The Problem With Obama Is...

According to the media, Barack Obama has problems. They say he’s an elitist. They say he does fight back hard enough. They say he is arrogant, which translates as, he doesn’t know his place. But, the real problem with Obama is that he does know his place. He is walking in his destiny and doesn’t need permission. The road to the presidency for a black man is not the road of ‘conventional wisdom.’ Conventional wisdom does not include a black man as president. Until now, all that talk that any American born citizen could be president was just that; all talk.

Now along comes Barack Obama. And here is the problem; he doesn’t play form the same playbook that every body else plays from. Now, whose problem is it? Barack Obama stopped the infamous Clinton Machine, which tried to use Karl Rove’s playbook against him. The Mc Cain Campaign is now being shaped by Karl Rove and it’s still not working to beat Barack. Mc Cain is just showing up as a bitter and jealous old man. The problem with Barack is he has written his own and didn’t tell them. They say he’s all talk, well, while they are busy talking about what he ought to do, he’s quietly winning the hearts and minds of the people.

Obama is proving his leadership by doing what he thinks is best. He doesn’t panic; he just continues to work his plan because he has faith in it. I watched the interview with Rick Warren on Saturday night and I saw a man who actually listens and thinks before he speaks. Imagine that? These are the signs of a leader. He is proving his leadership by running a campaign that is in the black. His fund raising ability has boggled the mind. He also is proving his leadership because his camp is not full of division. His fabled arrogance is simply confidence. It is the confidence that comes with being well educated, disciplined, and faith filled. We can all take a page out of his playbook.

Most of us will not have an ivy-league education, but we all have access to free education through the Public Library System. Our history proves that we can teach ourselves we had to. Most of us can be more disciplined, if we choose to. It is a matter of establishing new habits. Every habit that you have was created the same way. Habits start with a choice and they take repetition and practice. Your started it! You can change it. Now, faith is a subject that I love. Faith is something that everyone has. The question is in what are you placing your faith?

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) Most people do not realize that faith and fear are opposite sides of the same coin. Fear is simply faith in a negative outcome. When you worry you are using faith to create what you don’t want. I heard Creflo Dollar say, just this morning, “When you say that your child will not amount to anything, you can congratulate yourself when they fail, because you have played a part in their failure.” He went on to talk about the need to see a different picture for your life and for those that you love and build your faith on that picture—a new image of yourself or that of your loved ones.

Barack Obama sees himself as the president. That’s why he is a celebrity, draws huge crowds, and has drawn the wrath of the establishment, including both parties, as we saw with The Clintons. His inner picture is so strong that he is not shaken from it. We can all create strong inner pictures by changing what we let into our hearts and minds. We can read great books and watch television programs that offer information that we can actually use. We can cultivate relationships with people who are about something other than themselves—people who inspire us.

Let’s go into the patriotism issue, which John Mc Cain continues to hammer home, in one way or another. Anyone who is willing to put their life on the line for a country that has a history regarding those of your race that America does, has to do it for love of country. War after war, black people have fought and died for this country. Some may say it is misplaced loyalty—the result of the pathology that has evolved from the horrors of the past, and there is truth to that. But, I would like to submit that we are a forgiving people. In fact, I would go so far as to say that forgiveness is imperative for us as a people. Forgiveness does not excuse the past, but it begins to release us from the effects of the past. Forgiveness is not about them; it’s about you. Forgiveness changes you from being a victim to the possibility of being victorious. Become the Victor!