Why Presidents Talk About God

As excruciating as it is to watch, I give you an example of a President talking about God:



There's nothing so grating as a person in power invoking the things of God when they obviously care nothing for the Gospel. But why do they do this? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is votes. Of course. But what is the deal, really? What's going on when they do this, especially here in America. I think Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, writing from England in the first half of the 20th century, struck upon the truth of the matter:

"God must never be regarded as a means to an end; and religion is not to be commended primarily because of certain benefits which follow its practice (such as votes) ...We tend to believe, and perhaps rightly, that we have been blessed in the past because we have been religious...Hence the temptation to statesmen and leaders to pay lip service to religion, and to believe in its maintenance in a general form. But that is the very opposite of what I would stress, and what is emphasized everywhere in the Bible. God is to be worshipped because He is God...because He is holy. To place anything before God is to deny Him, however noble and exalted that thing may be" (parenthetical comments added) ~ excerpted from The Plight of Man and the Power of God.