YOU DON’T MISS THE JANITOR TILL THE GARBAGE PILES UP
“Come in, gentlemen. How may we of Aardvark Investigating Service help you? My name is Jones. I’m president of our little company. We’re not often privileged to serve men of the cloth. Our clientele usually runs to a seamier sort, if you’ll pardon the pun. Oh, well, how may we help you?”
“Can we be absolutely certain that what we say will be held in complete confidence?”
“Reverend, discretion is our byword. You can trust Aardvark. In fifteen years we have never revealed a client’s name or problem.”
“Very well, then let me introduce myself. I’m Dr. Andrews and this is my assistant, the Reverend Mr. Brown. Our problem is a matter of some delicacy: our superior has disappeared.” “Good heavens, if your grace will pardon the expression, this does sound serious! When did you last see the subject?”
“Well … it’s a little embarrassing … but … we’re not exactly sure. You see, he had become sort of an honorary figure in our operation without much real responsibility. We got so we didn’t notice him. Sort of like the janitor. You don’t notice him till he’s gone and the garbage starts piling up—that is to say, I’m not making a comparison, just speaking figuratively.”
“I understand perfectly, your eminence. Perhaps as a start you could tell me something about him personally. His habits, eccentricities.”
“He’s a very loving, generous person. Prodigally generous, you might say. You knew him well, Father Brown; can you think of other characteristics?”
“Well, he always showed an affinity for the poor. Perhaps he’s gone into social work.”
“Tell me, reverend, do you have any idea of where he may be? Did he ever speak of leaving?”
“Some of the things he said did seem to suggest he might leave the institutional church. And we have heard that he may be working among the Pentecostals or in some other small group. But we haven’t been able to verify this.”
“Your holiness, I can see this is going to be one of the most challenging cases Aardvark has ever undertaken. I’m going to put my two top men on it right away. You’ll have the bishop back in no time at all.”
“Bishop! Who’s talking about the bishop?”
EUTYCHUS V
OBJECTIVE AND HONEST
Having just reviewed a number of issues of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I was impressed with the accurate and objectively favorable coverage on Billy Graham—seen specifically for the Chicago and Oakland Crusades (News, “Graham Crusade: Satanists Lose to Jesus Power,” July 2, and “Northern California Crusade: Decisive Hour for 21,000,” Aug. 27). With so many so-called “evangelicals” attacking Graham for one type of evil or another, it is refreshing to see him reviewed honestly.
Of all times, Christians today need to be unified in their support of the outgoing Gospel; there is no excuse for “intrabody” strife over ideological methodology and petty issues. The Church of Jesus Christ has as its duty the prayer, moral, and financial support of this unique evangelist; for Dr. Graham is more than just an evangelist—he is a modern apostle and prophet of God.
Deerfield, Ill.
MOTIVATING SANITY
Just a brief word of hearty commendation on Robert Larson’s excellent article, “China: Open Door to What?” (Aug. 27). How often wishful thinking takes the place of sane judgment. Larson’s exhortation to motivation in Christian missions is very well taken. It is our opinion that the Holy Spirit is quietly doing far more behind the Bamboo Curtain now than many thoughtless zealots might accomplish should the door even open now.… Thank you for the excellent work you are doing. Escondido, Calif.
CONFESSING CANDOR
I have just returned from three weeks out of state to find myself the recipient of your very kind remarks in the editorial “God-Talk Is News” (Sept. 10).
You do me great honor in writing of me along with such distinguished and veteran religion writers as Lou Cassels and George Cornell, both of whose friendship I cherish.
The same applies to your able and thoroughly congenial news editor, Russ Chandler, who, with Dick Ostling, has in my opinion made your news coverage outstanding, and certainly far better than a certain Christian publication in Chicago.
Sometimes, I must confess, your editorial policy has incited me to refer to you as “Christianity Yesterday,” and I once addressed a letter to Russ Chandler with this needle on the envelope. He responded with admirable good cheer by writing “Christianity Yesterday … Today … Tomorrow … And Forever.” Touché!
I would be guilty of less than the candor which you kindly attribute to me in your editorial if I did not mention one aspect of my reporting of the Billy Graham Crusade in Oakland: his prediction that those not listed in the Book of Life will be cast into the Lake of Fire.
Whereas this may be mentioned in Scripture (along with a number of other practices which most Christians would reject today) I carefully designated as my editorial interjection, in this news report, that: “This listener found it inordinately difficult to imagine the warmly congenial Graham (or God) being capable of hurling even the most reprobate sinner into a Lake of Fire.”
As for Mrs. Billy Graham, whom I met for the first time and can affirm that none of the photographs do credit to her beauty, I wonder why Billy is so strongly concerned with devils when he has such an angel at home in Montreat?
For example, when I interviewed Mrs. Graham after her arrival midway through the crusade, I opened with the following query:
“Mrs. Graham; your husband told 34,000 people last night that he had committed adultery—by looking upon a woman with lust. That would have been my lead, but my city desk wanted the identity of the woman!”
A loud guffaw from Billy.
With a smile of sufficient radiance to melt casehardened steel, his lovely spouse replied:
“We never tell house secrets! Besides, don’t you think there is an important difference between window shopping and shoplifting?”
I have not always agreed with Billy Graham. But I will here affirm that he married gloriously.
(REV). LESTER KINSOLVING
National Newspaper Syndicate
San Francisco, Calif.
ONLY A FIGMENT
If it takes a “Jesus with a red heart painted on his forehead, … dressed in striped pants, a Superman shirt, and sneakers resplendent with pompons” (“Box-Office Religion,” Aug. 27) to “reach today’s kids with the Gospel and to open them up to the claims of Jesus Christ,” then it is indeed true that the Bible is irrelevant for our day.
This sacrilegious caricature of our Saviour God is not the Christ of the Bible, but is rather the figment of carnal imagination.
West New York, N. J.
Surely you must not have been aware of the true nature of the Broadway plays you described with approval. “Godspell could well be one of the best ways to reach today’s kids with the Gospel and to open them up to the claims of Jesus Christ.” Really? By depicting Jesus and the apostles as clowns? By having them on all fours bleating and baaing like sheep? What’s happened to CHRISTIANITY TODAY?
Roscoe, N. Y.
PRAISING JESUS AND HIS MOVEMENT
I was happy to see the article by Donald M. Williams, “Close-up of the Jesus People” (Aug. 27). I have never even been to the West Coast, but have followed reports of the Jesus movement fanatically and with scrutiny. After reading so many self-righteous slams on what appears to be the Spirit’s greatest foothold in this century, I was refreshed to see this appear in your magazine.
Maybe, just maybe, some of the establishment-type churchgoers will be challenged to live up to their responsibility to the Jesus culture, even if their own social/cultural norms do not coincide.
Bel Ridge, Mo.
WHO’S HELPING WHOM?
I have just read Cheryl A. Forbes’s article Thou Shalt Not Copy, Right? (Sept. 10). I have worked with a music and publishing company, and I know some of the problems aired in this article. However, I know some other things, too. I know that the authors and publishers of sacred music have a restricted field of sale, generally. The churches and church members, gospel singers, and other musical groups who use sacred music constitute the major source of income for music publishers. On the contrary, secular writers and publishers find a much wider sales outlet which includes both secular and religious sources.
If the publishers want to sue the infringers, then let them run the risk of biting the hand that feeds them. Let’s be brutally frank about a gospel fact. The churches can do without the song writers and go strictly with the preached word. But the song writers and publishers will find a hard go of it without the churches, if it comes to that. In brief, the churches, to whatever extent they use music, are doing the composers and publishers a much bigger favor than the composers and publishers are doing the church. It is rather that the composers and publishers are beginning to feel just a little exclusive, superior, and judgmental about the only folks who can keep them in business, in the religious business. If they should choose to depart and go in the secular business, then that is on their conscience.
I am not pleading for the right to copy. We have done very little of it, then only of necessity, and have chosen the path through the years of buying the books, whatever the cost. We use Singspiration and John Peterson music more than any other, but if Mr. Raisley and Mr. Peterson want to be hardnosed about it, then we can stick to the church hymnal at less than a penny a song.
Further, church folks are very generous in recommending music to others. If the composers and the publishers had to pay for this kind of very effective advertising and promotion, they would not be able to afford the price.
Goshen, Ind.
ON GRACE
Just couldn’t let the day end without writing to say thank you for L. Nelson Bell’s column entitled “Amazing Grace” (A Layman and His Faith, Sept. 10). You can tell he is a man that truly has and lives the “grace of God.”
Cross View Lutheran Church
Edina, Minn.
IN PURSUIT OF TRUTH
I must apologize for writing this letter in response to your editorial “No Private Affair” (Aug. 27) at such a late date. Having returned from that most hospitable land in late August, it has taken me some time to recover from my Grecian holiday and return to the preoccupation of being an ecumenist.…
It was not at all my intention to plead that Orthodox Christians be “left alone” by conservative evangelicals or anyone else. Precisely the opposite. More exchange of views, more understanding, more collaborations, more charity—this is what I want also. This was said plainly in my letter. Therefore, I can only agree fully with your sentiments as expressed in the latter half of the editorial in question.
Perhaps where you misunderstood me is in my reaction to the particular issue which was addressed, that is, the divisive activities of people like Mr. Spiros Zodhiates. Unless one is prepared to admit that the Greek people and the Greek Orthodox Church are not Christian and therefore stand in need of a thoroughgoing evangelization, then Zodhiates’s mission stands under the kind of criticism I have in my letter. In my opinion, his mission to the Greeks is an uncharitable and ecumenically destructive act of proselytism which prevents the true interchange of ideas and any mutual benefit which the various Christian traditions may have upon one another. Openness to authentic dialogue and the pursuit of truth under the guidance of the Holy Spirit is where we must begin, not through the tactics of Zodhiates or for that matter those of triumphalist Orthodox Christians.
Director
Interchurch Office
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America
New York, N. Y.
