by Jon Dykstra

The election of Barack Obama left Christians with a dilemma: how do we respect someone who has promised to do enormous evil?

God has made it clear that we are to respect those He has put over us: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God” (Romans 13:1). Or as the Heidelberg Catechism summarizes it: The fifth commandment tells me that I am to show “honor, love, and loyalty to… all in authority over me…” (Lord’s Day 39).

My stubborn heart

Still, it is hard to believe this commandment was ever meant to apply to an “authority” like Barack Obama. He is the National Journal’s 2007 most liberal senator, an advocate for special rights for homosexuals, and while he has said he opposes gay “marriage,” he also opposes the Defense of Marriage Act which allows states to refuse to recognize such “marriages” conducted in other states. And it gets worse: the president-elect once said that the abortion issue was “above his pay grade” but that hasn’t stopped him from getting involved. Whether it is his support for embryonic stem cell research and partial birth abortion, or his pledge to sign into law the “Freedom of Choice Act” which would remove the few protections that do exist for the unborn in US law, Barrack Obama is the unborn’s worst enemy. Is this the sort of ruling authority God demands we offer our respect and even our love?

The short answer is, yes, undoubtedly.

Does that still seem shocking? I know it does to me – when I consider the harm that this man is going to do over the next four years I find it difficult to pray for him, to get the words out of my mouth: “Lord, please bless President Obama…” But while my heart is stubborn, my head knows better.

Let’s make this personal - we might find it hard to respect Obama because he hardly seems to warrant our respect, but what if our children applied this same standard to us? What if they only had to show us respect when we deserved it? What a disaster that would be! Fortunately the respect they owe us isn’t due us because of our amazing parenting abilities. Authorities aren’t given respect because they deserve it – they are given it because God deserves it.

McCain gets it wrong

Martin Luther noted that we are too often like the drunkard who falls off his horse on the left side and makes up for it by falling off on the right side the next time around. If Christians are finding it hard to show the next president sufficient respect, John McCain has shown us what it looks like to make the equal but opposite error.

During the campaign, and one last time in his concession speech, McCain talked about the deep respect and admiration he had for his opponent. He praised Obama effusively – if listeners didn’t already know better McCain’s speeches would have left them with the impression that Obama had actually done something praiseworthy and honorable.

It is one thing to be respectful to an opponent, and quite another to praise him for virtues he does not have. Offering respect to our authorities doesn’t require that we call evil good. McCain’s example is not one we should follow.

The missing ingredient

But then what exactly does respecting the president-elect involve? When we catch Obama telling an anti-defense group that he is going to cut defense spending by “tens of billions” while on his website he promises to increase the US ground troops by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 marines, is it disrespectful to call him a liar? Or is being respectful just a matter of not calling him a #!@$%ing liar?

I wish it was that easy – I wish respecting the new president just came down to finding sufficiently respectful names to call him. But God doesn’t just call us to respect the authorities – as Lord’s Day 39 makes clear, we are also called to love those God has placed in authority over us… even when they are our enemies (Matt. 5:44, Luke 6:27). So when we catch President Obama lying the pertinent question we need to ask ourselves is, “How do we deal with it when we catch a loved one lying?”

Clearly name-calling isn’t an option in this sort of situation. And pretending nothing happened also isn’t an option. Ours is a tougher task: if we catch a loved one in a sin we need to ask for an explanation and confront them with the specifics of their sin in the hopes that they will repent. That’s how we need to treat the next president when he acts in a less than respectable manner.
Shortly after the election Jay Scott Newman, a Roman Catholic priest, provided a great example of this loving respect in a short article he wrote for his local parish. The article garnered the attention of the national press because in it Newman made it clear that if parish members had voted for Obama they needed to repent. He did not call the president-elect names, but stated clearly that voting for such a radically pro-abortion politician constituted “cooperation with intrinsic evil.” This was straight talk the likes of which we never heard from John McCain.

Newman followed his call for repentance with this call for prayer:

“Barack Obama, although we must always and everywhere disagree with him over abortion, has been duly elected the next President of the United States, and after he takes the Oath of Office next January 20th, he will hold legitimate authority in this nation. For this reason, we are obliged by Scriptural precept to pray for him and to cooperate with him whenever conscience does not bind us otherwise. Let us hope and pray that the responsibilities of the presidency and the grace of God will awaken in the conscience of this extraordinarily gifted man an awareness that the unholy slaughter of children in this nation is the greatest threat to the peace and security of the United States and constitutes a clear and present danger to the common good. In the time of President Obama’s service to our country, let us pray for him.”

He offered respect, where it is due. Let us do no less… and not too much more.