{"id":683,"date":"2009-02-04T11:29:33","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T11:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri.html"},"modified":"2009-02-04T11:29:33","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T11:29:33","slug":"i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri.html","title":{"rendered":"“I Screwed Up” — An Act of Christian Strength"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama in his first week said three words that the previous four presidents had avoided: “I screwed up.”<\/a> Even though the Bushes, Clinton and Reagan had made massive errors — from adultery in the White House to launching a war on erroneous premises — they invariably described the mistakes in the passive voice. “Mistakes were made,” Ronald Reagan famously said, referring to his secret policy of providing arms to terrorist kidnappers.
\nSome pundits will view this primarily as a sign of Obama’s incompetence or weakness. I hope not. To me, it’s a sign of great strength and self confidence, and politically shrewd.
\nIt may also be a sign of faith. A central idea of Christianity is that we’re all sinners, and what matters is ackowledging the defect and aspiring to better behavior. Of course, what Obama did — improperly vetting his nominees — isn’t a sin so much as a mistake.
\nBut the idea of confession-as-exercise-in-humility still applies. Recall that when Obama stuck a short prayer in the wailing wall<\/a>, he asked God to help “guard against pride.” At the end of the day, Christian humility flows from the idea that we’re all sinners and that it’s futile to hide one’s errors from God.
\nAdmitting error isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of humanness. Not admitting error doesn’t mean you’re error-free, it means your dishonest.
\np.s. I know other faiths also stress honesty and confession; I’m focusing on Christianity because Obama is Christian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama in his first week said three words that the previous four presidents had avoided: “I screwed up.” Even though the Bushes, Clinton and Reagan had made massive errors — from adultery in the White House to launching a war on erroneous premises — they invariably described the mistakes in the passive voice. “Mistakes were…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n"I Screwed Up" - An Act of Christian Strength - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""I Screwed Up" - An Act of Christian Strength - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Obama in his first week said three words that the previous four presidents had avoided: “I screwed up.” Even though the Bushes, Clinton and Reagan had made massive errors — from adultery in the White House to launching a war on erroneous premises — they invariably described the mistakes in the passive voice. “Mistakes were…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-04T11:29:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"I Screwed Up\" - An Act of Christian Strength - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"I Screwed Up\" - An Act of Christian Strength - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Obama in his first week said three words that the previous four presidents had avoided: “I screwed up.” Even though the Bushes, Clinton and Reagan had made massive errors — from adultery in the White House to launching a war on erroneous premises — they invariably described the mistakes in the passive voice. “Mistakes were…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2009-02-04T11:29:33+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri.html","name":"\"I Screwed Up\" - An Act of Christian Strength - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-02-04T11:29:33+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-04T11:29:33+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/i-screwed-up-an-act-of-chri.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"“I Screwed Up” — An Act of Christian Strength"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}