Has Billy Graham always been crazy?

From The Oklahoman, April 2, 2007:

Dear Dr. Graham:

I'm concerned about all the reports I read about global warming and us poisoning the environment and things like that. Do you believe we are in danger of destroying the world because of these things?

W. McK.

Dear W. McK.:

The Bible clearly commands us to take care of the world God created, and we ought to do all we can to protect our environment. God put Adam in the Garden of Eden, we are told, "to work it and take care of it" (Genesis 2:15).

At the same time, the final chapter of the world will be written by God, not by us. The future is in His hands, and the world as we know it will be finished only when He brings it to an end. God is sovereign, and the world in its present form will not end until God intervenes.

When that day arrives, Christ will come again to banish all evil and establish His Kingdom. The Bible says, "But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness" (2 Peter 3:13). This is what the Bible calls "the blessed hope--the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13). Never forget: Our ultimate hope is in God, not in any scheme of men.

Does this mean we shouldn't be concerned about our environment? No, of course not. God made the world, and it is wrong for us to misuse it or treat it with contempt. But even more important is something else He made: our souls. God loves us, and He sent His only Son into the world to cleanse us from the greatest pollution of all--the pollution of sin. Turn to Christ today and ask Him to cleanse you and remake you from within.

OK. Somehow I had the idea in my head that Graham was a harmless, kindly old man. This marks him as a crazy person in my book, though. It's just so irresponsible, this idea that ultimately we can't destroy the world because God's the only one who can do that. (I won't even touch the bizarre impulse to give the time of day to such a capricious, nasty deity as that.) Don't worry about polluting the oceans; worry about utterly arbitrary notions of shame and guilt and "sin." Gross.