Editor:
It's one thing to display hatred for President Obama. It's quite another to hijack five words from the Holy Bible to fuel that hatred, raise a nation to the level of idol and promote a narrow political agenda (letter, P.K. Fitzgerald, "President is endangering America by failing to support Israel," April 19).
One could pick their favorite five words from the Bible to support any political agenda, but to do so is an abuse of the inspired word of God.
Scripture is intended to be a revelation of why we exist on this earth and how we should relate to our God while we are here. God as revealed in the Old Testament gives us - all of us - a sense of identity with Him, a sense of belonging to Him. As revealed through Christ's presence on earth, His teaching, passion, crucifixion and resurrection, the New Testament God is one of reconciliation to the concepts of faith, hope and love as well as a sense of oneness with each other. Indeed, Jesus taught that all the laws and commandments should be replaced with two simple ones: love God and love your neighbor.
God is not a Jew or a Gentile. He is not a Republican or a Democrat. He is not a Conservative or a Liberal. The Bible is not a political document. It is a statement about God's relationship to humanity- all mankind, not just to one race or to one religion. ...
Our God is the God of Abraham, who is ancestor to the three predominant monotheistic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. We all worship the same God! So to imply, using only five words of scripture, that God is only the God of the Jews is not only bad theology, it's dangerous theology. The claim that God is the possession of one race of people or one political ideology has started some huge calamities of human misery throughout history, including the attempted destruction of the early Christian community, three ill-fated Christian crusades and the present day political use of the Islamic faith in attempts to stop the westernization of the Middle East.
To use the inspired word of God to display our personal hatreds and promote narrow political agendas is an abuse of the power of the revelation of that word. The only cause promoted by the body of work we know as the Holy Bible is one of reconciliation of mankind to the one true God, the building of a community of believers and redemption for our natural sinfulness.
Sonny McDowell
Grovetown
icon.