Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation. ~Michelle Obama

Many people have commented on this line already, but let me just add a few remarks.  In one sense, this makes sense, inasmuch as a well-ordered polity will flourish only when the citizens have well-ordered souls (that was and remains one of the original themes of this blog, hence the name), but where this is deeply, terribly misguided is the implication that a politician has something to do with this “soul-fixing.”  To the extent that this statement shows a recognition that the state cannot “solve” problems that derive from people’s ingrained habits, and that lasting political change derives from the reform of habits and that human flourishing in politics broadly defined depends on a sane ethical life, there is nothing necessarily wrong with this statement.  Qualified in the right way, I might say something similar in terms of disordered passions.  However, I have absolutely no confidence that this is what Mrs. Obama meant.  Taken together with her and her husband’s other remarks over the months, it seems clear that this statement implies that Obama’s “new politics” is the cure for what ails your soul, which is as worrisome as it is silly, or rather it is worrisome because it is so silly, yet it is being taken very seriously by millions of people. 

As Christians, we should acknowledge that the souls of all people everywhere are broken, and we should understand that they will not be healed by activism nor by any secular hopes, because just as the earthly powers cannot touch the soul to control it they are equally incapable of providing wholeness and redemption.