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Replies to post #163836 on Tornado Alley (PROG)
12/19/11 2:27 PM
12/19/11 3:41 PM
01/09/12 12:52 PM
The Republican speaker of the Kansas statehouse issued an apology this week after sending emails from his personal account referring to First Lady Michelle Obama as “Mrs. YoMama” and quoting a Bible verse cited by some as a reference to presidential assassination.
Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal [above], from the city of Hutchison, sent an email before Christmas that compared the president’s wife to the Dr. Seuss character The Grinch, with a tagline asking: “Twins separated at birth?”
“I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing Mrs. YoMama a wonderful, long Hawaii Christmas vacation — at our expense, of course,” the forward read.
May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.
When I read the title of this article, I was outraged at O’Neal and thought, how could a Christian do this??? Then I read it. The article implies that O’Neal quoted Psalm 109:9-12:
“May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.”
O’Neal never quoted those verses. The only verse that was quoted was verse 8:
“Let his days be few;
and let another take his office.”
Read just what it says, without interjecting any other verses or reading into it. No one is ever implying that they want our President dead; when they are saying, “Let his days be few,” they are talking about his days in office. They are simply wanting him to not be president anymore. This verse has made the rounds among conservatives and has appeared on bumper stickers. I laughed my head off when I first read it. Does that mean that I wish this man were dead? No!!! I pray for him and his family every day.
I receive hundreds of political emails, several of which jokingly referred to verse 8, but I have never, ever seen any Christian quote verses 9-12 in reference to Obama. Never. If one of my “friends” sent me an email about wishing death to our President, I would ban them from my life forever.
I admit that a pet peeve of mine is scripture being taken out of context, but this was not meant to be serious. It is a joke – no different from a political cartoon. I can understand liberals being offended at what conservatives joke about; I am often offended at what my liberals friends post (although I read them anyway and never hide them.) But for this writer (and many like him who did the same) to say that O’Neal wished death on President Obama is nothing but a lie. This is wrong.
Laura: Nice try, but your defense of O’Neal’s biblical reference is illogical.
You say that verse 8 of Psalm 109, as applied to President Obama, does not suggest a wish for his death. But the first five words of verse 8 are: “Let his days be few.” And verse 9 says: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”
The clear implication is not changed by the intervening words: : “And let another take his office.”
You suggest yourself that scripture should not be “taken out of context.” Well, the context of Psalm 109 is a wish for someone’s death. As O’Neal says himself: “Look it up — it is word for word!”
Does he expect that anyone who looks up Psalm 109 is going to isolate the second half of verse 8 from the rest of that Psalm?
Don’t be silly.
