Years ago the autobiography of movie star Errol Flynn, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, caught my eye in a bookstore. I was tempted to get it, but alas, at the time I was too principled and erudite to waste my time on what sounded like a very sleazy tome. Besides, I was in college, and it was hardback and too expensive.
Recently in the Philippines we had dinner at a western style restaurant designed to look like the Alamo called Texas Joe's. The Filipina waitresses all wore leather cowboy hats and boots, and they served some of the best ribs and brisket I've ever savored. On one side of the dining room was an old cabinet full of used books set up for a book exchange. So I brought an old paperback novel I had read and looked for something to swap it for. To my surprise I found a first edition Dell paperback version of Errol Flynn's book, that originally cost only sixty cents.
It's probably been thirty-five years or more since I noticed the hardback in the bookstore, and by now I'm either not so principled as I once was, or my experience in the world has better prepared me to read about his frivolities, so, curious as I was, I took it.
My first impression way back when was right. It was a bawdy romp through his memory of all the women he'd had in a hard packed, compressed life lived to its worldly fullest. In fairness, Flynn was clever but not graphic in his descriptions of his dalliances, and for all the episodes he related about fellow actors and some of their vulgarities, there was surprisingly little bad language. But the story is more than just a tale of how he became revered for his sexual prowess and then became a standing joke for the same thing. It's a tale of a man searching for his own soul, and Flynn is brutal in assessing himself.
Although it doesn't excuse his own culpability, young Errol was a product of his environment and careless upbringing. He was born in Tasmania, to a world famous Darwinist biologist father, who was too busy on archeological digs and teaching in universities to take any time for his son. His mother was an un-compassionate beast who beat him so severely that he ran away from home. When he was found and returned she was uncaring. He was put in boarding schools where he was either expelled or just ran away, and as a teenager he faced the world and stepped out on his own.
By the time he was 21 he had lived half a dozen lifetimes. He had sailed the Australian coast and across the ocean to New Guinea and Rabaul. He had managed a coconut farm and prevented the outbreak of a tribal war, owned a gold field which produced all of 100 ounces of gold, had owned a successful tobacco farm, and bought and sold New Guinea tribesmen into slavery. On an expedition into the New Guinea highlands he had been ambushed by head-hunters who speared two of his porters before he killed one with a pistol and they all fled.
Often broke, he became a thief, a con-artist, and a tough-as-nails street brawler. In Manila he and a friend invented a cock-fighting scheme and won all their fights by poisoning the opposing roosters with a slick slight of hand. When they were exposed they barely made it aboard a sailing freighter ahead of an angry mob.
When he finally reached England he got into movies, went to Hollywood, and became internationally known as a swashbuckling, sword swinging star. Everywhere there were women, and enslaved to his physical drives, he was almost powerless to resist any of them. The result was one scandal after another, including accusations of statutory rape of which he was acquitted, yet bore the stigma and a plethora of dirty jokes for the rest of his life. As he approached his fiftieth year he began to look back at his life with some remorse, but no regret. The book might have been better titled The Confessions of an Unrepentant Sinner.
"Confusion," he wrote, was his trademark. He questioned his existence. "How does a man become what he becomes?" To the end of his life he always had a question mark embroidered on the handkerchief pocket of his suits.
He saw no point in marriage, yet tried it three times, and had five children with whom he spent very little time until his last years. By his own admission he had dallied with thousands of the fairer sex in brothels, jungle villages, and in cosmopolitan circles. After a world wide search for love he very cynically concluded that there is no such thing, that the only thing that matters to a woman is money. "The man who for a woman fits the bill is the one who pays the bill," he wrote.
Early in his life he did everything he could to perpetuate his reputation as a ladies' man, but he came to think of himself as a male Mae West "in a swamp of Flynn jokes, dirty stories, snide innuendoes." In the end he had become nothing of what he wanted, and everything he didn't want.
Hollywood appealed to him and he to Hollywood audiences. Tall, muscular and gloriously handsome, he was a hit from his very first film, Captain Blood, in 1935. He might have been considered the action hero of his day with such popular films as The Charge of the Light Brigade and Robin Hood. He made several westerns to which he thought he was thoroughly unsuited due to his accent. He wanted to be remembered as a serious actor, but after over fifty films, he was only satisfied with half a dozen, bitterly disappointed that he was remembered for being a swashbuckler.
"There I was," he wrote, "sitting on top of the world. I had wealth, friends, I was internationally known, I was sought after by women. I could have anything that money could buy. Yet I found that at the top of the world there was nothing. I was sitting on a pinnacle with no mountain under me."
Flynn reads like the Book of Ecclesiastes. I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity. (2:1)
He eventually became so despondent and self-loathing that for three nights he sat on the edge of his bed with a gun trying to find the courage to end it all. He couldn't. Instead in a journal he began recording some astonishingly poignant thoughts.
"Alcohol is a far greater killer than all opiates.... It gets your brain, your liver. It destroys your morals, destroys your vitality, kills the sexual potential, and you become sluggish. It is a great pity that Prohibition failed."
"Man's indecency to man all over the world rules out the idea of humanity as an actuality."
His greatest addiction, he said, was curiosity. "This has gotten me into all my troubles, successes, failures."
He was an agnostic, he concluded, and didn't believe in a hereafter, so why be afraid of death?
Flynn finally found solace in a yacht and the sea which he loved. He sailed the Mediterranean and the Caribbean Seas, was an early scuba diving enthusiast, and built himself a large estate on the north shore of Jamaica. There he lived alone with his dogs and his caretaker. Finally he had a place to leave the world behind and consider his future.
On June 20, 1959, he turned fifty years old. He finished his autobiography a short time later, and the last line of the book reads, "The second half-century looms up, but I don't feel the night coming on."
But the night came on quickly. A month or so later he died suddenly of a heart attack, having used up his body, but never having found his soul.
Errol Flynn could have been a poster boy for the ACLU or any number of liberal, anti-morality organizations running around today. He was the picture of rowdy, raucaus, uninhibited living, the very lifestyle the anti-Christian crowd wants to force upon our society.
Flynn had delved into all the world's vices (except heroin, he said), had women, wealth and fame, yet he found his life empty and without meaning, and found no satisfaction in his accomplishments. At age twenty-five he was an Adonis, the best looking man in the movies. At fifty, his looks gone, he was a broken down wreck and could have passed for seventy-five.
This is the future the godless left offers to America. There might be an immediate gratification, but in the end it's not an audacity of hope, whatever that's supposed to mean, it is no hope at all. In a world without God there is no humanity. A culture dominated by an empty, free-wheeling, licentious philosophy is a culture headed to destruction.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
America the Beautiful
One thing we've learned living outside of the country is that no matter how bad the problems are, or how difficult life has become in the United States, America is still preferable to anywhere else. The United States of America is home.
We are in transit to the States, and this year in particular I wanted to be home in time for July 4th to give our adopted daughter, Hannah, a taste of American patriotism, and an idea of what America is all about. But my wife came down ill in the Philippines, and we've been unable to travel for the last two weeks. Now the fourth is upon us and we're going to miss it.
Ronald Reagan said in his last message to America that he knew there would always be "a bright new dawn ahead." President Reagan could say that and mean it because he believed in American exceptionalism. We hear this term bantered around a lot lately, mostly because the current occupant of the White House basically announced to the world that he doesn't believe in it. How sad and pathetic that America could elect a man to the most important position in the world who doesn't have a clue about America's history, where we came from, or what we're about.
American exceptionalism is at the very heart of American life. Her greatness is found in the greatest military bar none on earth. Her greatness is found in her invention, industry and technology. It is found in her luxury of living. Her greatness is found in her biblical roots. It cries out in her natural resources and resounding beauty. It is found in her literature and music, in such great patriotic hymns as America the Beautiful.
This hymn is exceptional because it outlines our history and gives meaning to our existence. The first verse extols the wonder of the land and prays for God's blessing. The second verse examines the pilgrims who settled the wilderness with the ingredients for true freedom; self-control under the rule of law. The third verse honors the heroes who have given their lives for our freedom, and the last verse looks to a bright future of alabaster cities and reminds us that it is only made possible by the grace of God.
We used to learn this song in our public schools. Our children need to learn it now, need to take it apart and study our history from the viewpoint of the composer, Katherine Lee Bates. Consider the first verse:
Oh beautiful for spacious skies.
If you've never driven across Montana you'll never understand why it's called the "Big Sky State." There, more than anywhere, the sky just seems to go on forever. It pictures America's influence projected by our presence in nearly every nation on earth, a hundred fifty of which are under the spacious umbrella of American foreign aid.
For amber waves of grain.
Have you crossed what was once called the "Great American Desert?" Now interlaced with well maintained super highways, the desert has become America's "breadbasket."
For purple mountain majesties.
The Appalachians in the east offer a forested blanket of green that turns colors in the fall with breathtaking magnificence, but the purple majesties are found in the Rocky Mountain west, high above timberline where, on a clear day against a bright blue sky the peaks take on a purple hue. Colorado provides the highest paved road in America up to the peak of Mt. Evans, 14,256 feet high, and a view that is on top of the world.
Above the fruited plain.
Millions of teeming acres of wheat covering Kansas, and millions more of corn in Nebraska and Iowa fill grain reserves that feed the world.
America, America.
It is a name that should not be spoken lightly or in derision. It is a place of belonging and comfort, a place that has opened its arms to the tired and poor yearning to be free. It is a place that deserves our highest regard and respect, because it is our place. It is our home.
God shed His grace on thee.
This is as much a statement as it is a prayer. The hymn writer is asking God to give His grace to the nation, and well we should continue to pray that prayer, but the fact is, God already has shed His grace on America like no other nation in history. The United States didn't rise to the top of the heap of nations by being ungodly or mediocre. God gave America His grace because Americans honored God with their faith. Jefferson trembled for his country when he considered that "God is just and that His justice will not sleep forever." We have had the blessings of God in America, but how long will those blessings continue when the nation continues to deny the God that gave them?
And crown thy good with brotherhood.
The French historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, stated that "America is great because America is good," and its goodness came from its churches that preached righteousness all across the land.
The reference to brotherhood speaks of the assimilation of immigrants who came to the United States to become Americans. Our strength was not in our diversity, but in our unity as people from all around the world joined us. This is a far cry from the illegal alien invasion of today, and even those who come legally, but only to live off the land and promote their own cultures within our borders without any intent of becoming American. If you don't want to be an American, find a better place to live and go there.
From sea to shining sea.
Our nation's borders stretch from one ocean to another. The story of the expansion to include the continental forty-eight and then Alaska and Hawaii is the story of America and how it became great.
American exceptionalism is not being taught in the public schools anymore. Even the Pledge of Allegiance is challenged by the ACLU and other liberal groups. It is time on this July 4th that we remember who we are and where we came from.
We are Americans. Our heritage is Christian. Our greatness comes from the God of our Fathers, the Christian God, who has shed His grace on us. We are a nation under God. If we ever forget that, we will, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "be a nation gone under.
Let's celebrate America the Beautiful. Happy Fourth of July.
We are in transit to the States, and this year in particular I wanted to be home in time for July 4th to give our adopted daughter, Hannah, a taste of American patriotism, and an idea of what America is all about. But my wife came down ill in the Philippines, and we've been unable to travel for the last two weeks. Now the fourth is upon us and we're going to miss it.
Ronald Reagan said in his last message to America that he knew there would always be "a bright new dawn ahead." President Reagan could say that and mean it because he believed in American exceptionalism. We hear this term bantered around a lot lately, mostly because the current occupant of the White House basically announced to the world that he doesn't believe in it. How sad and pathetic that America could elect a man to the most important position in the world who doesn't have a clue about America's history, where we came from, or what we're about.
American exceptionalism is at the very heart of American life. Her greatness is found in the greatest military bar none on earth. Her greatness is found in her invention, industry and technology. It is found in her luxury of living. Her greatness is found in her biblical roots. It cries out in her natural resources and resounding beauty. It is found in her literature and music, in such great patriotic hymns as America the Beautiful.
This hymn is exceptional because it outlines our history and gives meaning to our existence. The first verse extols the wonder of the land and prays for God's blessing. The second verse examines the pilgrims who settled the wilderness with the ingredients for true freedom; self-control under the rule of law. The third verse honors the heroes who have given their lives for our freedom, and the last verse looks to a bright future of alabaster cities and reminds us that it is only made possible by the grace of God.
We used to learn this song in our public schools. Our children need to learn it now, need to take it apart and study our history from the viewpoint of the composer, Katherine Lee Bates. Consider the first verse:
Oh beautiful for spacious skies.
If you've never driven across Montana you'll never understand why it's called the "Big Sky State." There, more than anywhere, the sky just seems to go on forever. It pictures America's influence projected by our presence in nearly every nation on earth, a hundred fifty of which are under the spacious umbrella of American foreign aid.
For amber waves of grain.
Have you crossed what was once called the "Great American Desert?" Now interlaced with well maintained super highways, the desert has become America's "breadbasket."
For purple mountain majesties.
The Appalachians in the east offer a forested blanket of green that turns colors in the fall with breathtaking magnificence, but the purple majesties are found in the Rocky Mountain west, high above timberline where, on a clear day against a bright blue sky the peaks take on a purple hue. Colorado provides the highest paved road in America up to the peak of Mt. Evans, 14,256 feet high, and a view that is on top of the world.
Above the fruited plain.
Millions of teeming acres of wheat covering Kansas, and millions more of corn in Nebraska and Iowa fill grain reserves that feed the world.
America, America.
It is a name that should not be spoken lightly or in derision. It is a place of belonging and comfort, a place that has opened its arms to the tired and poor yearning to be free. It is a place that deserves our highest regard and respect, because it is our place. It is our home.
God shed His grace on thee.
This is as much a statement as it is a prayer. The hymn writer is asking God to give His grace to the nation, and well we should continue to pray that prayer, but the fact is, God already has shed His grace on America like no other nation in history. The United States didn't rise to the top of the heap of nations by being ungodly or mediocre. God gave America His grace because Americans honored God with their faith. Jefferson trembled for his country when he considered that "God is just and that His justice will not sleep forever." We have had the blessings of God in America, but how long will those blessings continue when the nation continues to deny the God that gave them?
And crown thy good with brotherhood.
The French historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, stated that "America is great because America is good," and its goodness came from its churches that preached righteousness all across the land.
The reference to brotherhood speaks of the assimilation of immigrants who came to the United States to become Americans. Our strength was not in our diversity, but in our unity as people from all around the world joined us. This is a far cry from the illegal alien invasion of today, and even those who come legally, but only to live off the land and promote their own cultures within our borders without any intent of becoming American. If you don't want to be an American, find a better place to live and go there.
From sea to shining sea.
Our nation's borders stretch from one ocean to another. The story of the expansion to include the continental forty-eight and then Alaska and Hawaii is the story of America and how it became great.
American exceptionalism is not being taught in the public schools anymore. Even the Pledge of Allegiance is challenged by the ACLU and other liberal groups. It is time on this July 4th that we remember who we are and where we came from.
We are Americans. Our heritage is Christian. Our greatness comes from the God of our Fathers, the Christian God, who has shed His grace on us. We are a nation under God. If we ever forget that, we will, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "be a nation gone under.
Let's celebrate America the Beautiful. Happy Fourth of July.
Friday, July 1, 2011
A Good Name
Last Sunday we were at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila preparing to head for the States when my wife, Lhey, became so ill she almost collapsed. I got her a wheel chair and we saw an airport doctor who gave her some pain medicine for her back and recommended we reschedule our flight. Our ride was still waiting so we repacked the van and headed back to Olongapo.
Unknown to us as we started for home was that about an hour behind us a long time friend of ours, Pastor Ramon Reyes, was bringing his sister and family to Olongapo to see their mother. Just about the time we were arriving home they were passing near the town of Floridablanca on a dark, unlighted stretch of highway, when the car ran head on into a concrete barrier and went off the road.
Six people were in the car. Injuries to the passengers were light. Pastor Nelson de Jesus, who was sitting beside Ramon in the middle front seat, received a deep gash on his right middle finger, and Ramon's mother had bruises on her head and shoulder, but Ramon apparently hit the steering wheel with enough force to crush his chest and died instantly.
Olongapo, the Navy town at Subic Bay, was a rough place in the 70's and 80's. Youth gangs defended their turfs in various areas of the city, and there was no gang leader any tougher than Ramon Reyes. He was known as a fighter and feared by many.
In 1975, two students from the Baptist Bible Seminary and Institute in Manila, Jose Ornias and Wilma Dequina, came to Olongapo to start a youth outreach using Bible study materials for all ages, and a sports program called Bible Basketball. Jose, who became known as "Brother Joe," organized teams from the various gang areas and brought them together to play basketball and to share the good news of the Gospel.
Brother Joe took particular interest in a young man named Ramon, but seeing a change in Ramon's life was not easy in coming. For two years he came to the basketball tournaments, before he finally, in 1978, gave his life to Christ.
The Bible Basketball ministry became the roots that led to the founding of the First Olongapo Fundamental Baptist Church. Ramon became instrumental in bringing many of his gang members, as well as other young people to the church. Eventually he attended BBSI, and when he graduated he became the youth pastor of the church, and in 1987 was elected a deacon.
FOFBC has been a recruiting and training ground for young people going into the Gospel ministry. In thirty-four years around forty young men and ladies, many off the streets of Olongapo, have come through the church, gone on to Bible college, and become pastors and missionaries, or have been involved in church work. Many of those were first brought to the church by Ramon Reyes.
I first met Ramon in 1986 when he worked at the church. That year Brother Joe had organized another Bible Basketball tournament. Twelve teams played a round-robin schedule to determine a champion. Each of the teams was organized by one of the young men in the church youth group. Brother Joe asked me to be involved in the Gospel sharing phase of the ministry. The winning team was sponsored by the church for a week at the Word of Life Camp in Laguna, south of Manila. Later Ramon would work at the Word of Life Camp for nearly twenty years. In recent years he also had a jail ministry at Camp Crame, the army post in Manila.
In 1987 we didn't have enough young men to organize teams for a tournament because most of those who had helped the year before had gone off to Bible school. So Ramon asked me to join him and do a "pick-up" Bible Basketball. Every Saturday for several weeks he and I, and three or four others from the church went around to local community centers and basketball courts, and got into games with the kids hanging around. When we were done we would sit down with the boys and share the Gospel with them.
One hot Saturday morning I took a picture of Ramon in his basketball gear, dripping wet with sweat, a Bible in his hand, telling the players how they could be saved. It's a telling picture because when the character of Ramon Reyes is considered, one thing stands out more than any other; an unquenchable desire to tell young people, street kids, and disadvantaged youth about Jesus Christ.
In the Filipino tradition a kind of a Christian wake is being held each night at the church until the burial on Saturday. It was my privilege last night to preach the final message at the first funeral service. I used as a text, Proverbs 22:1. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.
I am proud to have been the friend of Ramon Reyes, a man who truly had a good name.
Unknown to us as we started for home was that about an hour behind us a long time friend of ours, Pastor Ramon Reyes, was bringing his sister and family to Olongapo to see their mother. Just about the time we were arriving home they were passing near the town of Floridablanca on a dark, unlighted stretch of highway, when the car ran head on into a concrete barrier and went off the road.
Six people were in the car. Injuries to the passengers were light. Pastor Nelson de Jesus, who was sitting beside Ramon in the middle front seat, received a deep gash on his right middle finger, and Ramon's mother had bruises on her head and shoulder, but Ramon apparently hit the steering wheel with enough force to crush his chest and died instantly.
Olongapo, the Navy town at Subic Bay, was a rough place in the 70's and 80's. Youth gangs defended their turfs in various areas of the city, and there was no gang leader any tougher than Ramon Reyes. He was known as a fighter and feared by many.
In 1975, two students from the Baptist Bible Seminary and Institute in Manila, Jose Ornias and Wilma Dequina, came to Olongapo to start a youth outreach using Bible study materials for all ages, and a sports program called Bible Basketball. Jose, who became known as "Brother Joe," organized teams from the various gang areas and brought them together to play basketball and to share the good news of the Gospel.
Brother Joe took particular interest in a young man named Ramon, but seeing a change in Ramon's life was not easy in coming. For two years he came to the basketball tournaments, before he finally, in 1978, gave his life to Christ.
The Bible Basketball ministry became the roots that led to the founding of the First Olongapo Fundamental Baptist Church. Ramon became instrumental in bringing many of his gang members, as well as other young people to the church. Eventually he attended BBSI, and when he graduated he became the youth pastor of the church, and in 1987 was elected a deacon.
FOFBC has been a recruiting and training ground for young people going into the Gospel ministry. In thirty-four years around forty young men and ladies, many off the streets of Olongapo, have come through the church, gone on to Bible college, and become pastors and missionaries, or have been involved in church work. Many of those were first brought to the church by Ramon Reyes.
I first met Ramon in 1986 when he worked at the church. That year Brother Joe had organized another Bible Basketball tournament. Twelve teams played a round-robin schedule to determine a champion. Each of the teams was organized by one of the young men in the church youth group. Brother Joe asked me to be involved in the Gospel sharing phase of the ministry. The winning team was sponsored by the church for a week at the Word of Life Camp in Laguna, south of Manila. Later Ramon would work at the Word of Life Camp for nearly twenty years. In recent years he also had a jail ministry at Camp Crame, the army post in Manila.
In 1987 we didn't have enough young men to organize teams for a tournament because most of those who had helped the year before had gone off to Bible school. So Ramon asked me to join him and do a "pick-up" Bible Basketball. Every Saturday for several weeks he and I, and three or four others from the church went around to local community centers and basketball courts, and got into games with the kids hanging around. When we were done we would sit down with the boys and share the Gospel with them.
One hot Saturday morning I took a picture of Ramon in his basketball gear, dripping wet with sweat, a Bible in his hand, telling the players how they could be saved. It's a telling picture because when the character of Ramon Reyes is considered, one thing stands out more than any other; an unquenchable desire to tell young people, street kids, and disadvantaged youth about Jesus Christ.
In the Filipino tradition a kind of a Christian wake is being held each night at the church until the burial on Saturday. It was my privilege last night to preach the final message at the first funeral service. I used as a text, Proverbs 22:1. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.
I am proud to have been the friend of Ramon Reyes, a man who truly had a good name.
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