Dec. 20, 2020, column:

Focus on the REAL reason for the season: the birth of Christ

By Mike Haynes

            Kathy and I watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas” the other night on Panhandle PBS. It’s been around since 1965, and nothing has changed about the commercialization of the holiday that helps send Charlie Brown into a gloomy funk.

            Near the end, Linus reminds us that the birth of Jesus is what Christmas is all about.

            Today, I’m looking at some comments about Christmas from three of my “heroes of the faith” who saw Christ as “the reason for the season” before somebody coined that catch phrase.

Let’s go in chronological order:

          

John Wesley

  John Wesley (1703-1791)

            United Methodist Professor David Watson wrote in 2016 that while many  Christmas sermons focus on the Golden Rule, giving and being kind – our relationships with others – Methodist founder John Wesley stressed the transformation that Christ’s coming to Earth made possible in each life.

            Watson wrote, “This transformation – receiving the capacity to serve God faithfully – was made possible through the Incarnation.” He quoted Wesley’s notes on John 1:14:

            “In order to raise us to this dignity and happiness, the eternal Word, by a most amazing condescension, was made flesh, united Himself to our miserable nature, with all its innocent infirmities….” Wesley continued that Jesus’ coming to Earth accomplished change in men and women that the Law of Moses could not do.

            Wesley’s brother Charles expressed Christ’s gift of potential change in his hymn, “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” according to Watson, in lines such as “peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled,” and “Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.”

            “So for Wesley, the coming of Christ means that we can be changed,” Watson wrote. “We no longer stand in guilt before God, and we are no longer compelled to sin by the power of original sin. We have peace, happiness, and an abundance of divine goodwill and favor.”

            By the end of Charles Schultz’s story, Charlie Brown was closer to those gifts of God.

         

C.S. Lewis

   C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

            Another Brit, writer and professor C.S. Lewis, would have said “amen” to Lucy’s declaration, “Look, Charlie, let’s face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket.”

            Lewis was no less blunt when in 1957 he wrote in “What Christmas Means To Me:”

            “Can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter just to help the shopkeepers?” In fact, Lewis even called it a “commercial racket” eight years before Lucy did. “The idea that not only all friends but even all acquaintances should give one another presents, or at least send one another cards, is quite modern and has been forced upon us by the shopkeepers,” Lewis wrote.

            Jennifer Graham and Lois Collins listed in the Deseret News several of Lewis’ comments about Christmas, including that he thought it “important and obligatory” but that in a letter, he said, “I send no cards and give no presents except to children.” In another letter, he wrote to friends, “Is it still possible amid this ghastly racket of ‘Xmas’ to exchange greetings for the Feast of the Nativity? If so, mine, very warm, to both of you.”

            In a 1954 essay, “Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus,” Lewis created a fictional country that celebrated two festivals: Exmas, involving excessive gift-giving, and Crissmas, a quiet observance of the birth of a child.

             Of course, Lewis wrote eloquently and sometimes wittily about the meaning of Christmas. In “Mere Christianity”: “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God,” and “The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.”

In “Miracles”: “The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.”

In an interview, Lewis said, “The birth of Christ is the central event in the history of earth – the very thing the whole story has been about.”

And showing his wit again, he wrote in a letter, “My brother (Warren Lewis) heard of a woman on a bus say, as the bus passed a church with a crib outside it … ‘They bring religion into everything. Look, they’re dragging it even into Christmas now.’”

         

Billy Graham

   Billy Graham (1918-2018)

            American evangelist Billy Graham echoed both Wesley and Lewis. In sermons and books, he pointed out the secularization and commercialization of Christmas, and like Wesley, he believed that the ultimate purpose of Jesus’ birth was to change people.

            “That baby who was born to Mary was more than just another man – He was God in human flesh,” Graham said. “He came into the world for one reason: to make it possible for our sins to be forgiven so we could become part of God’s family forever.”

            He preached, “He loves you and wants to transform your life.”

            Another Graham message certainly is fitting in 2020: “This Christmas season, when the world seems to be in turmoil – wars are breaking out in different places, crime is rampant, many things are happening that are great sins in the sight of God – but in that crib is the Person who would grow up to save us, and He did.”

            As Linus recited on stage, “For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” 

 Nov. 22, 2020, column:

Mayflower Compact filled with statements indicating allegiance to God

By Mike Haynes

The date of Veterans Day is easy for me to remember. It’s Nov. 11, which also is when I was born. I tell people, “Yeah, they fly the flags on my birthday.”

The flags actually go up that day because World War I ended on Nov. 11, 1918. It also is the date my great-grandparents got married in a field near Willow, Oklahoma, in 1903, according to the family story.

                Years and dates we were taught in school tend to stay in my memory, too, such as 1066, 1215; 1620; 1776; 1836; Dec. 7, 1941; and June 6, 1944; and some in our experience, including Nov. 22, 1963, and Sept. 11, 2001.

                But about that year 1620: Of course I knew that’s when the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. Until a few months ago, though, I had no idea it was on Nov. 11.

                I learned that from an email ad promoting the sale of a facsimile Bible. To mark the 400^th anniversary of those Mayflower travelers landing in America, a company is selling exact copies of the 1560 Geneva Bible.

For many, the best guess of what Bible version the English Separatists carried with them on the ship would be the King James Bible, first printed in 1611. And while the Mayflower’s captain probably had a copy of the Church of England’s King James Version, historians agree that the Bible used by those Puritans seeking religious freedom was the Geneva, an English Bible first printed in Switzerland because it wasn’t approved by the king of England.

                 The 1560 first edition being sold in facsimile form may not have been the edition read on the Mayflower, but almost certainly, those believers were reading some edition of the Geneva. It was the most popular Bible version in England at the time and the one most quoted by Shakespeare.

                The main objection King James I and the Church of England had to the Geneva Bible was its plentiful marginal notes, which were slanted toward the Puritan point of view and showed negativity toward the monarchy.

 

               Fleeing James’ unfriendly government, they had left England for the Netherlands in 1608, the same time that translation committees were working on the KJV. Eventually they decided they would be more comfortable in the New World, negotiated with a London stock company to finance the journey and sailed on the Mayflower.

                Only 35 of the 102 colonists on the ship were members of the English Separatist Church, which Encyclopaedia Britannica calls “a radical faction of Puritanism.” Most of the others were connected to the firm that paid for the trip.

                The first settlers were called “Old Comers” and later “the Forefathers,” says Britannica. The colony’s governor, William Bradford, referred to the “saints” who had left the Netherlands as “pilgrimes,” and the term wasn’t commonly used until Daniel Webster used the phrase “Pilgrim Fathers” in an 1820 speech.

                Whatever we call them, before leaving the ship on Nov. 11, 1620, 41 male passengers signed a 200-word document later called the Mayflower Compact, which set out a plan for a government, laws and regulations of the colony.

                The Geneva Bible facsimile sold by the Bible Museum Inc. at greatsite.com includes a photographic reproduction of Bradford’s handwritten copy of the Mayflower Compact showing its 41 signatures. The agreement is filled with statements indicating allegiance to God – it begins “In the name of God Amen” – and even shows deference to the king – it ends by referring to “our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland.” It was a historic beginning. But reality fell short of the Separatists’ vision.

            “Bradford's dream of a large community of sincere Protestant Christian Separatist Pilgrims creating a New Zion in the New World never really came to pass during his lifetime,” writes the Bible Museum Inc. “Bradford notes with disappointment that the newly arriving settlers were mostly adventurers seeking their fortune in the New World, and only a minority of them were Christians seeking to worship God freely.

“Nevertheless, the following generations of American settlers did establish a community of thriving Christians who were at last out from under the fist of England's kings and the government's Anglican Church.”

The pilgrims’ preference for the Geneva Bible certainly meshed with the early American ideal of protection of the church from the state.

                About that date: Bradford’s handwriting on the Compact does say “11 of November.” And “Nov. 11, 1620,” is printed on the cover of the new facsimile Geneva Bible. But that was under the Old Style calendar. Using our modern calendar, the signing was on Nov. 21, meaning yesterday was the 400^th anniversary.

                But I’m sticking with Nov. 11.

(By the way, the Bible Museum Inc. that's mentioned is not the Museum of the Bible that Kathy and I have visited in Washington, D.C. They're two different organizations.)

 Oct. 25, 2020, column:

Prayer March 2020 a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Amarillo couple

By Mike Haynes

                A man sitting in front of Chris and Kelly Caldwell as they flew back from Washington, D.C., to Amarillo Sept. 28 had on a familiar mask. They recognized it from the free packet they had received in the mail before attending the Sept. 26 Washington Prayer March 2020.

                Kelly asked their fellow passenger whether he had attended the Franklin Graham-organized event on the National Mall.

                “That made him almost light up,” she recalled. “It made us friends instantly. We had the same goal in mind. You could tell if someone would take off work and spend that money to go, that they love our country and they love God even beyond the country.”

 

Kelly and Chris Caldwell at the
Washington Prayer March
on Sept. 26, 2020

               Their new friend was a truck driver from Lubbock. “This is typical of the kind of people who went to the event,” Chris said. “He went by himself, and he had just the best time, he said, and he just really wanted to be there to pray with everybody.”

                The march attracted between 55,000 and 60,000 people who walked from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol, stopping at seven stations to address various topics in prayer – similar to the practice at Amarillo’s annual prayer breakfast. For example, at the Lincoln Memorial, the prayer focus was “Humbling ourselves, repentance and healing of our land.” At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, it was “National reconciliation.” At the World War II Memorial, the focus was “Military, police and law enforcement and their families – and peace in our nation.” And at the Capitol, it was “Congress and other leaders at all levels across America, Supreme Court, judges.”

                Those attending had been asked not to display political messages or show support for one candidate or party. “Franklin Graham said over and over that this is not political,” Chris said. “But of course, since we were praying about our country, there were political issues.”

                Politics had to be on many minds when, as the event was starting, Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, strolled onto the stage at the Lincoln Memorial. “That wasn’t even a planned thing,” Kelly said. “He just showed up, and of course they let him. They were thrilled.”

Pence spoke for a few minutes, urging those present – and an estimated 3.8 million watching online – to “pray with confidence.” He said George Washington often had prayed for leaders and the states with “an earnest prayer,” and that Abraham Lincoln had been driven to his knees in prayer.

                “When the president and I travel around the country,” Pence said, “the sweetest words we ever hear, and we hear them a lot, is when people reach out and simply say, ‘I’m praying for you.’”

                Among many well-known faces were former Major League Baseball star Darryl Strawberry and Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At Stop 5 at the African American History and Culture museum, Strawberry prayed for compassion, kindness and racial reconciliation. King, director of Civil Rights for the Unborn, prayed, “We have sinned and misunderstood or just on purpose thought that we were separate races. We are one human race. Acts 17:26 says, ‘one blood.’ … We are not color blind … We’re going to recognize ethnicity and all the beauty that you gave us, Lord.”

                Franklin Graham’s son, Edward, prayed for first responders: “Lord, an ugliness, a great sin and a lie has turned toward them. Lord, we ask for your hand of protection.”

                Country music star John Rich, an Amarillo native and writer of the song, “Earth to God,” took his two young sons to the march and was interviewed afterward. “I think throughout our country, there is an effort to desensitize our kids to the fact that God is real – and the fact of how great our country is and the fact that our country allows us to worship him like we want to,” Rich said. “And I wanted them to come to something like this prayer march to see tens of thousands of their fellow Americans praying for their country.”

                Along the 1.8-mile route, the Caldwells prayed out loud with each other. But Kelly said one magical moment happened near the beginning, when Graham asked everyone to pray out loud.

                “You’re talking close to 60,000 people,” Kelly said. “To hear what that sounded like – there’s not words to describe it. It was almost like a magical melody, just so cool to hear. And it made us both just cry, it was such a beautiful thing, and I told Chris: If it touched us and made us cry like that, just imagine what that sounded like to God.”

                “It just really felt like heaven,” Chris said, “because there were so many different kinds of people everywhere.” “And everybody was just happy, and they would smile and wave at you, and it was almost like a family reunion,” Kelly said. “We were all like-minded – different faiths, different representation, but we were all there for one reason, to pray for our country, and we were all united as one body in Christ.”

                The Caldwells, both involved in ministry, viewed attending the half-day event as once-in-a-lifetime.

                “I had just noticed a lot of things in the news that were troubling,” said Chris, a BSA Health System chaplain. “I had talked to Kelly about it and prayed about it. So when the prayer march opportunity came out, Kelly suggested that we go.”

                Kelly, assistant to the senior pastor and office administrator at Trinity Baptist Church, said she had seen Graham promoting the event online. “He said, ‘Folks, our country’s in trouble, and the only person who can fix it is God. We are in need of everyone who believes to come together in unity and pray.’ And that just really convicted me.

                “For me, it was just getting to be with my husband in a setting that was just, like he says, you think that’s what heaven is going to be like.”

                Because of the virus pandemic, much of Washington was shut down that weekend. “We were surprised there were that many people who came,” Chris said. “People just felt like it was that important.

                “We just think it’s one of these events that keeps on blessing people.”

* * *

Mike Haynes taught journalism at Amarillo College from 1991 to 2016. He can be reached at haynescolumn@gmail.com. Videos and stories from Washington Prayer March 2020 can be found at prayermarch2020.com.

 

Sept. 27, 2020, column:

A fan of the man, not the character he plays

By Mike Haynes
            I never was a fan of Alice Cooper.
            I am now.
            The “Godfather of Shock Rock” personified a gory Halloween starting in the late 1960s with his dark, shaggy, shoulder-length hair, black-circled eyes and leather outfits with skulls on the buttons. Peaking in the mid-1970s, his concerts featured headless baby dolls, a guillotine and fake blood. The pythons he caressed on stage weren’t the “Monty” kind.

Alice Cooper

            Alice Cooper’s lyrics included, “I’ll bite your face off,” and “Love hurts good on a bed of nails.”
            No, none of that appealed to me. These days, I do recognize songs such as “School’s Out” and “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” but until looking them up, I couldn’t have told you who sang them.
            The past couple of decades, what I knew about Alice Cooper was that he lived in Arizona and played golf.
            Then a friend told me about his interview with California evangelical preacher Greg Laurie. That’s what made me a fan of the real man, not the character he plays. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_GW7JL0-0k&t=2s)
            Around the beginning of 1964, 15-year-old Vincent Furnier was listening to the radio while painting a house in Phoenix. “It was always the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons, Motown,” he told Laurie last year. “And all of a sudden I heard, ‘She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah,’ and I went, ‘What?’ About an hour later I heard, ‘I want to hold your hand…’ and I went, ‘What?’ There were four songs that I heard. And I went, ‘Who are these guys?’
            Like many musicians of his generation, the Beatles had ignited a fire in Furnier, who recruited follow cross country runners and others to form a band. Then he saw the energy and wildness of Pete Townsend and the Who and decided to go a step further with theatrics to back up the music.
     

Alice Cooper, left, and Greg Laurie

       After playing as the Earwigs and the Spiders, the young band members picked “Alice Cooper” as their name. Furnier wanted something like “Betty Crocker” that was the opposite of their untamed stage antics. At the time, he thought, “It’s going to irritate every parent in America.”
            Alice Cooper eventually became Furnier’s own legal name, and by the time “School’s Out” was a Top 10 hit in 1972, the band had made it big – and Furnier, now Alice Cooper, had started a slide into drug and alcohol addiction.
            But a backup dancer in the show, Sheryl Goddard, married Alice in 1976 and helped steer him to sobriety – and back to church.
            Both were PKs – preacher’s kids – and Alice now compares his rebellious years to the Prodigal Son. After he threw his drugs away, he said, “I’m done,” and Sheryl replied, “Prove it.” They started attending a Baptist church in Phoenix.
            “A lot of people say, ‘I came to Christ because of my love of Jesus,’ Alice told Greg Laurie. “I came to Christ because of my fear of God. I totally understood that hell was not getting high with Jim Morrison. Hell was going to be the worst place ever.
“In fear, I came back to the Lord. But I went to another church, and that pastor preached the love of Christ. And you put the two together, and it was exactly right.”
            Alice wondered whether he should drop his macabre stage act, but his pastor told him God may have made him Alice Cooper. “He said, ‘He put you in the exact camp of the Philistines, and you were basically the leader. So now, what if you’re Alice Cooper, but what if you’re now following Christ? And you’re a rock star, but you don’t live the rock star life? Your lifestyle is now your testimony.’”
            The restored Christian did remain Alice Cooper but with a more tongue-in-cheek, humorous slant. His new songs began pointing to Christ with lyrics such as “Mercy please, I’m on my knees, You’re my temptation, Go way in Heaven’s name,” and “What about peace, What about love, What about faith in God above.”
            And Alice started a teen center in Phoenix called Solid Rock. It offers 12- to 20-year-olds free music lessons, and more important, a place to go.

Pastor Greg Laurie, left, interviews Alice Cooper at the Solid Rock
youth center in Phoenix. (Photos from Greg Laurie YouTube channel) 

            “It’s an alternative to what’s on the street,” he said. “I watched a couple of 16-year-old kids do a drug deal on the corner, and I went, ‘How does that kid not know he might be a great guitar player? Or that the other kid might be a drummer? And it just struck me right then: Why don’t we open that, give them that alternative to go there?”
            Solid Rock has a spiritual foundation, starting with Alice and his partners. “We’re all Christian guys, and the Lord told us to do it,” he said. “So we just obeyed; that’s all.”
            Alice Cooper still tours occasionally, but he spends more time on the golf course – six days a week, in fact. The Arizona resident told Laurie that hitting a great golf shot is the same as the high of heroin. “Golf is like the crack of sports,” he said.
            But he said his top priority is God. “If you were going to put what’s important in my life, Alice Cooper would be somewhere around fifth or sixth place,” he said. “Your relationship with God, relationship with your wife, certainly, your kids, and now, Solid Rock is a very big part of my life.
            “If you become a Christian, what you’re saying is, ‘I’m not God anymore.’ Everybody wants to be God. A lot of guys think, ‘Oh, just another religion.’ And the last thing you want is religion in your life. What you want is Christ in your life.”
            Alice chuckled when he mentioned a Christian TV show: “They used to tear my albums up on ‘The 700 Club.’ They’d say, ‘This is the worst person …’ – and now, he’s an agent for Christ. What a miracle that is. And I’m still Alice Cooper. I’m still playing this dark character, but he’s an agent of Christ. Very weird.”  
* * *
Mike Haynes taught journalism at Amarillo College from 1991 to 2016. He can be reached at haynescolumn@gmail.com. Go to www.haynescolumn.blogspot.com for other recent columns.

 Aug. 30, 2020, column:

Mission of Promise Keepers stems from the Bible

By Mike Haynes

            One reason Promise Keepers inspired me in the 1990s was the unity it brought to men of multiple Christian denominations, varied backgrounds and different races.

            Back then, the national parachurch organization started by University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney drew media attention in part because of the enormous crowds that packed arenas and football stadiums across the country.

            And who would have predicted that hundreds of thousands – some confidently said a million – men would converge on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1997 for the purpose of honoring Jesus Christ and urging men to follow him?

            Like many movements – and it was a strong movement for several years – PK slowed down and ran into financial troubles. Some observers claimed it lost momentum because it focused too much on racial reconciliation. From the beginning, its lineup of speakers included many African-Americans, such as E.V. Hill and Tony Evans. And African-American churches were well-represented in the several PK events I attended, from Amarillo’s Cal Farley Coliseum to that 1997 “Stand in the Gap” gathering in D.C.

 

Tony Evans is an author and pastor of Oak Cliff Bible
Fellowship in Dallas and founder of the Urban
Alternative ministry. (Promise Keepers photo)

           But Ken Harrison, PK’s unpaid CEO since 2018, told Christianity Today magazine last month he disagrees that a focus on racial unity contributed to PK’s decline. And even in 1998, local PK leader Greg Canada told me that although the group supported the Amarillo Area Racial Reconciliation Ministries, the PK focus was broader.

“We do not look at it as a black and white issue,” Canada said in my column that March. “We look at it as a sin issue, and that’s not unique to any one race or culture or denomination.”

PK certainly had an impact in this region. It was the impetus for my wife’s longtime friend, Bob, becoming an active Christian. Men’s accountability groups sprang up all over. Ken Plunk of Paramount Terrace (now Hillside) Christian Church arranged for 173 men from various congregations to fly to the D.C. event in a Boeing 727 and estimated then that 500 to 700 area men would make it to the Mall.

And so early in 2020, the slogans of the reinvigorated PK were “building on the Past to Redefine the Future” and “A Movement Reignited to Reach the Next Generation.” The big 2020 event was scheduled for July 31-Aug. 1, when 80,000 men were expected to converge on Arlington’s AT&T Stadium.

Because of COVID-19, PK had to move its first mass assembly online and postpone the stadium gathering to July 16-17, 2021. Harrison said 500 churches hosted simulcasts of the free online event a month ago and that it was seen in at least 65 countries. Speakers and musicians included former Dallas Cowboys Charles Haley and Chad Hennings, Luis and Andrew Palau, Steve Arterburn, Jimmy Evans of Amarillo and Dallas, Michael W. Smith, Jonathan Evans and Tony Evans.

Jonathan Evans, son of Tony and chaplain for the Dallas Cowboys, started the virtual messages with a rap-like performance: ““The gospel of Jesus Christ is certainly for real men … It’s for men who are willing to stand firm like Daniel did in his lion’s den … Come on, man, you’ve got an ‘S’ on your chest. Convey it. Display it. It’s time for men to soar with the gospel. Obey it. And be a real man, because the gospel is some real tough stuff. … The culture’s being slain by sin and has the audacity to look down on us.”

His father followed with a more traditional talk that alluded to the current social struggles but focused on the need for individual men to serve God. Tony Evans compared Christians to NFL football officials who don’t take sides in the game but make calls on the field based on the rulebook – “not based on how they feel or what they want, not even based on what the crowd thinks.

“They know sometimes they’re going to be cheered; they know sometimes they’re going to be booed. But that’s irrelevant, because they’re there to rule by the book, on the field, in the middle of the chaos.

“You and I are in a chaotic world today. We’re in racial chaos, social chaos, political chaos, class chaos, policing and community chaos. But God is looking for a group of men, his officiating crew, who will be in the mess but not a part of the mess, who will bring the response of the kingdom up there to the chaos down here.”

“It’s not because there’s wickedness out there,” Evans said, then pointed to his heart. “It’s because there’s weakness in here.”

The longtime Dallas pastor said many young people have no ethical compass, which should be provided by fathers rather than by the culture. Quoting Psalm 89:14, he said our foundation should be righteousness and justice but that today’s culture often stresses one or the other.

“Your children need to know to judge people justly by the content of their character, not the color of their skin,” Evans said. “They need to know righteous standards of moral integrity, and Daddy is to teach them both. If we would ever get the men to take this responsibility, then we could quell the chaos and confusion in the culture.

“This is not a time for delay, because the hour is too late. If this keeps going like it’s going, you will not have a country worth living in.”

Promise Keepers won’t solve society’s problems by itself. But its mission is simply that of the Bible, and if let loose, that’s a powerful force.

 Aug. 2, 2020, column:

Beatles' 'peace and love' truly found in Jesus

By Mike Haynes
            On July 7 this year, Ringo Starr hosted an online music show to highlight his 80^th birthday.
            (I’ll give my fellow baby-boomers a few seconds here to get over the fact that one of the Beatles has turned 80. OK, while we’re at it, know that Paul McCartney is 78, John Lennon would have been 79 and the baby, George Harrison, would have been 77 this year.)
            Paul and Ringo, the surviving Fab Two, still are going strong as solo performers, and during Ringo’s birthday celebration, he flashed the “Peace” hand sign and ended the show saying his now-trademark, “Peace and Love.”

Former Beatle Ringo Starr gives the peace sign to go along
with his "Peace and Love" mantra as he prepared to
celebrate his 80th birthday last month.

            I couldn’t help thinking of Ringo when I heard the July 19 sermon by one of our pastors. Discussing Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit to believers, he quoted John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
            The pastor continued, and I’m paraphrasing, that in our chaotic 2020 world and throughout history, people have sought peace but often don’t look for it in the person who IS peace: Jesus Christ, who is God and the Prince of Peace.
            My thoughts jumped to the Bible’s statements that not only is God peace, but God is love, too. “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (I John 4:8) “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” (I John 4:16)
             Peace and love. Those are wonderful concepts to strive for. And I wonder exactly what Ringo means when he repeats the words and asks people to say them at noon every year on his birthday.
            I like Ringo. He seems to have been the Beatle who was most agreeable most of the time when the others were squabbling. And I’m sure he sincerely wants peace in the world and wants love to spread.
            I’m not sure, though, whether true peace and love can take root without the spirit who created them in the first place.
            Our pastor pointed out that often, people try to maneuver their surroundings to produce peace in society, hoping that in turn, individuals will have peace within. He said that’s backward. The biblical model is that peace within a person will radiate out to create peace in that person’s environment. And that idea involves the Holy Spirit.
            The pastor said that to have peace within, a person has to invite Jesus into his or her heart, which is the equivalent of having the Holy Spirit inside. That Christian definition of peace is appealing, especially this year when it seems no one can gain control of the division and hatred that spiral around us.
            I would be stretching it to say the Beatles’ music is Christian, but much of it expresses a yearning for something better – a yearning that writer C.S. Lewis believed was hard-wired into all of us by the creator of the universe. Lewis said the only true attainment of our deepest desires, of which peace and love are among the most important, is in another world, the one where Jesus promised he has prepared a place for us.
            George Harrison was influenced by Eastern religions, but his song, “Within You Without You” reflects what our pastor said about the Holy Spirit. His “My Sweet Lord” has been used in Christian contexts. Paul McCartney sang for “Peace in the Neighborhood.” Some of the Beatles’ most familiar music prods us toward compassion. “The love you take is equal to the love you make” is another way of stating the Golden Rule.
            Another pastor, my cousin, says “All You Need Is Love” pretty well sums up his preaching during the past 25 years.
             I haven’t heard Ringo expand on the meaning of his “Peace and Love” mantra, but I appreciate his intentions. And I don’t know what would happen to our world if Christians everywhere let peace surge from their hearts.
            But let’s give it a chance.

July 5, 2020, column:
Behind the scenes of 'A Hobbit, A Wardrobe and A Great War'

By Mike Haynes

            “Too much, Hannah!”

            “More! More!”

            Those were some of the first words Hannah Dye heard in her first experience as an assistant working on a professional film. She was operating a smoke machine that, as she wrote in her blog, was “to give the scene a foreboding aura.”

Actor Alex Bird, in costume as J.R.R. Tolkien, and

Hannah Dye of Canyon pose during work in Oxford,

England, on the documentary film series,

“A Hobbit, A Wardrobe and A Great War.”

(Photo by Hannah Dye)

The scene needed that ominous atmosphere because it showed a young C.S. Lewis, played by Max Polling, in 1917, walking in and out of Keble College at Oxford University, “when he was called up into service during World War I … preparing to be sent off to the trenches,” Dye wrote.

Lewis is the reason for the “Wardrobe” part of the title of an in-progress documentary series called, “A Hobbit, A Wardrobe and A Great War,” produced by the nonprofit Eastgate Creative. The endeavor was founded a century after that great war by California filmmakers Ralph Linhardt and Jock Petersen and New York author Joseph Loconte, upon whose book of the same title the films are based.

During four days of filming in Oxford last November, Dye, then 22, got a taste of the film industry and of the true story of how Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, the “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” author, both served in World War I, later met as Oxford professors, or dons, and became fast friends and famous authors.  

Kirk Manton, production services director at Amarillo’s Trinity Fellowship and a volunteer staffer with the C.S. Lewis Foundation in California, made the connection between Dye and the film people.

Dye’s father is Darren Dye, pastor of Freedom Fellowship Church of Canyon, part of the Trinity Fellowship Association of Churches. Manton had invited Hannah Dye to Amarillo meetings of the C.S. Lewis Underground and knew she had moved to Oxford, England, to pursue her music education after graduating from West Texas A&M University.

Manton also was friends with Linhardt and Peterson, so he suggested that Dye work with them as a volunteer on the Lewis-Tolkien film. She did everything from producing smoke to making tea to taking behind-the-scenes photos to setting up props in an English pub.

One day, she even sat in a bicycle-pulled cart with a pile of leaves in her lap, transporting the leaves from one sidewalk location to another. 

Max Polling, playing C.S. Lewis in a World War I costume, walks out of

Keble College in Oxford, England, as filmmaker Ralph Linhardt operates

the camera and author Joseph Loconte watches during  production of

the documentary, “A Hobbit, A Wardrobe and A Great War.”

(Photo by Hannah Dye)

At The Plough pub, the crew shot Tolkien, played by Alex Bird, and Lewis either reading or writing, “with a mug of beer in one hand … and a pipe in the other,” Dye wrote. She said Linhardt had to teach the young actors how to smoke a pipe, something both authors did throughout their lives.

Although Dye had been in Oxford a few months, she had not visited The Kilns, the home of Lewis for more than 30 years until his death in 1963. But the film called for shooting at the suburban house, which the C.S. Lewis Foundation owns, so she got to visit rooms where Lewis wrote “The Chronicles of Narnia” and most of his other Christian works.

A highlight for Dye was observing an interview with an elderly woman who was one of Lewis’s students. The crew drove north of Oxford to her country home and did the interview in her art studio.

“One thing she repeated several times was that she didn't think Lewis looked like a don but like a grocer,” Dye wrote. “She also described how Lewis could fill a room with his lectures because many people wanted to hear him speak. I was in awe the entire time, hanging on her every word. I felt so honored to be there and listen to her.”

The focus of the film series and Loconte’s book is the relationship between the two literary giants and the impact World War I had on their writing. For example, Tolkien’s combat experience at the Battle of the Somme obviously influenced his vivid battle scenes in the “Lord of the Ring” stories. Lewis also saw death and destruction in the trenches of France, and the gloom of the war only added to his reasons for doubting the existence of God.

Lewis and Tolkien met at a 1926 faculty meeting, and although Tolkien was a confirmed Catholic, their interests and intellects otherwise coincided. Tolkien is given partial credit for Lewis’s conversion to Christianity a few years later, and they critiqued and influenced each other’s writing.

Rather than follow the literary trend of pessimism and despair that so many writers embraced between the world wars, these two marched forward with traditional ideals of brotherhood, duty and hope, all themes found in their fantasy tales.

Loconte’s book and the film series explore the common experiences of these two men and the epic achievements that resulted. And if that isn’t enough to attract you, the film credits will include the name of a young woman from Canyon, Texas.

Follow these links for more information:

http://hobbitwardrobe.com/ (film website with trailer and link to donate to the project)

https://anamericaninoxford.wixsite.com/blog (Hannah Dye’s blog)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwdwlhUBUTI (June 8, 2020, interview with author Joseph Loconte).

June 7, 2020, column:
Kindness, compassion drove evangelist Zacharias

By Mike Haynes

            Ravi Zacharias was at least as much heart as he was mind.

            The Atlanta-based evangelist who died of cancer May 19 at age 74 was known for his intellectually vigorous apologetics – reasoned arguments justifying the truth of Christianity. But according to speakers at his memorial service May 29, it was his compassion for whomever he saw in front of him – whether at a dinner table or as he spoke onstage to a crowd of thousands – that struck them more than his brilliant persuasive skills.

Ravi Zacharias, who Vice President Mike Pence called “the

greatest Christian apologist of this century,” died May 19

at age 74. Zacharias last spoke in Amarillo in 2016, and

members of his team have led discussions in Amarillo

and Canyon several times.

(Photo by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries)

            “He saw the objections and questions of others not as something to be rebuffed, but as a cry of the heart that had to be answered,” said Michael Ramsden, president of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. “People weren’t logical problems waiting to be solved; they were people who needed the person of Christ.”

            Zacharias, who last spoke in Amarillo in 2016 at Hillside Christian Church and whose team members have made presentations in Amarillo and Canyon several times, was remembered in a service at Atlanta’s Passion City Church that was streamed live. Speakers included Ramsden, Vice President Mike Pence, former football star Tim Tebow, Brooklyn Tabernacle Pastor Jim Cymbala and Passion Movement founder Louie Giglio. Contemporary Christian singer Matt Redman and hip-hop artist Lecrae highlighted the music. The service still can be watched on YouTube and Facebook.

            Zacharias was born in India in 1946 and moved with his family to Canada at age 20. He called himself a religious skeptic until an experience in a hospital after he tried to commit suicide at age 17. He said a Youth for Christ director visited and gave him a Bible. Zacharias noticed a statement by Jesus in John 14:19 that became a landmark of his life: “Because I live, you also will live.” He lived for Jesus the last 57 years of his life, 48 with his wife, Margie. His three children all are involved in his ministry.

             After Billy Graham invited him to speak at a 1983 evangelists’ conference in Amsterdam, Zacharias was ready to start RZIM in 1984. It’s based in Atlanta but has offices in a dozen countries, 100 speakers who travel globally and offshoot ministries including Wellspring, a humanitarian outreach to women and children.

            Like Graham in his heyday, Zacharias traveled constantly, racking up more than 4 million miles in the air just last year. My cousin Thacker and friend Mike live in the Texas Panhandle but said they were blessed mightily when they heard him, Francis Chan and Cymbala at the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York a few years ago.

            A slogan of Zacharias’ ministry was “Helping the thinker believe – and the believer think.” He took the Christian side in debates with unbelievers, but he certainly wasn’t the type to let a discussion turn into a shouting match. In his 1983 Amsterdam speech, he said, “When you are trying to reach someone, please be sensitive to what he holds valuable.” He often quoted an Indian proverb that he heard from his mother:

            “There is no point in cutting off a person’s nose and then giving them a rose to smell.”

            Mahlatse Mashua, RZIM’s Africa regional director, said Zacharias had “a precise, robust, yet tender, voice.”

            Lou Phillips said “Uncle Ravi,” which he and other RZIM team members sometimes called their boss, liked food, Elvis and laughing. And his favorite sport was cricket.

            In 2015, Zacharias participated in a forum at Oklahoma Christian University in Edmond, where he was given a cricket bat engraved with John 14:19. Phillips smiled when he said Zacharias would tell audiences that explaining why Christianity is true and how God is loving in the midst of evil and suffering weren’t the hardest things he had to do.

“Ravi has argued that one of the most impossible tasks he was ever given,” Phillips said, “was trying to explain the game of cricket to an American.”

At the memorial service, not long after doctors ended Zacharias’ cancer treatment in Houston and he returned to Georgia, Ramsden said:

            “Those who knew him well will remember him first for his kindness, gentleness and generosity of spirit. The love and kindness he had come to know in and through Jesus Christ was the same love he wanted to share with all he met.”

             Zacharias talked about Jesus with people from Atlanta to Amarillo, from sheiks in Saudi Arabia to a general in Russia to Louisiana prison inmates who crafted his casket. He met five times with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.    

            And he was more to his staff than the man at the top. “Ravi became a father and a friend and a mentor,” Phillips said. “But he always pointed us to Christ.”

            Closing the May 29 service, Giglio said Zacharias had asked him to talk not so much about Ravi but more about Jesus. Giglio apologized, not able to resist pointing out the example of his late friend’s character and achievements. But he still kept the focus on Christ.

            Just more than two years ago, at the 2018 memorial for Billy Graham, Zacharias said, “A great voice has been lost, but the message goes on.”

            The same could be said now.