different people can live as man and wife. Love doesn’t smooth the
road, according to the old proverb, but it puts springs in the wagon.
Or in the words of the Bible, love “covers a multitude of sins.”
His colleagues sense the authenticity of his love, and it bonds
them to him. Graeme Keith emphasized to us that Billy always
wanted to communicate his message in love. “If you look at his
sermons, you see the emphasis of love, and he projects this love
to all around him.”
We looked up a just-published Billy Graham sermon and, sure
enough, there it was: “The Bible teaches that God is love, and if
you don’t remember anything else, remember this: God loves
you! He loves you so much that he gave his Son to die and to take
your judgment on the cross. The cross is your judgment; but he
took it for you because he loves you.”
The love Billy expresses is cognizant of tragic realities, espe-
cially human pride and self-centeredness. For him, the ultimate
reality is God’s human creation needing redemption through the
exquisite suffering of Jesus.■ ■ ■Billy’s decision to emphasize love started early. He did not react in
kind to the bitter criticisms of those fundamentalists who were
outraged by his having Catholics and “liberals” on his platform.
He responded with silence and with love.
At the founding of Christianity Today, surveying the personal
attacks and divisiveness among conservative Christians, he wrote
that the magazine should set as its goal “to lead and love rather
than vilify, criticize, and beat. Fundamentalism has failed miser-
ably with the big stick approach; now it is time to take the big love
approach.”
In answering his critics, Billy said in a very early issue of CT,
“The one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy but
love.” Editor Carl Henry, whom he had hired, said much the
same, criticizing not the theology of fundamentalism but its
“harsh temperament” and its “spirit of lovelessness and strife.”
The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham