August 28, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:

The world may have changed, but God hasn't

By Mike Haynes

                “Times are changing. People are changing. We’ve moved on so much from large swaths of the Bible.”

                With those words, English journalist and TV personality Piers Morgan urged evangelist Franklin Graham to get with those changing times and reconsider his views on social and biblical issues. Morgan, who many know from his stint as a judge on “America’s Got Talent” and various other media appearances, was interviewing Graham last month on the News UK program, “Piers Morgan Uncensored” while the son of Billy Graham was in London for his God Loves You UK tour.

Piers Morgan, right, interviewed Franklin Graham in England in July 2022.

                My wife and I both could have predicted Graham’s response:

                “God doesn’t change. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever.”

                That claim comes from the Old and New Testaments, where Malachi 3:6 says, “For I the Lord do not change,” and where Paul extends it in Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”

                Today, though, some say the Bible is not authoritative and that any words from the past are subject to being altered, reinterpreted or even ignored. We all know how scores of words and terms that formerly didn’t cause a stir now are politically incorrect, and many who have certain political views won’t listen to any arguments or reasoning that come from “old, white men.” Only the new and fresh is on their radar.

                C.S. Lewis (yes, a white man who eventually got “old”), had something to say about that. Arthur Lindsley wrote that one of the famed author’s seven key ideas was “chronological snobbery,” “the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is thereby discredited.”

                Lindsley set forth these questions: “Why did an idea go out of date, and was it ever refuted? If so, where, by whom, and how conclusively?” Lewis suggested that a person should read at least one old book for every three new ones. His point was that humans should not automatically throw away the wisdom and knowledge learned through thousands of years in favor of recent, untested ideas.

                Dr. Mary Dodson, a local English professor, showed a 2014 video to a Bible class last week of university students being asked basic history questions such as “Who won the Civil War?” and “Who is the vice president?” Most didn’t know. But most had no trouble answering what show celebrity Snooki was on and who actor Brad Pitt was married to at the time.

                With brains so unburdened with even basic facts, how would they be able to intelligently compare “old” ideas to “new” ideas? And how would they be able to judge the truth or fallacy of the words of the Bible?

                Consider a quote from George Orwell’s 1948 novel, “1984”: “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” That reshaping of the culture is easy to do when much of society knows more about Angelina Jolie than who fought against whom in the Civil War.

And according to Dodson, the gradual destruction of traditional values and beliefs stems primarily from the stealthy rise of Marxism, which values groups over individuals, and postmodernism, which denies the validity of “metanarratives” such as the grand, unfolding story of the Bible and says there is no objective truth.

With no universal truth, people have “my truth” and “your truth,” no one should be judged, and everything is relative. So old paper documents such as the U.S. Constitution and the Hebrew and Christian scriptures really have no meaning and are subject to revision or rejection.

                Piers Morgan’s opinion that a preacher should move on from “outdated” parts of the Bible isn’t surprising in our increasingly secular society. Some politicians have argued that the United States is not a Christian nation, and since the Marxist-postmodern movement started gaining ground in the 1960s, their assertion becomes more accurate every day.

                For some of us, that’s alarming – and sad.

 Aug. 14, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:

Billy Sunday knocked it out of the park as an evangelist

By Mike Haynes

                One of my most embarrassing moments as a Texas Tech University student – probably even more so than when the campus cops caught me and a group of fellow students from my hometown playing touch football on the new AstroTurf of Jones Stadium – was in my first freshman history class.

                I was impressed by the professor, a relatively young man who exuded passion as he told fascinating anecdotes about people in U.S. history instead of just going through a timeline of battles, laws and elections. I wish I could remember his name.

Billy Sunday, Major Leaguer

                We had to write a paper about a well-known American, then give a class presentation on it. Always on the lookout to promote Christianity, I chose the evangelist Billy Sunday as my topic.

                I suppose speaking to a class makes most college freshmen nervous, and that certainly was true of me. And it got embarrassing when I told the class that Billy Sunday’s family had immigrated from Germany and that their name had been changed from Sonntag to Sunday. I wish I hadn’t added, “I have no idea why they changed it to Sunday.”

                Another student quickly spoke up: “Sonntag is German for Sunday.”

                I had taken some Spanish in high school and was enrolled in a college French class, so I might not have looked so dumb if the name origin had been “Domingo” or “Dimanche,” but I knew nothing about German.

                I’m sure now that my paper and presentation were pretty rudimentary, but I made an “A” in the course, so it wasn’t a disaster. And I learned that Billy Sunday was quite a remarkable character.

                Born in poverty near Ames, Iowa, in 1862, Sunday was fast and agile, and he became an outstanding baseball player. The Chicago White Stockings signed him in 1883, and he played for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys and the Philadelphia Phillies. His career batting average was only .248, but he was known for his speedy base-running. While at Pittsburgh, a reporter wrote that “the whole town is wild over Sunday.”

                While in Chicago, Sunday heard street preachers who inspired him to attend church. He started speaking at churches and YMCAs, and according to historian Lyle Dorsett, he turned down a $3,500 a year baseball contract to work for the Chicago YMCA for $83 a month. From then on, Sunday was a preacher first.

                According to christianitytoday.com., a newspaper story said, “Center fielder Billy Sunday made a three-base hit at Farwell Hall last night. There is no other way to express the success of his first appearance as an evangelist in Chicago.”

Billy Sunday, evangelist

                Sunday was flamboyant as he spoke in tents and wooden tabernacles, striking dramatic poses and preaching forcefully with sometimes crude language. Reflecting William Tyndale’s 16^th century desire that even English plowboys should know the Bible, Sunday said, “I want to preach the gospel so plainly that men can come from the factories and not have to bring a dictionary.”

                One of Sunday’s many one-liners, used by many preachers since, was, “Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.”

                He fit the category of “evangelical,” ending each revival service with an impassioned plea for those present to “walk the sawdust trail” to the front of the venue to accept the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. He opposed playing cards, attending movies, women dressing immodestly and especially drinking alcohol.

                Sunday has been called a strong influence on getting Prohibition passed in the United States in 1920. “To know what the devil will do, find out what the saloon is doing,” he said.

                But he wasn’t in lockstep with all conservative Christians of the time. Sunday backed women’s suffrage and ending child labor. He invited all races to his services, even in the South, supported Jews and considered Roman Catholics his fellow Christians. According to christianitytoday.com, he rejected the theory of evolution but didn’t go so far as endorsing “Genesis literalists.”

            Billy Sunday was to the first half of the 20^th century what Billy Graham was to the second half. He preached to millions and led an estimated 300,000 people to belief in Christ. Other than my ignorance about his name, I don’t recall what I told my history class many years ago. But I’m sure I read aloud some of his quotes like these:

            • “I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I have a foot. I’ll fight it as long as I have a fist. I’ll butt it as long as I have a head. I’ll bite it as long as I’ve got a tooth. And when I’m old and fistless and footless and toothless, I’ll gum it ’til I go home to glory and it goes home to perdition.”

• “Nowadays we think we are too smart to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus and too well educated to believe in the resurrection. That's why people are going to the devil in multitudes.” 

 

July 31, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News

Popular culture was once blessed with godly influence; why not now?

By Mike Haynes

            The column below appeared in this newspaper on June 26, 1997 – 25 years plus a month ago. It was the first Faith column I wrote, and it focused on a speech by Philip Yancey. A quarter of a century later, Yancey has written many outstanding Christian books, and other creative people have taken his message to heart. I had hoped to hear him speak in person again this week at a C.S. Lewis conference in Oxford, England, but I’m settling for seeing him live online at home. Since 1997, I’ve written another 474 of these columns. Here’s the first one:

Somewhere in a backyard storage shed in the Texas Panhandle are the notes I took on a June 1979 morning in St. Paul, Minn.

Philip Yancey

The young speaker that day so impressed me that I don’t have to find my notes to recall the exhortation he gave to a group of fledgling Christian writers.

“Christians usually settle for less than the best,” was the gist of Philip Yancey’s remarks.

Yancey, who already had written a couple of best-selling books, must have struggled to avoid offending some of the sincere people in his audience while not white-washing his criticism.

He left the whitewash in the bucket.

Writers, musicians, painters – anyone attempting to do something creative to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ – too often churn out mediocre work and, consciously or not, pass it off as excellence.

Christian artists, Yancey claimed, don’t attract the attention of people in the general culture because the quality of their work doesn’t compare to the efforts put forth by talented people whose motivation is far less divine.

What if the innovation and “coolness” of the Beatles had come not from an admittedly fab four who nevertheless were wandering in their personal lives, but from a band of lads whose purpose was to glorify their Creator?

 What if a novelist with a Christian world view put words together as compellingly as Hemingway?

Actually, popular culture has been blessed with godly influence in past centuries more than it has in our own.

From my college art history class, I know that the subject matter of many master painters through the ages has been biblical. Art experts praise the Sistine Chapel for Michelangelo’s vigorous brushstrokes at the same time Christians admire it for its depiction of the Last Judgment.

Much great music also was inspired by Christian muses. How else do you get a piece called “The Hallelujah Chorus”?

So what happened? Yancey said modern Christians typically are satisfied with good intentions. So what if a short story is predictable and has stereotypical characters? If those characters quote scripture, isn’t that all that matters?

So what if a praise chorus sounds almost like “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and repeats “I love Jesus” 14 times? Isn’t it the thought that counts?

Well, yes, and people worshipping in simplicity can be a pure, admirable act. It’s the creators of the lyrics and the tunes and the artwork and the paragraphs for whom Yancey had a swift kick. 

Since 1979, Christian creativity has made much progress in quantity and maybe some in quality. Customers can mine a Christian bookstore for a profusion of musical styles and book topics. Sometimes they even find gold.

Even assuming that artists are achieving more, however, how much of it is preaching to the choir? One of Yancey’s coups 18 years ago was getting a story published in Reader’s Digest. That’s a small example of a Christian influencing U.S. culture rather than vice versa.

Bob Briner used his 1993 book, “Roaring Lambs,” to tell Christians they can’t spend all their time lounging in their own bookstores when there is a whole culture out there drifting, drifting away from the foundation in which they believe.

Briner urged church members to focus less on choir practice or usher training and more on stirring the salt of the Christian message into the cultural stew.

“Certainly, there’s much in this world that is alarming,” Briner wrote, “but I believe there’s a better way to do something about it than simply preach against it. The best way to stop the spread of evil is to replace it with something good.”

   And according to Yancey, artists must inject into our culture not only a good message, but a message presented in such a creative way that the public will be enticed to notice.

            People committed to God should be marketing movies that rival the attention of “Jurassic Park.” They should be pitching TV shows that become as acclaimed as “NYPD Blue.” Someone should be picking up where C.S. Lewis left off, Briner wrote, making the best-seller list of the New York Times, not just that of the Christian Booksellers Association.

            Yancey got my attention that morning in Minnesota in part because he didn’t look like the then-typical Christian evangelist. He wasn’t much older than me, and he had bushy hair reminiscent of a hippie.

But he has a place in my storage shed because he didn’t repeat phrases I had heard from preachers a hundred times before. He was intellectual in that he talked about poetry, philosophy and art. He was sensitive in that he talked about beauty.

And he didn’t think Christians, of all people, should be producing drivel.