When the Devil Quotes Scripture

Sick of Hillary Clinton quoting the Bible she's never read on immigration (might want to look up the Ten Commandments first, dear)? So's David Klinghoffer:

There is a problem, of course, with selective cherry-picking of Biblical verses to support the political cause of your choice. This, in fact, has become a favored tactic among advocates of “spiritual activism” (as they’re called on the Left). One of the more amusing is religious-Left celebrity spokesperson and pseudo-rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, whose new book is called The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back from the Religious Right.

The cute ambiguity in his title alludes to an aspect of God’s personality, as it appears in Scripture, that’s full of compassion, love, and warm-fuzzies. Lerner opposes it to God’s “Right Hand” which, in his treatment, is all about fear, justice, and judgment. In political terms, Lerner would have us amputate the “Right Hand” and embrace the “Left Hand” alone. The problem with this rhetorical strategy is that it leaves us with an artificially lopsided, one-handed God, when it’s clear from the Bible that the Lord has both His limbs intact.

If we want to take the Bible as a guide to crafting wise policies, that means trying our best to see Scripture as an organic whole with a unitary message. After all, if the Bible is only a treasure trove of beautiful and serious-sounding quotations from which we’re free to choose according to our predilections—much as a writer of articles or speeches might make use of pungent quotations from Shakespeare’s plays, while never bothering to wonder what Shakespeare personally would think of the issue at hand—then on what grounds do we regard Scripture as an ultimate authority, stamped with God’s own wisdom? We don’t, after all, view Shakespeare that way.

If the Bible isn’t an ultimate authority, a source of the deepest wisdom available, then what business do we have, in the manner of Mrs. Clinton or the New York Times editorial writers, using it to whack political foes anymore than we’d use Shakespeare’s personal opinion (if that could be reliably discovered) to do the same thing? Imagine an editorial entitled “The Tempest vs. H.R. 4437.” Doesn’t have quite the same resonance, does it?

I don't know what Jesus would have to say about illegal immigration, but I suspect he would have some unkind words for women who actively enable their husbands' adultery and lies for the sake of power and abuse scripture when it suits them to gain still more.