Category: News & Pop Culture

God helps those who help themselves

Quick, where in the Bible can you find this quotation: “God helps those who help themselves”?
Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, has discovered that it’s one of the most popular “biblical” quotations cited by Americans – incorrectly. Mr. Prothero has developed a religious literacy quiz that he’s given to 300 of his students — 17 passed.

Prothero has written the book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – And Doesn’t.
Jeffrey Weiss has excerpts from an interview with Prothero on the DMN Religion blog.
Interesting stuff.
Maybe we should interview him if our encounter/OrangeNoiseRadio talk show gets off the ground.
Speaking of that quotation, Gotquestions.org has some more interesting thoughts that argue just the opposite.
It would appear that God is in the business is helping the helpless.
Hmmm… I wonder what Sally and Jose would say about that?
If God is in the business of helping the helpless – wonder what business we should be in?

Graham says his wife ‘had a great reception in heaven’

From the AP:

Ruth Graham retained her beauty even in death and surely “had a great reception in heaven,” an ailing Billy Graham told a packed auditorium of mourners who gathered Saturday to remember his beloved wife.
“I wish you could look in that casket because she’s so beautiful,” said Graham, clinging to his walker. “She was a wonderful woman.”…
Billy Graham, who is 88 and is largely confined to the couple’s home in Montreat by several ailments, wasn’t expected to speak Saturday. But the world’s most renowned evangelist, who preached to more than 210 million people during his six-decade career, surprised the crowd with his words, perhaps spurred by the sight of his 19 grandchildren.

Moral implications over Ruth Graham’s death

You may or may not have noticed this, but during several of the AP’s stories, it was reported that Ruth Graham, had requested her feeding tube be removed during the last several days of her life.
Jeffrey Weiss has a great piece in the DMN today about the situation. He’s also blogged additional quotes that didn’t fit the print version of the paper.
Why is it that no one is upset that Ruth Graham, or even Pope John Paul II requested their feeding tubes be removed before death yet outcry is heard everywhere over the Terri Schiavo case?
From the DMN:

The dignified, semi-public passing of Ruth Graham showed a family struggling with end-of-life issues that affect many American families: private home, hospital or nursing home? Aggressive treatment to the end or comfort care? When is it time to let go?
Mrs. Graham, who died Thursday, was not merely the wife of a famous person. Her husband, Billy, is among the best-known religious leaders in the world, and Mrs. Graham carried her own moral and religious reputation. Who she was drew particular attention to the moral decisions associated with the end of her life.

Weiss offers additional quotes on the DMN Religion blog:

Dr. Art Caplan, quoted in the story, is one of the world’s best known medical ethicists. He offered an interesting observation that I had no room for there:
Ironically for all the protest that took place around the removal of a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo by those such as Tom Delay and the current Pope who said food and water cannot ever be stopped no one has said a word about what was done in the Ruth Graham case. This strikes me as more then a bit hypocritical even though I think what happened in her case was ethical and in accordance with her express wishes.
Dr. Tom Mayo, of SMU and the UT Southwestern med school is another top medical ethicist — famous far beyond local zip codes. Among his thoughts that did not make the story: That sometimes for the dying, food or water can actually kill them faster and/or make them uncomfortable. As the body shuts down in the days or hours before death, it stops being able to deal with nutrition and even water. The effects can even be rather gruesome, as he explained in some medical detail I will not share. So those who would insist on feeding — even tube feeding — may not be offering any blessing. Depends on the case, though. And if you’re really interested in how ethicists such as Dr. Mayo explore these sorts of broad questions, Google up “trolley problem” and “ethics” and “double effect.”

In the end, the idea of a feeding tube or life sustaining machines may have a lot more to do with the patient’s wishes and their consent, along with the wisdom and sincerity of their physician.
In the Schiavo case, there was no living will, no confirmed writings or thoughts of Schiavo as to her wishes. It was simply a case of he-said, she-said.
In the Graham case, it was apparent from the family spokesman that it was Ruth’s wishes and eventually the family decided to follow those wishes.
Either way – it’s an interesting moral comparison between the two individuals.

Services for Ruth Graham

The DMN Religion blog has info on Ruth Graham’s funeral services.
The services will be open to the public, with the first 2,000 people getting a seat in the auditorium – others will be directed to three off-site closed-circuit viewing areas.
Question for the day: Do you think there will ever be a couple like Billy and Ruth Graham in America who has the kind of impact they’ve had? Are the days of the large crusades coast to coast over?

Ruth Graham dead at 87

From the LA Times:

Ruth Graham, the wife of evangelist Billy Graham, who supported her famous husband as he spread the Gospel to millions but dispelled the notion of the demure preacher’s wife with her humor, spunk, poetry-writing and motorcycle riding, died Thursday at her home in Montreat, N.C., from complications of pneumonia. She was 87.
“Ruth was my life partner, and we were called by God as a team,” Billy Graham said in a statement released Thursday.
“No one else could have borne the load that she carried. She was a vital and integral part of our ministry, and my work through the years would have been impossible without her encouragement and support.”
It was Ruth Graham who dissuaded her husband from launching a campaign for the U.S. presidency: She told him she would leave him if he quit his ministry. The American public would not accept a divorced man as president, she warned….
Long before Billy Graham’s legendary 1957 crusade in New York — the beginning of a journey that would take him to 185 countries and territories — she understood that his calling would eclipse her own. The woman who once had dreams of becoming a missionary in Tibet surrendered them for her husband.
“If I marry Bill, I marry him with my eyes open,” she wrote in her journal. “He will be increasingly burdened for lost souls and increasingly active in the Lord’s work …. I will slip into the background…. In short, be a lost life. Lost in Bill’s.”
The couple married Aug. 13, 1943, and had five children. In addition to her husband, Graham’s survivors include her children: Virginia, Anne, Ruth Bell, Franklin (William Franklin III), and Nelson Edman.