What’s more important, human rights or climate change?

Just as President Obama’s domestic agenda disturbs many, comes word of his misguided – if not shameful – foreign policy agenda….

A Christian professor and author of note, wrote a short blog post on On Not Speaking Truth to Power

Obama refuses to meet with the Dali Lama and 1143237_little_girlfigures opposed to tyranny. This is typical of the hard left. They refuse to support those who speak truth to tyrannical power; instead they curry favor from the powerful, as long as they are hostile to the West. This is unjust, perverse, and ungodly in the extreme. Wake up, America. Your president is a no friend of freedom, democracy, or “hope.”

Beyond the shiny spectacle of this “historic” president is an empty suit, political mantras (meaningless), a magic teleprompter, and a man who is putting America and its deepest ideals at risk for the sake of his neo-Marxist ideology.

What had triggered this?? He’d read an article by one of the senior statesmen of evangelicalism, Chuck Colson, on human rights (here). That article begins with some shocking revelations….

What’s more important to the administration’s foreign policy—climate change or human rights? The disturbing answer.

Many were shocked last February when Secretary of State Clinton said that pressing China about its human rights abuses “can’t interfere” with more important things — like “the global 1053013_great_wall_chinaeconomic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.”

Even the Washington Post was shocked; its editors said Clinton’s comments were “misguided.” But now it seems that Clinton was only stating what was to be official Obama administration policy.

We saw this same attitude last month when Barack Obama declined to meet with the Dali Lama. The snub was an apparent effort to curry favor with Chinese leaders — leaders who deny religious liberty and human rights, not only to their own citizens, but also to Tibetans.
(read the rest here)

Friends, the need to pray for our country, and for those in power, has seldom been greater than in our own time…
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Shame on Barack Obama

How Barack Obama Will Make Christ a Minister of Condemnation
(by John Piper, emphasis added)

At Barack Obama’s request, [Sunday] in the Lincoln Memorial, Gene Robinson, the first openly non-celibate homosexual bishop in the Episcopal Church, will deliver the invocation for the inauguration kick-off.

This is tragic not mainly because Obama is willing to hold up the legitimacy of homosexual intercourse, but because he is willing to get behind the church endorsement of sexual intercourse between men.

It is one thing to say: Two men may legally have sex. It is another to say: The Christian church acted acceptably in blessing Robinson’s sex with men.

The implications of this are serious.

It means that Barack Obama is willing, not just to tolerate, but to feature a person and a viewpoint that makes the church a minister of damnation. Again, the tragedy here is not that many people in public life hold views (like atheism) that lead to damnation, but that Obama is making the church the minister of damnation.

The apostle Paul says,

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves , nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

What is Paul saying about things like adultery, greed, stealing, and homosexual practice? As J. I. Packer puts it, “They are ways of sin that, if not repented of and forsaken, will keep people out of God’s kingdom of salvation.” (Christianity Today, January 2003, p. 48).

In other words, to bless people in these sins, instead of offering them forgiveness and deliverance from them, is to minister damnation to them, not salvation.

The gospel, with its forgiveness and deliverance from homosexual practice, offers salvation. Gene Robinson, with his blessing and approval of homosexual practice, offers damnation. And he does it in the name of Christ.

It is as though Obama sought out a church which blessed stealing and adultery, and then chose its most well-known thief and adulterer, and asked him to pray.

One more time: The issue here is not that presidents may need to tolerate things they don’t approve of. The issue is this: In linking the Christian ministry to the approval of homosexual activity, Christ is made a minister of condemnation.

Pray, my friends, for God is not mocked!
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