Face, meet Palm

I'm going to be talking about one crazy man, so if you're still riding high from the inauguration you might want to skip this one. It's really that stupid.

Let's start with his thesis statement:

"Many American Christians believe, as an article of faith, that we are to pray for the success of our leaders."

Fail.

Every church I have attended has never prayed for the "success" of the president or other world leaders, but that they might have wisdom, mercy, and justice in their governance.

But we're missing out on what's really ridiculous:

"...I do not hesitate today in calling on godly Americans to pray that Barack Hussein Obama fail in his efforts to change our country from one anchored on self-governance and constitutional republicanism to one based on the raw and unlimited power of the central state."

Read that again and mull it over a bit. It took me a few moments to recover from disbelief before I could digest it. This, my friends, is 100% fail from concentrate.

First we have a strange assumption: Obama wants to replace self-governance with central authority. I'm not sure how someone gets that from the first candidate in history who refused public funding because he was getting hundreds of millions of sub-$100 donations from voters across the country.

Second, we have a hidden, implicit statement: Self-governance and "constitutional republicanism" is more godly than an uncontrolled, infinitely powerful central authority.

Third, I have an obvious remark: What is God if not an uncontrolled, infinitely powerful central authority? I'm being facetious, but I found the implication hilarious.

More seriously he speaks as though to say that our former president was a bastion of self-governance and constitutionalism. This is the same president that skirted habeas corpus, expanded the authority and size of the executive branch, and nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That's about as diametrically opposed to "self-governance and constitutional republicanism" as it gets without degrading into a complete despot.

Obama has already signed an executive order forcing Guantanimo Bay to close within a year. The news has already aired people saying, effectively, that (constitutional) human rights be damned, this is a national security issue! I want to know if these people have hot daughters, and if they'd allow me to install cameras in their home (and showers) were I to tell them it would help me fight terrorists.

But of course, this insanity wouldn't be complete without insinuating the Obama is a blight against all that is good and right.

"I want Obama to fail because his agenda is 100 percent at odds with God's. Pretending it is not simply makes a mockery of God's straightforward Commandments."

The sheer hubris of this statement is staggering. Beyond the obvious fact that Obama hasn't been writing bills which require children to dishonor their parents or laws which give tax breaks to people who use the name of the Lord in vain. Beyond the fact that Romans 11:34 asks the pointed question, "For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became his counselor?" Beyond the subtle implications of "I want". Beyond all of that is this:"

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God."

Romans 13:1, quoted by he, himself in his very argument.

I'm not suggesting, as he works hard to contest before anyone can bring it up, that this verse or series of verses tells us to strictly obey our leaders. But this verse is the poster child for the commonly held belief and theology that God, being in control, appoints leaders according to his will.

The obvious conclusion is that it is impossible to claim that Barack's agenda is 100% at odd with God's unless you wish to assert that God has no control over the authorities of the world. Barack Obama is a part of God's agenda, his master plan. He may be, from some perspectives, a modern day pharaoh but messiah or antichrist he is a tool for God's will.

The diatribe ends as it begins, concluding with the strange notion that we pray for the success of our leaders however evil or unchristian they may be. From start to finish the argument presented was flawed, and only became tangled the further it went.

But more than anything else, I am saddened that in a time of great worry and woe that the most urgent suggestion given is for us to pray for the damnation of others rather than for grace.