Billy Graham died yesterday morning. Last night, the local news in Asheville had nothing but his life and the weather for the 30 minute time slot at 6:00 PM. Thinking about his legacy today has been common in many conversations.

I’m as guilty as anyone for dismissing him when I was younger. There will be plenty who will dismiss him today – I’ve already seen tweets and Facebook comments by people who didn’t know much about him that are full of what we come to expect: divisiveness, hatred, jealousy, and a tendency to focus on the negative.

There’s plenty to dislike. To lump him in with people like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson (although Robertson has recently said that he thinks assault weapons should be banned, so there’s some hope for the man, I suppose) is a huge mistake, though. Here are some things I think about when I think of him today:

1. He didn’t care what Christian tradition you landed in. His organization invited church members from everywhere to come and volunteer to help in different ways at his revivals. And all those folks who “came forward”  at the end of the service? Those folks were asked what Christian tradition they were part of; the volunteers wrote it down, then contacted churches of those particular traditions with names and addresses for following up with them. When Graham said it wasn’t about him, he meant it. His organization wanted all those thousands of folks who were moved by him to have a community to belong to, not just come forward to accept Jesus on television.
2. Famous for meeting with Presidents from Truman to Obama,  he was rarely seen as for one political party or another. He was probably, for the last thirty years, more Republican than Democrat, but he gave advice and care to any President who asked him. Listening to the Clintons, Obama, and George W. Bush last night, I realized that Graham did more than just rub elbows with the great and mighty: he treated them as he did everyone.
3. I was in the doctor’s office in Black Mountain years ago – back in the 1970’s – when Graham walked in for a standing appointment to get a shot of some kind. I was sitting and reading while a friend was with the doctor, and when the door opened from the outside, in walked Billy Graham. As he went to the receptionist’s window, he looked at each one of us – there were only three or four – sitting in the lobby, and he did not ignore us: for each person who met his eyes, he smiled and nodded. There was a kindness and genuineness that went beyond the Hollywood fame that one thought he would probably have; I halfway expected him to sit down and start chatting with me, and he had actually began looking for a chair when the nurse came out and said, “Mr. (yes, Mr.) Graham, we can take you now.”
4. A few years later, he changed his opinion of the idea of MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction, a term used during the height of the nuclear arms race. It was the American policy, to make sure if we did not survive, no enemy would, either. Graham had gone along with the policy for decades, but suddenly, he changed his whole outlook on it, and gave him some credibility with the peace community. And it ended up giving us some credibility as well.
5. Living near his home in Montreat, and in the community where he and Ruth spent their last years, it is hard not to encounter people who were friends of his. While I did not see him very much, he went to church with several friends of ours. I once taught a Sunday School class at the church I attended in my early days here, and every class began with a 5-minute check-in with how Ruth and Billy were doing, as though their welfare was the concern of every person in the class. I had to make time in the lesson plan for the “Billy and Ruth” news. They were discussed as though they were our next-door neighbors. In many ways, they were. While tourists wanted to see his house and asked directions ( I always just said, “Montreat,” and pointed north), most locals gave them their deserved privacy.
6. He did NOT succomb to the temptation, in these latter years, to have “The Billy Graham Show.” That, in and of itself, is a miracle among evangelicals. It sets him apart in ways that may be too subtle for the simple to understand.

Billy Graham had his faults. Seeing a photo of him with Joel Osteen last night made me want to scream. Seeing photos of him with Nixon and Reagan was not much comforting, either. He set the stage for televangelists, and especially the ones currently flashing their faces on the screen. But he was more than that, and there was a genuine humility to the man which one rarely sees these days, be you liberal or conservative, evangelical or other.

I’m not blind or stupid, and this blog is not about hero-worship.

It is, however, about respect. I realize that respect is discounted these days. But it’s the number one reason that we Americans will never be united again as a nation. It’s why we won’t ever solve our gun problems or our political issues, or our faith divides. Respect is not as important as possessing some “correct” idea and ideology.

I know that there were some major differences theologically between us. But Graham’s reputation as a person who simply cared for God’s people, wherever they were, is something that’s important, it’s what really matters, not how he influenced evangelicals. At a time in history when one’s theological guesses are as divisive as one’s politics, it matters that we  remember one who could put all of that aside whenever he was one-on-one with another beloved child of God. All it ever required for Graham to love you seems to have been for you to be breathing. I’d be okay to die with that as my legacy.

If I’m wrong or naive, that’s just what it is. I am just one person trying to see the good in another. Sometimes we can learn from how things appear to be. I, for one, hope that my picture of Billy Graham is close to the truth. He taught me some things about humility in his later days that I hope never to forget. No one’s perfect. He would have been the first to say so. But everyone’s loved by God.

And he would have been the first to say that, too. But hopefully, not the last.