Graham Urges God Over Technology

After a slow walk to the ARCO podium at the Institute of Politics (IOP) last night, Reverend Billy Graham was greeted with a standing ovation from the 800-member audience. Two more standing ovations were to come at the end of Graham's address, entitled "Is God Relevant for the 21st Century?"

Speaking in his characteristic Southern drawl, Graham said that today's technology cannot solve humanity's biggest problems: evil, suffering and death. He urged students of all faiths, instead of turning to technology, to turn to God.

Graham, 80 years old and suffering from Parkinson's disease, is one of the nation's most renowned evangelists as well as a respected presidential advisor. In his introduction of Graham, IOP Director Alan K. Simpson described him as "the single most respected world figure in the second half of the twentieth century, and a great part of the country's collective conscience."

Graham compared the technological situation at the turn of the millenium to the technological revolution of Israel 3,000 years ago. Both then and now, Graham said, there have been "moral and spiritual problems that need moral and spiritual answers."

"Have you ever thought of what a contradiction we are?" he asked the audience. "We can probe the deepest secrets of the universe, but racism, injustice and violence sweep our world."

Graham cited several examples of technology's dark side, including computer viruses and the Oklahoma City bombing. But the problem does not lie in the technology itself, he asserted, but in the spiritual emptiness of those using it.

Thus, Graham exhorted even those students without religious beliefs to recognize their soul, which he defined as "the part that yearns for meaning and light."

Moreover, technology doesn't solve all problems, Graham said. Death is still inevitable, though technology "projects the myth of control over our own mortality."

Graham related an instance where he was asked what the greatest surprise of his life had been. He responded, "Its brevity." Submission to God, he explained, is the only way not to fear death.

Graham cautioned his audience that "the 21st century could become the most bloody and tragic century of the human race."

To avoid that, he urged students to "add a moral dimension as we approach the dawn of the new millenium. In the midst of the exciting things you are doing at Harvard, I pray you will not starve your soul."

Though the essence of his speech was sobering, Graham still peppered it with humorous anecdotes, like a comment on how much shorter the average student's hair had gotten since his last trip to Cambridge in 1982.

Graham also discussed the source of his inspiration in his speech. When a preacher visited his North Carolina farming village, Graham became inspired, at the age of sixteen, to "open [his] heart to Jesus Christ and experience a revolution, becoming a new person."

He urged students to embrace Christianity in a similar fashion, saying "The whole of your life can be touched by faith. The Lord will come into your life if you let him."

Students described Graham's address, which elicited two more standing ovations when it ended, as inspirational.

Ana Maria Patino '03 spent Saturday night on the steps of Memorial Church, in order to get a good seat for Graham's sermon there Sunday morning. She returned to see Graham for a second time at the IOP.

"I really admire the way he lives every day for Jesus Christ, and the way he's certain about the peace and joy that comes with the faith in Christ," she said.

"It was a breathtaking and awe-inspiring experience to have witnessed the greatest evangelist of our time and one of the most decent people to have walked the earth," said Dan E. Fernandez '03.