Rhetorical Iconography

I just watched the Obama Father's Day speech. I thought the Jesus bits at the end felt tacked on, mostly there because he was in a church. So, in that sense, a little discordant as literature.

I have decided to refer to such invocations of Jesus as "rhetorical iconography." It seems like there is this tendency among the religious, or those in the habit of making arguments that they try to evoke as religious, to just stick a reference to having faith in Jesus Christ as making everything all better, and why this is so is left unsaid. The speaker/writer is not really trying to explain the importance of Jesus, or how mechanism by which faith and Jesus beings about positive developments, they are simply throwing in the reference. It's a representative rhetorical flourish meant to be considered and meditated on by the audience, in much the way an icon was meant to be studied on, as if through it's consideration some truth of the depicted would dawn upon the viewer.

Now, there is probably a good reason the reference can just be tacked in there, which is that the audience as already heard all of the reasons for why they should trust in Jesus, so why said it again? But that's actually what icons are for. You look at them, and meditate on your relation to the which is pictured; it requires some understanding of the images meaning in order for the truth to emerge from it. Since I haven't internalized these reasons, these evocations always leave me cold. They don't tell me why faith in Jesus will (supposedly) help me, and as a result I just think "whatever, man."

I wonder if I should be feeling alienated that Obama seems to think that faith, and faith in Jesus, is so important, such an edifying way of living and succeeding in life, but I figure, that's just his bag. All people have some shit that they think is the the way to be, the way to do things, whether that's Veganism, Christianity, being a swinger, hippy, "traditional" family member, gay clubber, raver, anarchist, objectivist.... People all have this tendency to form some silly tribe that bolsters their particular view of How One Should Live. Obama's is no different, and his thing happens to involve Jesus. Not really something to get bent out of shape about.

Still, I hope he keeps that kind of talk in the Church. If he starts talking like that at those huge rallies, I might have to reconsider my position.