I recently read this exert from the Associated Press December 11th, article entitled, “Obama: 'I'm Being Judged Against the Ideal':
He [Obama] rejected questioner Steve Kroft’s suggestion that the public was judging him on his performance as president. "I'm being judged against the ideal," he said. "Joe Biden has a good expression. He says, `Don't judge me against the Almighty, judge me against the alternative.'"
My initial reaction to this statement was disbelief. How could anyone be willing to follow a man who is aspires to be only better than his opponent? If Obama were running against Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin would he ask us to vote for him simply because he is better than those two? In my opinion he is setting the bar rather low for himself.
Being raised in a conservative Christian household I was taught that simply being better than the alternative was not accepted. I was taught to strive for the Image of God, the image of perfection. Even if complete perfection is not possible, that does not make it any less worthy of a goal. When completing a math exam I would not do just enough work to get a C simply because I knew it was higher than any of my classmates.
A teacher is not expected to grade their students based on the grades of those around them and neither should the American people use this method to judge their president. To settle for just good enough is not the message the American people need to hear.
We are called to seek after perfection, not to outdo our opponents. We are called to rely on God, not the opponent’s weaknesses. The sooner the leaders of our country learn this, the sooner America will become what men like George Washington wanted it to be.
He [Obama] rejected questioner Steve Kroft’s suggestion that the public was judging him on his performance as president. "I'm being judged against the ideal," he said. "Joe Biden has a good expression. He says, `Don't judge me against the Almighty, judge me against the alternative.'"
My initial reaction to this statement was disbelief. How could anyone be willing to follow a man who is aspires to be only better than his opponent? If Obama were running against Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin would he ask us to vote for him simply because he is better than those two? In my opinion he is setting the bar rather low for himself.
Being raised in a conservative Christian household I was taught that simply being better than the alternative was not accepted. I was taught to strive for the Image of God, the image of perfection. Even if complete perfection is not possible, that does not make it any less worthy of a goal. When completing a math exam I would not do just enough work to get a C simply because I knew it was higher than any of my classmates.
A teacher is not expected to grade their students based on the grades of those around them and neither should the American people use this method to judge their president. To settle for just good enough is not the message the American people need to hear.
In another interview Obama explained his campaign as pursuing, "the vision that is truest to our history and most representative of the core decency of the American people." America was not founded by men who strove to be just good enough, however. They were great men who strove to be the best that they could be and when they came up short they learned to rely on those around them and ultimately the strength of God.
George Washington, this Country’s first president and arguably one of the greatest men in American history, said, “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.” Washington saw how important it was to rely on the strength of God and to adhere to the words of the Bible which say, “I am God almighty, walk before me and be blameless” (Gen. 17:1). But we can also take comfort from passages such as this one, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18)
