Olbermann: Obama/Warren Backlash -12/18 (Part 1)

Run time: 07:36 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH92YLOScJw   Posted on YouTube: December 19, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: December 19, 2008 By DU Member: Hissyspit Views on DU: 1407

 
MSNBC Countdown w/ KEITH OLBERMANN - Dec. 18, 2008.

PART 2: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x251651

You can't be everything to everybody. If you want to change the world, you are going to have to offend a lot of people very often.

Obama's dream of change through harmony and consensus can only be realized at the expense of people on the margins if the harmony and consensus is to include religious bigots.

I will say one thing about Jesus. He was quite willing to offend if that is what he had to do to stand for what he knew was right. The New Testament is the story of a man who preached what he believed to be the truth no matter the price, even if it could (and did) cost him his life. You may not have learned to look at Jesus that way back in Bible School, but take another read now that you are grown up.

Even with regard to homosexuality, Jesus told his disciples (Matthew 19, I think -- right after he recites the Jewish law on adultery) that some eunuchs are just born eunuchs. Some eunuchs (the Biblical term that includes homosexuals) are eunuchs in their mother's womb.

In denying Jesus' observation about homosexuals, Rick Warren is pandering to the prejudices of his right-wing congregations. The argument that marriage has always been between a man and a woman brings to my mind the argument used to justify excluding women from the firefighter and police professions: after all, it was claimed, we say "policeman" and "fireman," so by definition a woman cannot qualify. Believe it or not, that argument was seriously raised in the court -- and ultimately rejected.

Choosing Rick Warren to give the invocation at the Inauguration is the equivalent of choosing the head of the Southern Baptist Church say back in the 1950s. Come to think of it. That is how the coalition of Southerners and Northerners won elections for Democrats from 1932 through the Johnson era. Close an eye to intolerance and injustice, and you can be very popular among the bigoted majority.

Rick Warren is not a centrist. He is an extremely divisive figure. Obama could have reached out to someone else. And if he wanted to make a show of religious inclusivity at the Inauguration, he should have included religious leaders from all leading religions. Rick Warren would be less controversial had he included a group of religious leaders from different faiths. This choice was a big mistake. It does not show good judgment on Obama's part.

3Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"

4"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' 5and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? 6So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

7"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"

8Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."

10The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry."

11Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriagebecause of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."

<http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2019>

Unfortunately, he says nothing regarding those who, for whatever awful reasons, can't.

The whole question was geared to whether marriages should be dissolvable for no cause other than the husband just feels like it. Note: divorce is still obtainable in cases of the wife's infidelity.

What Christ didn't do was impose the obligation to marry a woman on men who didn't get turned on by women. But he also didn't give gay men married to women any way out unless the wife decided to find a man who did get turned on by her.

He really wasn't a big help here. He was trying to protect women from being put aside by husbands who were just bored or wanted something younger. Or a child. He doesn't give the option of dumping a wife for infertility.

But he does seem to acknowledge that some men are different. And he exempts them from his little marriage talk. (Doesn't know a thing about gay women. How could he? Although, biblically speaking, doesn't Ruth's declaration to Naomi sound a LOT like a wedding vow?)

The pharisees who interpreted the scriptures very rigidly and enforced the laws, sort of the theology police, tried frequently to trick him into denying the traditional teachings of their faith. Many stories in the Bible about Jesus concern his veering from the strict traditions of the Jewish religion.

Here, the pharisees were testing Jesus on the Jewish law regarding adultery and marriage. He passed the test by showing he knew that law. Then his disciples asked him, how, knowing that law, they could avoid the terrible consequences of divorcing a wife. And he was sort of making a joke in saying well you could be a eunuch. Obviously, that was kind of a joke because the adultery laws really don't apply if you have no desire to marry women. He was kind of making fun of the narrowness of the Jewish laws, the absurdity of making rules that don't apply to the variety of human experience. Jesus taught inclusivity, forgiveness and love. To keep alive, to avoid becoming the object of a lot of disapproval, he focused his affirmative teachings on living the way of love and sacrifice for others.

Jesus could recite the Jewish law on adultery, but remember the story of Jesus and the woman at the well?

5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

9The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

10Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

11"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

13Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

15The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

16He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

17"I have no husband," she replied.

Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

19"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

21Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

25The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

26Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
27Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

28Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" 30They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

31Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."

32But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."

33Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"

34"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. 38I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."
Many Samaritans Believe
39Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41And because of his words many more became believers.

42They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

Footnotes:

1. John 4:9 Or do not use dishes Samaritans have used
2. John 4:29 Or Messiah
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=JOHN%204:5-42

This was the real Jesus, the Jesus whom, I believe, was laughing at the obsessive Pharisees testing him on the laws. The Jesus who would love homosexuals just as he loved the woman at the well.

how did you link "eunuch" to homosexuality. It seems to me (looking up the definition) that a eunuch is a man that can't have sex.

I believe) on gay marriage, and he stated that the term eunuch in the Bible included homosexuals. If you read the Bible passage, you will discover that Jesus was speaking of people who are eunuchs in womb of their mothers. That would be a homosexual in my view.

On edit, the pastor who spoke at the meeting on gay marriage had one a lot of research on the Biblical and theological origins of the bar against gays and gay marriage and said there is no actual Biblical basis for it. His church had asked him to do that research.