President Obama and the Constitution

President Obama reacting to those people who are concerned he is acting unconstitutionally, for example, when he delayed the employer mandate in the health care law: 

“ ... I’m not concerned about their opinions — very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less constitutional lawyers."

According to the president, a person's opinion concerning the constitutionality of his actions are valid only if he or she is a constitutional lawyer; being a lawyer in general isn't even good enough.

His words are pharisaic. Like the pharisees who looked down on Jesus in the temple.

For the president to make the statement quoted above, he must relate to the Constitution as abstract or external document in the same way as a scientist relates to a tree. Surely, scholarly study of the document and the history behind it is compelling and helpful to understand context. However, as with the Bible, the Constitution is a spiritual document reflecting freedom and liberty in the world. The spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is intuitive/experiential ... it is individual. The president's words have no heart, there is no insides. If you must be a trained constitutional lawyer to carry valid opinions concerning it, then the spirit of the Constitution - reflecting the self-evident truths and unalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence - is a hollow document. If the Constituion is understandable only to those few who are trained in an esoteric knowledge of intellectual abstraction, it is dead. It turns the Constitution into an idol only understandable to a few who then bind everyone else to an abstract knowledge fed to them externally.

Jesus is quoted in Mark 7:6-8 as saying this to the Pharisees:

Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, 
This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. 
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.

The pharisees trusted in the external words of the bible but did not experience the truth within ... in their hearts. The President honors the Constitution with his lips but denied the spirit and power that animates it when he denied that anyone, but those trained as he is trained in constitutional law, can question his actions with validity.


The American Revolution was (and still is) fought because many individuals rejected the tyranny of the King and centralized governance. The American Revolution is not merely a rejection of centralized governmental power, it is a rejection of centralized religion. Freedom is not poured into the world institutionally. It is experienced and known intuitively ... individually ... and manifested through individuals. Freedom is not a noun ... it is a verb. It is a way of being. Intuitive experience of freedom is the power behind the Constitution. We need no external authority (even the President of the United States) to know freedom. President Obama, reflecting the pharisees of old, would have us turn our gaze from the freedom within us and bind our understanding to his intellectual abstractions ... this is akin to asking us to pull out our hearts and attach ourselves to an external artificial heart ... leaving us with no insides and controlled by external forces.

I stand with those spiritual people at the time of the Revolution who experienced the inner light within and rejected external/abstract political and religious external authority to dictate his or her path both socially and religiously.

But, ultimately, I’m not concerned about their opinions--very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less constitutional lawyers,” - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-suggests-only-lawyers-understand-constitution#sthash.UyNOhNeC.dpuf