When Jerry called Bishop Tutu of South Africa a “phony” in 1985, and the media castigated him, I came to his defense in a column I wrote for USA TODAY. That column started my career as a columnist that lasted for eight years until I refused to sign another agreement with the paper. Jerry gave a qualified apology which I think was a mistake.

At an unremembered location in the 1980s, our picture was taken with Jerry’s arm around my shoulders and he whispered, “Don, this will ruin you with our Baptist brethren.” He was referring to the attacks he was getting from our mutual friends over decisions he had made at Liberty University and his Moral Majority activities—and I often agreed with his critics!

But Jerry was one of the kindest, sharpest, most generous, and most principled men I knew and I write that having often disagreed with him. But that kind of disagreement didn’t affect our casual relationship.

Over the years, I have been to Liberty a few times, know many graduates, and Jerry’s right hand man was one of my oldest and loved friends going back to our college days. He died this year and the world is poorer and Heaven richer because of his death.

Jerry Sr. is no longer running Liberty, but Jerry Jr. is and I’m afraid the younger Falwell inherited his father’s position without his father’s principles.

Jerry Jr. has overseen an amazing growth in Liberty enrollment to about 110,000 students with 94,000 on line and has built a school of medicine and a school of law, all fully accredited. Their sports teams compete and often beat major secular universities. Jerry Sr. would be proud.

I am not impressed with Liberty’s accreditation or athletics, but that’s only my opinion.

Recently, the leftist media have relentlessly attacked Jerry Jr. for his peccadillos, practices, and policies. No doubt, most attacks are fake news but not all. Jerry wrote to Congressman Denver Riggleman (representing the Charlottesville area) promoting his reelection even though the county Republican Party unanimously refused to support his reelection!

Riggleman’s website makes no mention of church, God, Christ, or the Bible and could be that of a pagan. He and his wife own a whisky distillery.

It seems Riggleman officiated at the wedding of two homosexual men! Let me see if I have this straight: Jerry Falwell, that’s the son of Jerry Falwell, Sr., is supporting the congressman but the county GOP is not! Does that mean they are more principled than Jerry Jr.?

Seldom does a political party refuse to support an incumbent; moreover, let me remind you that there is a primary scheduled to decide who will represent the party. However, Falwell has already decided to support the whiskey-making, homosexual-supporting candidate!

Falwell’s letter to the congressman said that nothing can be done about homosexuality until the Court reverses the law. However, even then that law should be disobeyed since no one should support perversion whatever the law or consequences for breaking that law. Obviously, Jerry didn’t get his dad’s convictions, or character, or common sense. He suggests that Republicans must be “united and pragmatic” or they will lose the election. He forgot that, as a Christian, he must predominantly be guided by biblical principles.

In his own defense, Riggleman said, “it also comes down to love is love. I’m happy to join two people together who obviously love each other.” Gag! Hand me a barf bag. Love without truth is not love. I’m sure glad it is impossible to gag in Heaven.

Jerry, with his many talents, has become too political, too pragmatic, too safe. He is standing on the battlefield of the most combative and bloody of battles but has refused to grab the sword so skillfully and stanchly used by his faithful dad, to fight for victory.

He has decided to opt out of the most controversial social/political/biblical battle of our day and let others do the fighting.

For sure, Jerry Sr. would not support a whisky-making, homosexual-supporting congressman even if pigs learn to fly over the White House in close formation while whistling Amazing Grace in harmony.

It’s all distressing, disgusting, and disloyal!

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D; and visit his blog. Send request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles, and click here to support his work with a donation.)

This calls to mind country singer Hank Williams, Sr. who held the world in his grasp then lost it all in the back seat of his Cadillac dying from a drug overdose on New Year’s Day, 1953. He was age 29. His long-time manager Merle Kilgore called him, “the most cocky, confident man I ever met in my life.” Yet, he was a small man with a very average appearance.

He had a string of hits including “I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry” in 1949; and the haunting “Cold Cold Heart” in 1950; and “Your Cheatin Heart” in 1952. It seems that Williams could massage a song to get the most from it and was proficient with his guitar, but he couldn’t handle fame, money, and life in general. He was often drunk or drugged even on stage.

With all his advantages, as is true of other entertainers, he lived a shameful, sorry, and sinful life and died a lonely death surrounded by toys, trinkets, and treasure.

His songs reveal that Williams had some exposure to the Gospel. One of his songs reveals his knowledge of salvation: “How Can You Refuse Him Now?” The chorus asked: “How can you refuse him now, how can you refuse him now, how can you turn away from His side, with tears in His eyes on the cross there He died, How can you refuse Jesus now?” Hank obviously refused Him.

He wrote his famous “I Saw the Light” in 1948 although the melody was exactly the same as the Chuck Wagon Gang’s 1935 country gospel song, “He Set Me Free.” Williams often sang his song as if he was a man facing the end, desperate to believe in a salvation that he didn’t think existed. Was he trying to convince himself of the reality of the Gospel? He sang: “I wandered so aimless, life filled with sin; I wouldn’t ask my dear Saviour in. Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night; Praise the Lord, I saw the light! The chorus went, “I saw the light, I saw the light. No more darkness; no more night. Now I’m so happy no sorrow in sight. Praise the Lord, I saw the light!” But Hank was not happy but hopeless, and hapless.

The second verse: “Just like a blind man I wandered alone, Worries and fears I claimed for my own. Then like the blind man that Jesus gave back his sight; Praise the Lord, I saw the light!”

The third verse: “I was a fool to wander astray, For straight is the gate and narrow is the way. Now I have traded the wrong for the right; Praise the Lord, I saw the light!” But Hank apparently never saw the light! He usually closed his shows with this famous song.

Near the end of his life, he was doing a show in San Diego but stumbled drunk off stage after only two songs. His friend, country performer Minnie Pearl, tried to sober him as they rode around town in the back seat of his Cadillac so he could do his second show. She got him to join her in singing “I Saw the Light” thinking it might help sober him, but after one verse, Hank put his head in his hands and said, “O Minnie, Minnie, I don’t see no light. There ain’t no light.” But there was light, only it seems Hank refused it.

On Jan. 1, 1953, Williams died in the back seat of his car on the way to a concert in Charleston, WV. He was to do a show the next day in Canton, OH in the Memorial Auditorium. Williams’ Drifting Cowboys band opened the Ohio show with a spotlight on the curtain after the packed crowd was told that Hank Williams had died the previous day. The band, behind the curtain sang, “I Saw the Light.”

More than 20,000 people attended his funeral on Jan. 4 at Montgomery’s (AL) Municipal Auditorium where an overflow crowd listened via loudspeakers. Roy Acuff sang, “I Saw the Light” as Hank’s body lay in front of him in its casket. Acuff was joined by Bill Monroe, Little Jimmie Dickens, Carl Smith, Red Foley, Webb Pierce, and others. Dickens began weeping uncontrollably during the song. It seemed to be appropriate to this huge crowd of fans that Hank’s “closure” song was used to end his last public appearance—his funeral.

Williams is buried in Montgomery and across the front of his huge tombstone are the words, “Praise the Lord, I Saw the Light.” What a tragedy that a man could talk, write, and sing about seeing the light, and apparently never see it.

We are on this earth for only a few years and it is foolish, freakish, and folly to destroy our health by drug addiction, riotous living, and even undisciplined eating. Hopefully, in this New Year we will be more disciplined, dedicated, and determined to live a life that is honorable with no dependence on illegal drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and gluttonous eating.

We only have one life and we are fools to waste it. There is no second chance.

Boys’ new book Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! was published recently by Barbwire Books; to get your copy, click here. An eBook edition is also available.