Billy Graham, now 87, recently gave an extended interview to Newsweek reporter Jon Meacham [1]. The interview contained a few surprises that brightened my day.
First, Graham indicated that Christians need not be Bible literalists:
The new interviews with NEWSWEEK, however, reveal a more intriguing figure than either his followers or his critics might assume. He is an evangelist still unequivocally committed to the Gospel, but increasingly thinks God’s ways and means are veiled from human eyes and wrapped in mystery. “There are many things that I don’t understand,” he says. He does not believe that Christians need to take every verse of the Bible literally; “sincere Christians,” he says, “can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology—absolutely.”
Graham also expressed some humility on whether good and decent non-Christians will be barred from heaven [2]:
A unifying theme of Graham’s new thinking is humility. He is sure and certain of his faith in Jesus as the way to salvation. When asked whether he believes heaven will be closed to good Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or secular people, though, Graham says: “Those are decisions only the Lord will make. It would be foolish for me to speculate on who will be there and who won’t … I don’t want to speculate about all that. I believe the love of God is absolute. He said he gave his son for the whole world, and I think he loves everybody regardless of what label they have.”
Not that these humble common sense admissions made any big headlines (I didn’t see anything about Graham’s interview on any other media outlet). I suppose the media can’t sell much advertising by airing tolerance. To sell more of their expensive commercials, they will have to find some other televangelist to condemn all those gays, liberals and non-Christians to hell. Get those ratings up, you know.
In the meantime, Graham’s statements have some Christian talk radio hosts all worked up. I heard it with my own ears on the way home from work tonight. Here’s how I cynically interpreted what I heard on the AM dial: Let’s see . . . how can we spin Graham’s statements 180 degrees? If all good people can simply go to heaven WE MIGHT BE OUT OF OUR JOBS!! On tonight’s show, for instance, radio host Paul McGuire actually argued that the Newsweek reporter inaccurately reported Graham’s words. Such dejection. Now we can’t be assured that all those gays will roast in a literal fiery hell for eternity! If God’s not going to roast the bad guys, life will lose all meaning! Let’s pass a “Defense of Heaven Act.” We simply CAN’T share heaven with the bad guys! If they are happy, I’m NOT!
I’m not getting my hopes up too high, but, really, how nice not to hear a prominent religious leader calling on that big bodyguard, God, to condemn all others who happen to be different. It’s an innovate approach for most conservative religions. It’s called TOLERANCE and HUMILITY. It’s called “Maybe we don’t know everything after all.”
Actually, Billy Graham has been practicing tolerance for quite a few years, which has really been pissing off many fundamentalists. Graham’s been on the receiving end of some really nasty stuff. See here [3] and here [4] and here [5].
It’s been quite a summer. Remember Pat Robertson admitting that global warming might be a man-made problem and that maybe we should be doing something about it? [6]
God apparently works in mysterious ways . . .
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