This constant undercurrent flowing into our subconscious
affects us more than we may realize. Media may be a mix of the
coarse and the cerebral, but too much of it urges “Sue ’em! Out
’em! Retaliate!”
The strategy of Billy Graham has been the polar opposite of
this dark undercurrent. Anglican rector John Stott commented
about Billy, “He has loved his enemies who have vilified him,
bearing the pain and declining to retaliate.” To even his harshest
critics he genuinely reached out in love, thereby redeeming many
a volatile situation but also empowering his own soul.
Did Billy get angry with his critics? Of course he did. As the
Bible says about Jesus himself, “He was a man of like passions as
we are.” Billy may be viewed by many as all sweetness and light,
but his life and spirit are the results of gritty determination to love
God, to lead from that love, and to forgive, and even learn from,
his “enemies.”
In his later years, media and commentators have been mostly
kind to Billy Graham. But early in his ministry, he often felt the
sting of criticism. His wife, Ruth, recalled that in their pastorate in
a Baptist church in Western Springs, Illinois, they felt plagued by
“resident troublemakers” who “generated a cackle of criticism
about the minister and his non-Baptist wife, swooping in to catch
the slightest sliver of glittery gossip or detail. They fell soundly
into John Calvin’s category of those determined to take offense.”
Many times over the decades, Billy was attacked by critics who
would say scathing things, even when they were dead wrong
about the facts. Still, inaccuracies didn’t stop millions of people
from reading their accusations.
Billy has been described by liberal and secular writers as being
a “moral dwarf,” of being “psychologically sick,” and telling “sanc-
tified lies.” His prayer at one president’s inauguration was termed
a “raucous harangue,” and one liberal seminary described his
ministry as “spiritual rape.” Religious conservatives, angry at his
alliances with Catholics and liberals, were equally vicious, and
because he came from a conservative upbringing, he particularly
felt the sting of their criticisms.
The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham