At prayer breakfast, Obama says Christian faith guides his policies

[Igel]

84. Devil's in the details.

I think most people read it as the agent (suppressed by the passive verbs) being the same in each case.

Here we have, "for unto whom much is given (by ...?), much shall be required (by the government)."

So are we given what we have by the government?

Most conservative Xians also interpret that as meaning something along the line of "unto whom much is given (by God), much shall be required (by God)."

You get various kinds of inferences from this. Government as god, Obama as god, stipulating that there must be different agents involved. It sounds good to those who already think that government should require much more from those with than those without, sort of a government virtue.

Oddly, a lot of liberal Xians also tend to believe that somehow "charity through taxation" is a kind of collective virtue, which rather implies a collective salvation ("Hey, that guy over there hates blacks and Jews, but he pays his taxes--albeit at gunpoint--so he's also counted as being kind to the poor and loving his brother!" Yeah, it's a nice reduction to the absurd. Lots of things viewed through the prism of faith and belief are.

Still, when saying what the effect is that the president's words will have on political opponents, it's not entirely unreasonable to at least consider what the other side actually is likely to think and not just assume they'll think what we want them to think.