May we take up the torch

1933-2007

Love him or not, one can't overestimate the value of this one life to the 20th Century. As for me...well, I didn't always agree with him but I did have great admiration. I put him with the others I respect...Billy Graham, D. James Kennedy, Bill Bright, James Dobson, and of course...Francis Schaeffer.

I didn't always agree with their theology or the what they have said through the years but at least...they said something. When it was being preached from the pulpits that it was a sin for conservative Christians to get involved in politics and it made one liberal to uh...feed the poor, care for the environment, care about low cost housing, etc...they brought to the light that we were losing the culture (Schaeffer said, correctly, that we'd already lost it).

Some were loud and even brash...but I understood. For in my own involvement in politics and social change, I felt at times I had to stomp my feet and take people by the shoulders and shake (and shake, and shake, and shake) until they would come out of their stupor and see what was happening to this country we loved.

For the attitude I found so often was...well, we'll always have Heaven. Sigh...but what about the Words in Red? You know, those in the Gospels? What about being salt and light in this world? Hey, perhaps we can't stop all the changes going on but maybe we can uh...slow them down a bit?

Contrary to much that has been written, Falwell wasn't trying to take over the country and make it "Christian". He was trying to take back what we had lost, those morals that were based on the Bible.

If you want a good cry sometimes, rent some of the old TV shows...you know, those in black and white. Do you notice a difference? There are those who say they don't show the truth, that they only indicate a nostalgic memory of that which wasn't. Well, yes...after all they are made up and they are actors portraying people...but people withing our society as it was. They weren't making that up.

That's what Jerry Falwell stood for, that's what he knew we had lost. He wasn't trying to make a Nirvana of this country. He was simply a voice crying in the wilderness...you have to care before it is to late...

...and people, Christians even, scoffed at him.

But he did something,
not perfectly,
not always what I would say...
but something.

He was salt. He was light.