Obama's First Mistake: Swearing In Ceremony

“President-elect Barack Obama has requested that the words ‘so help me God’ be added to the end of the oath of office to be administered by Chief Justice John Roberts on Inauguration Day. " [CNN: Jan. 10, 2009]

I do not know what motivates President-elect Obama to add these words to the oath. Christian doctrine – coming directly from the lips of Jesus – unequivocally forbids the taking of oaths in the first place; specifically, forbidding invoking God’s name in this way. In the Book of Matthew (5:33-37), Jesus refers to a law established 1,200 years earlier commanding people who make an oath to God be obliged to honor it. (The law he refers to is found in the Book of Numbers (30:2)). Taken alone, that 1,200-year-old law, pre-dating the Christian era, would provide the ethical framework from which to structure the swearing-in ceremony found today in courtrooms, the halls of Congress and at presidential inaugurations. But Jesus makes a radical break from this tradition and introduces us to a concept so liberating, yet so personally challenging that we have yet to embrace it 2,000 years on. Jesus said that we should not make oaths at all, especially to God. We should simply let our “yes” mean “yes,” and our “no” mean “no.” That is: say what you mean, mean what you say; let your word be good, and binding, at all times. And this, perhaps, is the most difficult standard for each of us to live up to, yet our emotional and spiritual growth is conditioned upon walking that narrow but clearly defined path.

President-elect Obama is welcome to swear an oath to God on the Bible, regardless of the teachings of his faith. That is his business, but it should be done in the full light of Christian doctrine.