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A Prophet with Honor

Page 23

by William C. Martin


  The cornerstone of Graham’s theology, of course, was his unshakable belief that the Bible is God’s actual Word. His literalism required him to reject evolution of the human species and to believe that Adam and Eve were actual historical beings, “created full-grown with every mental and physical faculty developed,” but it was Adam’s nature, not his origin, that played the key role in his theology and preaching. Adam, in the orthodox Evangelical view, was created sinless but equipped with free will. Because he used that freedom to disobey God and eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he fell into a state of sinful, guilt-ridden rebellion against God, a state passed along to all of his descendants. Left to their own devices, humans will live a miserable, unsatisfying life and spend eternity separated from God and the only relationship upon which true peace and happiness can be based. Even in their depravity, however, they possess sufficient reason to understand what they must do to escape from their wretched state, and sufficient free will to enable them to do it. And what they need is justification. A just God, Graham proclaimed, had no choice but to demand that all sin, from Adam onward, be punished by a sentence of death. Since “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” the only hope for fallen humanity was for someone to volunteer to die, physically and spiritually, as a substitute offering to God. In a succinct statement of his doctrine of atonement, Graham wrote, “God demands death, either for the sinner or a substitute. Christ was the substitute!” Because he did not deserve to die, since he had not sinned, his merit could be transferred into the accounts of those who would accept it. Here then was the heart of Graham’s theology and preaching: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

  Graham frequently asserted that only born-again Christians could ever know true happiness and genuine peace of mind, but he never promised that conversion would cure all ills; on the contrary, he warned that the disciplined life of a true Christian could be difficult and that taking a stand for Christ might create entirely new and quite serious problems. Still, he believed that “only the Christian knows how to live,” and his thumbnail sketch of the Christian life looked remarkably like an idealized self-portrait: “The Christian should stand out like a sparkling diamond against a rough background. He should be more wholesome than anyone else. He should be poised, cultured, courteous, gracious, but firm in the things that he does and does not do. He should laugh and be radiant, but he should refuse to allow the world to pull him down to its level.” The hallmarks of Christian life are the disciplined practice of specific spiritual exercises and personal purity, particularly with regard to sex. In a 1952 sermon, “The Life That Wins,” he told his radio audience that “your quiet time (your prayer time and the time you spend in the Word) is absolutely essential to a happy Christian life. You cannot possibly be a powerful Christian without such a daily walk with Christ.” He was able to imbue these words with convincing force because he made it clear, somewhat more frequently than absolute humility required, that he followed such a regimen himself. In sermons and articles and interviews and printed excerpts from his diaries, he often spoke of long stretches of prayer, of praying immediately upon arising, of an entire afternoon spent pouring out his heart to the Lord, of walking out under the starry sky to pray, of a delightful prayer time with a close circle of friends, and of dropping to his knees again and again as he wrestled with some decision or difficulty. Such descriptions, which clearly portrayed him as a spiritual exemplar, could easily have been viewed as immodest and self-serving. They seem also to have been accurate.

  A person properly fortified by prayer and Bible study would, Graham believed, live a disciplined moral life. In keeping with Evangelical practice, he tended to identify morality with avoiding specific behaviors, primarily sins of the tongue and the flesh. He spoke against the profanity he heard among politicians, university professors, and other men in high places, but warned that many common expressions used by professing Christians are simply disguised ways of taking the name of the Lord in vain. He also condemned lying, including the shadings of truth that often occur in business, politics, and everyday social intercourse. As for sins of the flesh, Graham appeared to share the common Fundamentalist conviction that alcohol is scarcely less pernicious and damnable than heroin or cocaine and was willing to put at least a bit of his weight behind occasional last-wheeze efforts at legal prohibition. In 1950 he spoke so forcefully to the Georgia state senate about the need for an all-out revival against sin that two hours later, that body passed a bill to make the state totally dry; the state’s House of Representatives, however, managed to arrange that bill’s death by neglect. In Jackson two years later, Graham commended Mississippi for being one of the few dry states in the nation and said, “I hope it will remain so.” And in his first two feature films, alcohol served as a key symbol of the lost condition of the male protagonists. Clearly, Graham felt the bottle held a powerful demon. Still, far more dangerous than lying, swearing, or drinking was sex, the primary temptation Satan uses to lure people down that broad path to hell. Graham readily admitted to being a sexual person and spoke glowingly of the joys to be found in a God-blessed marital bed, but he followed Evangelical practice by using immorality as a code word for sexual transgressions and devoted what was clearly a disproportionate, if not in ordinate, amount of attention to sex-related topics. In an early collection of his best “My Answer” columns, for example, over a hundred selections deal with some aspect of sex—adultery, fornication, petting, pornography, smutty stories, illegitimacy, abortion, rape, impure thoughts, immodest apparel, and “living in sin,” among others. Graham’s basic position on these topics was predictably condemnatory, or at least full of caution. Speaking to teenagers about sexual temptation, he stated flatly, “You’ll never make it to the top until you lick this thing, and you’ll never lick it without Christ!” He pointed out that adultery is one of the few sins for which God demanded the death penalty in the Old Testament and consistently warned against any behavior that would increase the likelihood of falling into this grievous sin. To a man who defended his ostensibly platonic friendship with a woman other than his wife, he warned, “You are living a double existence and you are playing with fire. What can so easily start as an ‘innocent friendship’ has within it the seed of untold sorrow for all concerned and of the eternal loss of your soul.” At the same time, he refrained from a bluenosed, unforgiving priggishness that would demand some modern equivalent to a scarlet letter. He reminded sinners that as bad as it is, adultery can be forgiven as easily as lying, cheating, or stealing, and told them they must not fear that God would not welcome them back into his loving arms. He told women who suspected their husbands of infidelity that “before I did anything at all, I would make certain that my suspicions were justified.” If the test proved positive, they should confront the offender directly: “I’ve known men to grow up overnight when wives reminded them that from now on it is an ‘either/or’ deal.” Moreover, he said to one woman who had failed to take this step, “I must frankly say that your meek silence is in part to blame for your husband’s philandering. He either thinks you don’t love him, you don’t care, or that you are not smart enough to know what is going on right under your nose.” To those who wondered if they should confess their past infidelities, he counseled against either a public confession before the church or a private confession to one’s mate: “I don’t think this is always advisable or necessary. I have known of homes that were wrecked by such confessions.” Interestingly, on the question of abortion, which was not hotly debated at the time, Graham ventured that if it were necessary to save the mother’s life, abortion might be acceptable, though he felt it should not be employed simply “for selfish reasons.”

  Graham’s prescriptions for a happy Christian home included a similar blend of biblical precept and commonsense. The husband, he said, should provide for the support of his family and serve as “the ma
ster of the house, the one who organizes it, holds it together, and controls it.” The wife is “his chief assistant in this work” and has every right to expect her husband to be demonstrative, courteous, polite, loving, and gentle toward her, but she is nevertheless to remain in subjection to him and adapt herself continually to “his interests, his experiences, his progress. . . . When he comes home in the evening, run out and meet him and give him a kiss. Give him love at any cost. Cultivate modesty and the delicacy of youth. Be attractive. Read as much as you can to keep up on world events and developments.” Given his own marriage to a strong and capable woman, Graham had to admit that “in one sense, the husband and wife are co-equal in the home; but when it comes to the governmental arrangement of the family, the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, teaches that man is to be the head of the home. . . . He is the king of the household, and you, his wife, are the queen.” A proper queen, he said, would prepare the king’s favorite dishes, have the meals on time, make their home as attractive and comfortable as possible, and feel “it is her duty, responsibility, and privilege to remain at home with the children.” She is not, however, a plaything or chattel without basic rights. She should satisfy her husband’s sexual desires, but the decision to bear children should be hers: “Surely a woman is entitled to choose when she will undertake the burden she alone must carry in bearing a child. No woman should be called upon to pass through [childbirth] involuntarily, nor should she be obliged to live in constant dread of doing so.” To a husband who asserted his right to impregnate his wife against her will, Graham flatly answered, “In my opinion, you are totally in the wrong. You and your wife should lovingly and prayerfully agree on this point.”

  Graham believed children in a Christian home should be subordinate to both parents and did not hesitate to recommend spankings, pointing out that “the pain of corporal punishment administered in love is insignificant compared with the evil and pain resulting from the habits of disobedience.” Accordingly, he decried modern psychology’s tendency toward permissiveness. “Psychologists are saying, ‘Don’t spank your children; you’ll warp their personality.’ I stand here before you tonight in a warped personality because I got plenty of spankings. There are plenty of calluses on my backbone that were put there by a razor strap. If you haven’t had that kind of discipline in your home, you’d better start it, because God demands it. Our children tonight are roaming the streets because there is no home discipline or restraint.” Despite these strong words, Graham acknowledged that punishment is inherently negative and that children differ in their reaction to punishment: “It may not be necessary for you to resort to the rod. I am saying, do not be afraid to use it when there is no other way.” As for religious training, he cautioned against forcing children to perform unpleasant or meaningless exercises. It is better, he counseled, to let them see their parents pray, to set aside special times for family worship, and to make such experiences as pleasant as possible. Graham felt confident that couples who followed these directions would be able to establish happy homes, a vital need not only for individuals but for the nation as well, since, “almost every historian will agree that the disintegration of the Roman Empire was due largely to the broken home.” He informed an Hour of Decision audience that only one in fifty-seven marriages ended in divorce when the families were regular in their church attendance; in homes where daily Bible reading and prayer occurred, the ratio dropped to only one in five hundred. “This amazing survey,” he proclaimed, “gives us two significant facts: that divorces in America are mostly among nonreligious people, and a Christian home is the best possible insurance against a broken home.”

  Nothing in Graham’s theology or recipes for Christian living was unique, or even rare, but he proclaimed his convictions with an urgency and style that caught and held attention, and he undergirded them with a character and personality that made them compelling to those disposed to listen. As he gained experience, first-person dramatizations of the exploits of biblical heroes disappeared along with his argyle socks and flashy ties. Occasionally, he displayed a purplish school-declamation kind of eloquence, as when he declared that “the secret of America is not found in her whirling wheels or streamlined industry, nor in the towering skyscrapers of our teeming cities where clever men of commerce meet, [nor] in the rich, lush prairies laden with golden grain, nor in her broad green meadows where fat cattle graze . . . [but] in the faith that abides in the hearts and homes of our fair land.” He also sometimes illustrated his sermons with Moody-like stories of the praying mother who left the front door wide open for years, winter and summer alike, so that a wayward daughter would always know she was welcome at home; of the father who turned away from the saloon when he noticed his young son walking behind him, “stepping in Daddy’s tracks”; of the fatally ill girl who lamented that her mother had taught her how to dance and smoke and drink, but not how to die. But he was never truly comfortable with either poetry or pathos, and though he acknowledged it was possible to move audiences by eloquence, deathbed tales, and heart-tugging illustrations, he felt the result was too often insubstantial. “It may look genuine,” he said, “but the people are weeping over the story told and not over the conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit.” In consequence these rhetorical techniques came to play less and less a role in his mature style, a style that reflected elements from most of his major forerunners but that borrowed most heavily from the earliest and latest forms of mass communication in America, the jeremiad and the network newscast.

  In the manner of YFC speakers, as well as of many a southern preacher, Graham usually began by relating a few warm-up jokes, often mangling the punch line, to relax the audience and let them know that despite the hard things he had to say, he was really a good fellow not much different from themselves. As soon as he got through these relaxation exercises, he shifted gears and set about to create a high level of tension in his listeners. He observed that revival is more likely to occur in a time when people feel unable to cope with the problems they face, and he used a variety of techniques to make his audiences believe their lives were filled with such problems. In some sermons he proceeded carefully from point to next logical point. In others his subject and text served merely to launch him into a barely related discourse on teenage sex, drugs, loneliness, communism, or atomic war. But whatever the mode of organization, he typically began by ticking off a list of individual or social problems he had observed or heard about on the news or seen mentioned in an article by J. Edgar Hoover or personally discussed with Henry Luce and President Eisenhower or read about in Reader’s Digest or gleaned from the works of British historian Arnold Toynbee and Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and Dr. P. A. Sorokin of Harvard and the famous psychiatrist, Erik Erikson, and the great Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev. He pointed out that like the rich young ruler in the parable, many seem to have everything but inside are lonely, restless, empty, despondent, and depressed. They seek pleasure in nightclubs and casinos, but their faces wear no smiles when they leave. And even those whose personal lives seemed rich and fulfilling must live in a world filled with terror and threat. As a direct result of sinful humanity’s rebellion against God, our streets have become jungles of terror, mugging, rape, and death. Confusion reigns on campuses as never before. Political leaders live in constant danger of the assassin’s bullet. Racial tension seems certain to unleash titanic forces of hatred and violence. Communism threatens to eradicate freedom from the face of the earth. Small nations are getting the bomb, so that global war seems inevitable. High-speed objects, apparently guided by an unknown intelligence, are coming into our atmosphere for reasons no one understands. Clearly, all signs point to the end of the present world order.

  These assertions flashed like a fusillade from an automatic weapon, fired in unrelenting staccato bursts that could not be ignored but allowed no time to run for cover. Indeed, Graham’s basic mode of preaching in these early years was assault. To keep entire arenas alert and at bay, he stalked and walked and some
times almost ran from one end of the platform to the other, his body now tense and coiled, now exploding in a violent flurry. His arms slashed and crushed and shattered, his hands chopped and stabbed and hammered, his fingers pointed and sliced and pierced. And his words kept coming, a stream of arresting, often violent and frightening, images. He never faltered, never groped for a word, never showed the slightest doubt that what he said was absolutely true. Then, when he had his listeners mentally crouching in terror, aware that all the attractively labeled escape routes—alcohol, sexual indulgence, riches, psychiatry, education, social-welfare programs, increased military might, the United Nations—led ultimately to dead ends, he held out the only compass that pointed reliably to the straight and narrow path that leads to personal happiness and lasting peace. “The Bible says,” Billy said, that the only Way worth following, the only Truth worth knowing, the only Life worth living is that offered to those who acknowledge their helplessness, throw themselves on God’s grace and mercy, and turn their lives over to Jesus Christ, who is able to answer their deepest need. “Christ died for your sins,” he proclaimed. “They hung him on a cross, and his blood was flowing, and they taunted him, ‘Come down, come down. You saved others; save yourself.’ And he said, ‘No, I love them. I’m dying for people in 1952 in Washington, D.C. I’m dying for those people in generations yet unborn. I’m going to bear their penalty and their punishment, and take it upon myself.’” That offer, Graham stressed, as he moved to close the sale, was the most spectacular any person could receive, but it would not forever be available. Even if Christ did not soon return, each individual’s life is of brief and uncertain span. Think, he reminded them, of the movie stars and sports heroes and political leaders who had recently died, some at the peak of their careers. How could anyone be sure he or she would be alive twenty-five or fifteen or ten or two years from now? What about a week? A day? How easy it would be to die in an automobile accident on the way home from the service, and then face God at the Judgment, aware of having passed up this one last opportunity to escape an eternity of separation from his blessed countenance. Life is uncertain. Tomorrow’s sun may never rise. Eternity may be but a heartbeat away.

 

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