follow Jesus.

He’s a humble believer and doesn’t want to give the impression that he has the corner on truth. I respect that, although it makes fielding questions about his faith more complicated and provocative.

It is dangerous to try to judge the quality of a man’s faith. That is God’s purview, not ours.