Jimmuh Carter: Jesus Should Have Made a Deal With the Devil

Just how much faith does Jimmuh Carter have in the religion of liberal government? Enough that he expresses regret that Jesus turned down Satan's offer to rule the world (from the American Spectator):

Carter places the miracles of government bureaucracy ahead of those of his own church, yet still wonders why the largest single contingent of Baptists in the country is skeptical of his New Covenant. "I treat theological arguments gingerly but am bolder when it comes to connecting my religious beliefs with life and current events in the world, even when the issues are controversial," Carter writes in Living Faith. In other words, the details of scripture are uninteresting until they offer a rationale for Carter's left-wing predilections or somehow justify the four years of tribulation known as his presidency.

APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH, to Carter's mind, the biggest trade-off of the Crucifixion may have been gaining eternal salvation while losing a potentially great bureaucratic overlord. During a meditation on the temptation of Christ, Carter muses over the attractiveness of Satan's offer to allow Christ to rule the world if he rejected God:

What a wonderful and benevolent government Jesus could have set up. How exemplary justice would have been. Maybe there would have been Habitat projects all over Israel for anyone who needed a home. And the proud, the rich, and the powerful could not have dominated their fellow citizens! As a twentieth-century governor and president I would have had a perfect pattern to follow. I could have pointed to the Bible and told other government leaders, "This is what Jesus did 2000 years ago in government. Why don't we do the same?"

That Carter assumes, first, he would be a worthy successor to Christ in political office -- what, Jesus returns to implement...term limits? -- and, second, that the Messiah would spend his post-presidency years doing precisely as Carter did -- building Habitat for Humanity homes, apparently -- tells you everything you need to know about the Man from Plains' outlook on this world and the next.

I always suspected that Jimmuh had a God complex.