That's one thing we don't talk about a lot in our culture - we don't mention those
tons of people that you would respect and, and you're already impressed by them
and
everything they've ever done and then you find out oh, they believe that, well I
didn't know that.
I thought that all the smart people didn't believe that. Well, that's not true.
My favorite examples of
incredible people - William Wilberforce - I wrote a book about him so I know
his life intimately. This is a guy who
led the battle to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire.
You wanna talk about an amazing human being who spent his whole life doing
good
when everybody thought he was nuts for
for wanting to end the slave trade - he says, "no, this is wrong and I'm gonna dedicate my
life to this." He was a
politician in British Parliament, and Lincoln
and Frederick Douglass and all these people looked to him as the hero on the issue of
abolition.
Where did he get that motivation? From his profound
Christian faith. An amazing human being did what he did
that I think any good person would say, "well, yeah, that was
it was a wonderful thing that he did." Well,
he did it because of his faith - because he believed these things.
That's just a one example. I mean,
we could talk about the great poet, a writer,
we could talk about Dante, we talk about Milton -
some of the finest
literary minds have believed this.
John Updike, of all people, wrote a poem in 1961,
I believe, where he talks about
the literal resurrection of the body of Jesus - it's not just you know, Jesus
rose in the hearts of his disciples or whatever, but
you know, a Harvard graduate - a genius - John Updike
you know, writes a poem specifically on the subject. Flannery O'Connor
without a doubt one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century,
she believed this profoundly
and wrote about it, and you know,
you could sort of look in any, in any field. Isaac Newton
kind of a bright dude -
Isaac Newton, you know, the man who discovered gravity, who invented calculus
we can't fault them for that - but even if you enjoyed calculus, I didn't like calculus, think
about the mind
a mind that invents calculus, a mind that discovers
how the universe works - he believed all of this stuff.
We're led to believe this, in this day and age, that scientists don't believe that stuff.
Well, most scientists
in the history of science did believe that stuff. You just tend not to hear that
'cause scientists today
tend not to be so on-board with that, but it's like in any direction you
you go in, you find people in that you admire - Martin Luther King
Jr. - Reverend Martin Luther King - he believed that stuff
and he told his followers to turn the other cheek, to not fight
back.
Jackie Robinson did what he did
because he was a profound Christian. You know, in the field of music,
there's zillions of people. Johnny Cash - it was nowhere
to be found in the biopic "Walk the Line" - good movie, but it didn't mention the
fact that
he had a profound Christian faith, that he would
appear with Billy Graham. He and his wife June Carter Cash would
play at Billy Graham's Crusades, and he had an incredibly vibrant
Christian faith, and he sang about it and it's what got him
off drugs alcohol and you know, like, legendary
person of faith - Johnny Cash. I mean, you know,
Mary J. Blige reads the Bible everyday. I mean, there's so many people
that believe these things but we just tend not to hear about a lot in the
media. It's not something that is
you know, maybe so popular to talk about but it's true.
I think it kind of encourages us that
it's okay for me to believe it if these great people believed it.