The Complexity of Faith

What is your religious position? Are you Christian or not? If a Christian, what kind of Christian? The founding generation of my denomination asserted that they were simply Christians, no more, no less. They looked to the Bible, and especially the New Testament, for their answers and left it to the person to find the truth.

A nice piece in the Chicago Sun Times shares Barak Obama's attempt to place himself? Is he an evangelical, the interviewer asks -- he answer's I'm not sure. I know how he feels.

Here is his response -- he who is being accused of not being a Christian, but really a Wahabist Muslim instead:

Surrounded by members of the editorial board, editors, our publisher, and a couple of his own aides, this was Obama's answer:

"Gosh, I'm not sure if labels are helpful here because the definition of an evangelical is so loose and subject to so many different interpretations. I came to Christianity through the black church tradition where the line between evangelical and non-evangelical is completely blurred. Nobody knows exactly what it means. "Does it mean that you feel you've got a personal relationship
with Christ the savior? Then that's directly part of the black church experience. Does it mean you're born-again in a classic sense, with all the accoutrements that go along with that, as it's understood by some other tradition? I'm not sure."

He continued his answer: "My faith is complicated by the fact that I didn't grow up in a particular religious tradition. And so what that means is when you come at it as an adult, your brain mediates a lot, and you ask a lot of questions.

"There are aspects of Christian tradition that I'm comfortable with and aspects that I'm not. There are passages of the Bible that make perfect sense to me and others that I go, 'Ya know, I'm not sure about that,'" he said, shrugging and stammering slightly.

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