Eutychus and His Kin: August 6, 1982

Playing the Rating Game

It is important to understand ratings if you plan to survive in today’s economy. Most of us are well acquainted with movie ratings. “PG” means Parental Guidance. I find it is not the youngsters you have to be concerned about at PG movies, but you had better think twice before taking your elderly parent. The other ratings are easy to remember. “X” means violence: people are “X”ed out. “R” indicates long sex sequences that interrupt the flow of the plot. “G” means boring even for 10-year-olds.

Here are some other categories.

Cars. Do you remember when “cream puff” meant a car owned by a little old lady from Pasadena who drove it only to church? Today “cream puff” means exactly what it says. Have you ever tried eating a five-year-old cream puff? It’s poison. So is the car.

Motels. Some motels describe themselves as having “no surprises.” A lot depends on what you expect. One person discovered while seated on the twentieth floor watching a TV newscast that his motel was on fire. I have a friend who claims that motels rated “Very Good” don’t change the sheets between guests. Before he checks out he leaves a small wad of newspaper between the sheets at the foot of the bed, hoping that if the cleaning crew does not put on clean sheets the newspaper wad will be discovered by the next customer, the motel will be sued, and he will have his revenge.

Restaurants. Four of us were at a restaurant with a ★★★★★ rating. The maître d’, a tall, balding Prussian in a gray suit, stood by our table cracking his knuckles. The 4′6″ waiter in striped shirt and bow tie cleared the table by pointing to the plates and snapping his fingers at us until we meekly handed him first the dinner plates, then the salad plates, and finally the butter plates, all of which he stacked along one arm. He looked like a juggler who had escaped from the circus. Restaurant ratings can’t be trusted. You never know what the reviewer is accustomed to.

Churches. There once was a reporter who wrote reviews rating Sunday morning church services. No one has heard from him lately, proving, I suppose, that the rating game can be dangerous.

EUTYCHUS XI

Religious Liberty and the Gospel

I appreciated your editorial, “Graham in Moscow” [June 18]. One further point: although religious liberty is an important issue, it is not on a par with the gospel. The discomforts and imperfections of this world—including the lack of religious liberty—are not to be compared with the glorious treasures and possessions of the next. Thus it is far greater to have eternal life, regardless of whether there is complete freedom to express it.

One of Billy Graham’s greatest attributes is his faithfulness to his calling as an evangelist, refusing to become involved in peripheral issues, despite their often close association with Christianity. Moreover, approval by the secular news media and other religions must not become the criterion for the Christian’s conduct and message. After all, who should we seek to please—them or God?

KENNETH L. HOSFORD

Gainesville, Fla.

Billy Graham’s comments on religion in the USSR were dead wrong by any sane standard of Christian or even merely human morality. At best unforgivably ignorant, and at worst cynically Jesuitical, they betrayed an awesome indifference to the tribulations of fellow believers. And they were gratuitous (whatever happened to “no comment”?). It is sad that Mr. Graham has not had the grace to admit he was in the wrong, so that 1 John 1:9 can apply.

WILLIAM C. FLETCHER

Lawrence, Kan.

I was in Moscow at the time of Billy Graham’s visit. Unlike Dr. Graham, I traveled across the Ukraine and European Russia by car, making contact with a number of churches, both registered and independent. By maintaining a low profile throughout my trip, I was able to witness firsthand repeated evidences of government-sanctioned harassment and oppression of Russian Christian believers. This is a side of Russian church life that men such as Billy Graham never see.

Shortly after his appearance at the Moscow Baptist Church I sought out Russian pastors and lay leaders who would give me their candid opinions, not the standard government line. Most had mixed feelings. Some hoped the visit would enhance the image of evangelicals in their country. Others feared the government would use it as a smokescreen to hide their persecution of Christian believers while proclaiming religious liberty to the world. One registered pastor, convinced that arrests and imprisonments would continue once Graham was gone, ended our conversation by saying, “I wish now that he had never come to our country.”

CHARLES H. ROGERS

Eastern European Mission

Pasadena, Calif.

Magnificent Address

A thousand thanks for giving your readers the magnificent address by Billy Graham [“Graham’s Mission to Moscow,” June 18]. This establishes him, along with Pope John Paul II, as a world leader for peace.

CLARENCE F. AVEY

Westfield, Mass.

I question Mr. Graham’s opinion that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is the worst problem of our age. It is only a symptom of a culture so devoid of feeling that it practices the mass murder of its offspring. God has decreed that “whosoever sheds man’s blood, by man will his blood be shed.” Nuclear war may be the means God chooses to fulfill his Word.

TOM MULDOON

Philadelphia, Pa.

Religion in America

Regarding “Who Turned the First Amendment Upside-Down” [June 18], the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas observed in 1952 that “The First Amendment … does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State.” He added: “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”

The founding fathers intended the First Amendment not to safeguard society or the state from the influence of religion, but rather to preserve and protect religious liberty from encroachments by the state. They recognized that a society’s public morality depends upon a religious foundation, and that the beneficial influence of religion on private and public morality is indispensable to the maintenance of good government and the survival of self-government.

HAVEN BRADFORD Gow

Arlington Heights, Ill.

I agree with Rep. Dannemeyer’s carefully reasoned argument that Christian principles should be applied to public policy. But his quality of reasoning declines abruptly when he implies that his chief opponents are an apparently monolithic coterie of “secular humanists” who worship human power and disagree with him on a narrow list of domestic issues.

The world cannot be divided so easily into good and bad. Is it not more realistic to admit that Christians can be influenced by sin, and that even secular humanists cannot always eradicate the image of God in which they were created?

DARRELL J. HARTWICK

Allston, Mass.

When Donors Donate

“The Shell Game Donors Love to Lose” [June 18] did not bring up the issue that has been troubling me: the spiritual aspect of relief organizations.

As a donor, I have no problem with the funds being used for development—provided that development includes the body, soul, and spirit of the individual through presentation of the gospel, Bible studies, and other discipleship ministries.

CAROLYN WHEELER

Tucson, Ariz.

In a shell game the wide-eyed fairgoer is deceived by the illusionist. The suggestion that the compassionate response of Christian donors to the needs of the world is somehow akin to that carnival game is greatly demeaning.

In the midst of this fine article, we regret the suggestion that we are “locked in combat” to find pitiful scenes or naked children to mislead the public. I do indeed challenge the writer—and the editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY—to travel with us to any of several hundred projects in the developing world before again publishing such heavy-handed words. You will find the very conditions portrayed occurring with “numbing repetition.”

TED W. ENGSTROM

World Vision, Inc.

Monrovia, Calif.

Beautiful Souls

It pleased me so deeply to read “Why Foreign Students Usually Hate the United States” [May 21].

I’m a foreigner here, and to get the cold shoulder isn’t easy to accept. Some Americans can learn from people like the Taussigs about love and humanity.

SALOME MOORE

Vernon, Conn.

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