I Must Be An Acrobat To Talk Like This And Act Like That

Last week ABC News aired an interview with George W. Bush, an interview that focused entirely on Bush's faith in God and its impact on his governance. I found it interesting and informative. During Bush's first presidential campaign and into his first term, I thought he talked well about his faith, tending to speak of grace not a dogma of exclusion. It has also seemed to me that his positions on immigration, foreign aid, and AIDS have been consistent with his expressed views of grace and faith. Of course, I find some decisions of war and torture to be wholly inconsistent with these same views.

Freed from the constraints of another election, I think we're hearing some candid answers from Bush. And to be honest, as frustrated as I am with Bush about some pretty big things, I am in tune with his views of faith. The juicy excerpts below (edited for easier reading), and the entire interview HERE.

(Voiceover) To the sympathetic, he's a man of deep and abiding faith. To his detractors, he's a man whose leadership has been blinded by that faith, leading the nation dangerously off course. What there is no question about is that his faith has played a central role in his presidency and his life since the mid 1980's.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN
So do you believe that God actually intervenes in human affairs?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH
I'm not so presumptuous as to kind of be God. In other words, it's one I get asked all the time, well if you're religious, therefore you must think that you were picked out of all the people on the face of the earth to become president. I just can't go there. I'm not that confident in knowing the Almighty to be able to say, yeah, God wanted me of all the other people. My relationship is on a personal basis, trying to become as closer to the Almighty as I possibly can get. And I've got a lot of problems I mean, I've got, you know, ego. I've got anxieties and all the things that prevent me from being closer to the Almighty. So I don't analyze my relationship with the good lord in terms of, well, you know, God has plucked you out or God wants you to do this.

I know this. I know that the call is to better understand and live out your life according to the will of God.

MCFADDEN
Does God talk to you at all? People of faith throughout the ages have wondered about this. How do they know when it's their own ego, when it's their own desires and when it's actually God's will?

BUSH
I guess that's one of the universal questions. I think one way you make sure it's not your ego is you stay in the bible, at least that's what I have found. And I'm still learning. The bible is an amazing book.

MCFADDEN
Is it literally true, the bible?

BUSH
You know, probably not... No, I'm not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it.

MCFADDEN
So you can read the bible and not take it literally? I mean you can - it's not inconsistent to love the bible and to also believe in evolution say?

BUSH
Well, I think you can have both... I think that the world - the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an Almighty. And I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there's evolution.

MCFADDEN
Do you believe that when you pray to God that that's the same God that a Muslim prays to?

BUSH
I do. I do.

MCFADDEN
So the leader of the Taliban is praying to the same God...

BUSH
No, I'm not sure he's praying to a God. I think anybody who murders innocent people to achieve their objective is not a religious person. They may think they're religious and they may play like they're religious. But I don't think they are religious...

MCFADDEN
I want to focus for a moment on your decision to go into Iraq, because an awful lot of people believe that you did this based upon your faith. Was that part of the decision?

BUSH
No, I did it based upon the need to protect the American people from harm. You can't look at the decision to go into Iraq apart from, you know, what happened on September the 11th. It was not a religious decision.

MCFADDEN
There are so many people who are comforted to have a strongly believing Christian in the White House. Some people feel excluded by it though.

BUSH
Probably do. Yeah, I'm sure they do. I'm sure people say, well, Bush must feel that I'm inferior because he believes in Christ and I don't... I'm sure people say George Bush is a Christian therefore he can't possibly relate to me or he doesn't like me or he thinks I'm condemned and I'm sorry that's the case because that's not the way I feel.