Billy - The Early Years

Last weekend, my wife and I watched the movie "Billy - the early years" with some of our friends. This is a short biographical movie on the early years of Billy Graham. I'd say the movie was okay. I'd say just about average. But, there was one thing from the movie that struck me in a really powerful way. No, it wasn't anything about the life of Billy himself, but it was the old man in the movie who narrates the story of Billy's life to a group of television journalists (and to us).
The old man was playing Charles Templeton, a one time partner in ministry to Billy and gifted evangelist turned avowed atheist/agnostic. The life of Charles (Chuck) Templeton is a sad, poignant story of a once mighty man of God who became a committed agnostic later in life. Reason. His struggles with the age old question about evil and suffering in this world. This is one of the most widely debated and classic questions in religious philosophy. The problem of evil. I will not here in this blog attempt to answer supporters of this argument that rail against the christian faith and the judeo-christian God for the simple fact that this is not a simple issue that can be satisfactorily addressed by a short journal entry in a blog. Moreover, there are tons of really good articles out there on the internet that should answer any intellectual curiosities regarding this problem of evil. Enough material available on the internet to exercise your brains with till the end of your lives. As for me, I will try to talk a little bit about Charles (Chuck) Templeton himself.
I think one of the fundamental mistakes that Chuck may have made when he faced those struggles was looking to man's wisdom to find answers rather than looking to God. When faced with tough situations and questions in life that seem to shake the very foundations of your faith, we ought to go to God, the giver of life and fall at His feet asking Him for wisdom and He will give wisdom. Because that's what the bible promises in James 1:5.

"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it (wisdom) shall be given him".

This doesn't mean that we will understand everything perfectly and have all our questions about life answered. But we will definitely have a greater understanding than before. Part of which is to know that we can't know everything. The pursuit of knowledge consists not in knowing everything perfectly, but moving in that direction and knowing that we still have a long way to go. This world and all the evil in it existed long before we ever came into this world and will continue long after we are gone. Which means these issues are far bigger than us. Now, that doesn't mean that we have to stop thinking about them, but it certainly means that it is sheer stupidity to jump to hasty and premature conclusions about them with our limited wisdom and understanding and on top of that to gamble the eternal fate of our souls based on those conclusions we shouldn't have arrived at in the first place. What a foolish thing to do! We cannot make ourselves the prisoners of our own limited knowledge and understanding. All of mankind's accumulated knowledge over the course of history still cannot completely explain life and evil and suffering.
So, going about to understand these issues for purely philosophical reasons is perhaps a good exercise for the mind, but a terrible way to understand God. If you want to understand God, go to God and ask Him to reveal Himself to you and he certainly will as He said in Jeremiah 29:13

"And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."

The bible never quotes God as saying "You shall find me when you shall search for me with all your mind". Because the very essence of salvation is a personal relationship with God through Christ our saviour and the very essence of every relationship is the heart and not the mind. The mind is not tossed out of a relationship to make place for the heart, but the mind can never fathom what the heart does out of love. Sometime back, I read a book by Richard Wurmbrand, the famous Romanian pastor who was imprisoned and severely tortured for 14 years in communist prisons for his faith in Christ and witness for Him. He said something about love which explains it perfectly. When a mother sees her baby in danger, she'll risk her very life for that one baby without thinking of her other children in that moment. The mind says it is a foolish thing to do, because logically speaking it makes perfect sense for the mother to let alone her baby in the better interests of her other children. But he who knows what love is doesn't try to dissect the mother's love intellectually. Rather people applaud the mother's sacrificial love and then only wonder about the intensity and profundity of that love.
The mind can never comprehend the actions of a heart filled with love. So, rule number one. Never ever make your mind the centerpiece of your relationship with God, rather let your heart be the one holding it together. As for the intellectual struggles, go not to the world seeking answers, but go to your Father and He surely will give wisdom and understanding to gain a better perspective on these issues bigger than life and in the process actually draw you closer to Himself. In any child's life, the parent comes first and then the teacher.
I so wish Charles Templeton went to his Father in heaven first and not to the world's libraries which became his undoing.