Life without Falwell

I've had a day to sit on this Jerry Falwell dying thing. I'm calling it that because for so long he wasn't human to me, he was just that guy I poked fun at. I think most of us can say the same thing. He was a political bulls-eye or a sound bite, but he was never human. I think Rev. Falwell did his part to seem less than human by playing the games with modern media. He became a cause, the face of the moral majority, certainly not a human though.

I have to admit, I got caught up in the absurdity. I sent my pot shots at Rev. Falwell without really considering if he'd been misquoted or if his intentions were good. So, I've put on my rose colored glasses and I'm looking back at his life. I have been listening to the interviews on NPR and reading the blogs. Now I've got a little more sympathetic opinion of the late Reverend. I really think he had a deep passion for knowing Christ and making Him known. It's apparent that he felt a burden to help educate people in just about every walk of life. For all of his short comings, presupposed or not, I'm sad to see him go.

With all of my new found respect for Rev. Falwell and his adventures I still have some problems with a few of his theological stances. The soft filter that death allows us to view a life through can't change something that has an eternal weight. While his philanthropic and moral crusading will be viewed differently, I don't see how we can stop crying out against misuses of scripture and wrong teaching.

This is still the same person who loosely threw around the H word when he said, "We are not into particular love or limited atonement. As a matter of fact we consider it heresy." There by calling everyone who does believe in limited atonement a heretic(1 Tim 4:1-2), even if he didn't know he was doing it. He's also the man who stood behind Ergun Caner, President of Liberty University, when he said "Calvinists are worse than Muslims." I think we can all appreciate the implications of that statement, and I'm pretty sure that he knew what he was saying. I also think that they did a lot of dividing where dividing wasn't necessary.

Let's just call a duck a duck. The man did some good and we should applaud his life for that good. That doesn't mean we forget the bad. We don't learn anything if that happens. Let's study and discuss his theology, he does in fact have a University full of minds soaking it in. If it is wrong, let's humbly correct and reprove the offenders making sure to keep Matthew 22: 37-40 at the forefront of our reasons for doing so.

Jerry Falwell was a man. Plain and simple. He was a man on a big stage. He did some good and he made some mistakes. I hope to see him in heaven. I also hope we "reason together" about the many bold/brash statements that Rev. Falwell made, so that the body of Christ might be unified.

Please feel free to comment if you have a particular Rev. Falwell quote that infuriated you or enlightened you. Hopefully we can reason together and come to a better understanding of scripture through it.