The Twilight of the Saints
Newsweek did a cover story on Billy Graham last year. I thought it was an excellent treatment of one of the most influential men in the last 2000 years. You can read the full article here.
I came away from the story with two thoughts. The first thing that struck me was the arc of Billy’s story. The picture above shows his youthful fire. He was friend and confidante to presidents and world business leaders. He was on a nickname basis with Martin Luther King, Jr., “Mike” to Billy. He got involved in the political scene and became a type of spokesman for political figureheads - a career move that got him written off by most of the press and social critics, something that he eventually was able to reverse. He preached the gospel to more people in the world than anyone else in the history of Christianity.
Now, he is consistently lionized by the press. Time did a story about him 13 years ago:
Then he made the top 100 most influential people of the 20th Century list. Then this latest article by Newsweek. “When’s he going to die?” seems to be the underlying question. And the one that is even deeper is, “Is there anyone in the current generations who can fill the void he will leave?” That is the second thought I had and the one that leaves me troubled.
Compare the two pictures. Look at the eyes. He’s been tempered over the years. That gives me some hope for our present. There are lots of fiery young folk (by young I mean 50 years and younger) around who are in the process of being tempered. But I’m not sure I see any really cut from the same stock as Billy or Mother Theresa. Most likely there are a lot of saints like them - perhaps they’re just diluted in the over publicized era we live in. Perhaps they aren’t recognized as such because of our post-Christian society.
But the case doesn’t seem much different in other religions. We are witnessing the twilight of other “saints” - His Holiness The Dalai Lama is no young buck, Thich Nhat Hanh is also in his latter years. Have there been any recent Buddhas? Not to my knowledge. Certainly Imams and Clerics all have black marks by their names, whether they deserve it or not. Maybe what we’re really living in is not just a post-Christian society, but a post-religious world - a world of “spirituality” and secularism. A world where atheism is trying to scrape and claw its way back into favor after being deemed passé, if not anachronistic.
And yet, it is a world that still loves a good redemption story. The romance of healing, peace, and love still grips the hearts of most everyone. Humans still long to “be complete,” to be at peace with ourselves, each other, and the material world. Now that “Man is dead,” as Foucault declared, now that the idol of human potential and accomplishment has been consumed in a mushroom cloud, maybe now we see that there is still hope in something more. We can almost glimpse the “white shores” and the “far green land” that Tolkein talks about. Will there be anyone in the present and near-future generations who can serve as beacons for the rest of us? Will all God’s children please stand up?
September 7th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Thanks for a thought-provoking article. I wonder, what are you looking for and not finding in today’s saints to make the comparison with these “great saints” of the recent past? It would be interesting if you could elaborate. Also, for what it’s worth, I think you’re right that “they’re just diluted in the over publicized era we live in,” and here’s why: I don’t think there is a unified public forum as in years past. To use a favorite example, Lincoln and Douglas debated for hours at a time, and the common people listened, or took time to read the transcripts. Today we only get sound-bites in the public forum, and I’m not sure how we’d recognize great men and women through them. But I’m inclined to think that’s okay, as long as God in his faithfulness IS raising up fiery saints and tempering them through years of faithfulness. After all, the kingdom has always come quietly.