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Mon.Jun.18.2007

3:33 am EDT        75°F (24°C) in Gary, IN

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Today, I hope, is the day that I find out I have a new job. The hiring manager I was talking to a week and a half ago should be back from his vacation today, and I will in all likelihood be giving him a call if I haven’t heard from him by this afternoon. Wish me luck.

This past Thursday, Ruth Graham, the wife of Christian evangelist Billy Graham, died at the age of 87. Unlike what happened to Jerry Falwell a month ago, which is what will happen to many so-called “fundamentalist ‘Christians’” when they die, Ruth Graham has been invited into the presence of the Lord in heaven. Like her beloved husband, who isn’t in the greatest health himself and may join her with the Lord before long, she embodied what it truly means to be a Christian — displaying Christ’s love to everybody to the best of her ability, avoiding self-righteous condemnation, and leaving judgment to God.

Christians would do well to ignore the Satanic ramblings of the likes of Pat Robertson, Peter LaBarbera, D. James Kennedy, James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, Gary Bauer, Donald and Tim Wildmon, and Fred Phelps, and everybody else who repeats their garbage, and instead emulate the example of Billy and Ruth Graham. They have shown that the most effective evangelism is that which does not condemn, bind, deceive, or always insist on its own correctness; rather, they actually lived the values of the Gospel and let their own example do the persuasion.

Even on the few occasions where Billy Graham has strayed from the Gospel, for example when he told an audience in 1993 that he believed AIDS was a judgment of God, he has admitted his error and sought forgiveness. It’ll be a cold day in Falwell’s permanent residence when you see that kind of behavior out of almost any other “fundamentalist ‘Christian’” — Graham’s own son Franklin, all too sadly, included. If Franklin Graham does not repent of his deeply sinful statements and beliefs that “Islam is an evil, wicked religion” and that homosexuality is “outside the parameters God created,” then he will be joining Jerry Falwell instead of his parents when his time comes.

I don’t have a ton of time to write much here tonight, but I did need to stop in and refresh a week-old entry. Hopefully, in a few days, I’ll be between jobs and will have more time.