Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. On April the 7th, 2007, Holy Saturday that year, cartoonist Johnny Hart died of a stroke while working at his drawing table. Hart was the award-winning creator of two popular comic strips, The Wizard of Is and BC, which at one time reached 100 million readers worldwide every single day. In a 1999 breakpoint commentary, Chuck Colson identified Hart as the most widely read Christian of our time, with more readers than C.S.
Lewis, Frank Peretti, and Billy Graham combined. He wasn't wrong. Raised in a moderately religious home, Hart's faith became more serious around 1984 when a born-again father-son team. And installed a satellite dish in his home. Not long after that, his Christianity became more and more evident in his comic strips.
According to Hart, and I quote, it started out like when Christmas would roll around. If a holiday comes up, I do something about the holiday. I've been doing that for the life of the strip, he said.
Well, in my view, Hart was always at his very best around Easter time. His most controversial strip was published on Easter of 2001. It featured a Jewish menorah. As the panels of the strip progressed, the seven candles burn out, each one captioned with one of the seven last words of Jesus from the cross. After the final candle is extinguished, captioned with Jesus' words, it is finished.
The arms of the menorah break off and leave there just a cross. The final panel portrays a trail of blood from the cross to the empty tomb with the stone rolled away, revealing the Lord's table arranged inside. At the time, Hart was accused of being anti-Semitic and of suggesting a form of replacement theology, the idea that Christianity supplants Judaism. Hart clarified later that he was only attempting to demonstrate the Jewish roots of Christianity out of respect for both religions. And of course, according to the Gospels, Jesus claimed to have completed the requirements of Old Testament law.
And according to the author of Hebrews, several Jewish traditions, symbols, and essentials are fulfilled in Christ Jesus. Another of Hart's Easter comic strips featured a cross with the note to be continued attached. And another one, a caveman, asked a couple of friends, would you lay down your life for someone else?
Well, that would be pretty stupid, replies one. Yeah, why would we do that? says the other. You mean like, would we die in their place? Nobody has that much love, says the first.
And then the second one adds, and if anyone did, I'd sure hate to lose him. Holding a cross, then a fourth caveman enters the final scene and says, well guys, I've got good news and good news. And one of his lighter Easter comics, a caveman tells a salesman, I am in the market for a burial site. What have you got in a tomb? The salesman replies.
I believe we're sold out, but let me check. Oh, you're not going to believe this. We just had an opening. In another, a fruit juice stained outfit becomes pure white when rinsed in a river made red by a stream of blood flowing from a cross. And another, a star, cast a cross-shaped shadow across the ground.
A caveman explains that can only be possible if something brighter than the star is behind the star, like a S U N sun, maybe. That prompts the other caveman to wonder aloud if it's perhaps a sun, S O N, making the shadow. There's so many more examples I could share here, but two have stood out to me since I first read them as a child in the Sunday funny papers of the Washington Post years ago. In one, a caveman says, I hate the term Good Friday. My lord was hanged on a tree that day.
Another caveman replies, Well, if you were going to be hanged on that day and he volunteered to take your place, How would you feel? The other strip featured Wiley, that grumpy peg-leg caveman, sitting beneath a tree pinning the poem The Suffering Prince. Picture yourself tied to a tree, condemned of the sins of eternity. Then picture a spear parting the air, seeking your heart to end your despair. Suddenly a knight in armor of white stood.
Stands in the gap betwixt you and its flight. and shedding his armour of God for you. Bears the lance that runs him through. His heart has been pierced, that yours may beat. The blood of his corpse washes your feet.
Picture yourself in raiment white, Cleansed by the blood of the lifeless night. never to mourn the prince who was downed. for he is not lost, it's you who are found.
Now outside of his comic strip, Johnny Hart explored and embraced certain theological views that I certainly could not agree with.
However, he stayed within the bounds of orthodoxy in print, and he covered an incredible amount of theological ground in the process. From the creation of the world, to the deity of Christ, the centrality of the cross in history, the forgiveness of sin, substitutionary atonement. All of that in a comic strip. As Chuck Holson wrote way back in 1999, quote, Johnny Hart can be an inspiration to all of us to find ways to bring a Christian worldview to bear on our work, whatever it may be. Healthy humor is one of God's good gifts to us, and even writing comic strips can be done to his glory.
⁇ End quote. Indeed, every single aspect of our redeemed lives are to bring glory to God. And that's because of the work of Christ, which for quite a while in American history, was described so well over and over and over again. and the Sunday funny papers. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
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