Political Blogging: We are not the ones we have been waiting for....

This blog will have done something it has yet to do: criticize Obama. Being a farm-hand and corn-reared son of Indiana you might think it begins with a little comment that has caused a maelstrom, but you'd wrong. Obama comments, though overly drawn and generalized, have a powerful resonance with me. Much of 'small-town' America has social mores that often remind me of the movie 'The Last Picture Show.' Religious zealotry and zionphobia scar many of those who live in rural, and often forgotten, America.

No, what is of concern is one line: "We are the ones we have been waiting for..."

The line by Obama (and was first the title of an Alice Walker book, and picked up by Jim Wallis' book "God's Politics") is featured prominently at the end of a new music video, "We Are the Ones."

Watch it here.

The video, powerful to be sure, changes nothing in my belief that Obama can assuage much of the political contentions that have created a riff in the American landscape, and also can begin to allay the world of its concerns of the United States. However, for all of this, Obama is not, nor are we, the Hope, but simply a hope.

John the Baptist always conceded that he was only announcing the arrival of someone greater than himself. Obama, though an incredibly inspiring individual, is not the one John was speaking of.

Perhaps its not even about Obama, but more about that one line. We are simply not the ones we have been waiting for... Or, at least more specifically, I am not who I hoped for. Such hope, is poor hope.

My first article on Obama caught the attention of another blog, Deep Furrows. The blogger used my article to show that Obama's followers write with a messianic flare in concern for Obama's presidential campaign. Though after arguing my rhetoric, she capitulated that I indeed was not crossing the line between a hope and the Hope, but nonetheless, I have grown sensitive to the critique.

My good friend Chris Marchland has kept me grounded, promising me, that no matter the political promises made, the status quo will remain the status quo. And to a large extent that is one of my hopes. In comparison to the other countries round the world, the United States is doing quite well. Change need not be radical, to be meaningful.

However, in a world still marred by sin and scarcity, no amount of hope will ever truly ascend human depravity, unless of course the One we have been waiting for arrives... ... and its not Barack Obama.