Using Your Giftedness for God with Gary Varvel

Gary Varvel Interview

Gary Varvel: Hey, I’m honored to be with you guys. It’s nice to meet you.

Tim Moore: Well, it is nice to meet. We’ve been talking for a long time over internet, or, excuse me, email and even telephone. But now to be face-to-face, even through the miracle of technology, is a great blessing.

Gary Varvel: Yep, it is, it is. I’m looking forward to this.

Nathan Jones: Well, Gary, I’ve been following you probably 20 years or more through townhall.com, I love that website, and I usually go to it to see the cartoons, particularly yours, so thank you for that. You take an entire article worth of information and put it into one picture, and that’s a gift. And, you know, when we were reading about history over the years, it’s interesting that even back during the Revolutionary War and going on, satire has been in editorial cartoons for hundreds of years, right?

Gary Varvel: That’s right, yeah, absolutely.

Tim Moore: How do you go about doing that, Gary? I’m always amazed, and I, too, have been a very long-time fan of your art. I love editorial cartoons because they do condense complex ideas into something very simple, and yet they convey conviction, information. That’s why you as a Christian, obviously your biblical worldview comes out, but tell us how you came about realizing that you had this particular gift.

Gary Varvel: You know, that’s a great question. And, you know, when I was probably—I think I was 12 years old, I was in a little department store and I walked down the magazine aisle. And there staring at me was MAD magazine. And when I saw that and I picked it up and started looking through it, it was like explosions were going off in my head. And I thought, this is so cool to just look at and bought it. And then over some time, my dad would buy me MAD magazines and… And so I still have those, I collected them, but I would, what I would do is I would practice drawing from what I was seeing, those great artists, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee, and so I would, that’s where I learned how to draw. I’m self-taught, I learned, I just taught myself how to do it, but I think that was the beginning.
But as I got older, then I started—when I was in high school, I realized that you can really convey a message. And then I started looking at the guys who went before me, the great cartoonist, we had a great cartoonist in our Indianapolis area, two of them actually, Charlie Werner and Jerry Barnett. And Jerry Barnett really took me under his wing and kind of taught me how to do that job, you know? And, you know, here’s the thing, when I was 17, I met him, and he, this is what he would do. He’d come to work at eight o’clock in the morning, draw a cartoon, and go home at noon. And I thought, wow, where do you sign up for that job? That’s the best, right? You’re drawing cartoons and it’s a short day.

My day is a lot longer than that, I do a lot more things nowadays, but… So that was the beginning of it, and it’s a lot of trial and error. There’s no school on editorial cartooning. You just look at the people who you think are really good, who went before you, and then deconstruct how they did what they did, and then try to start thinking the way they do it. And you use, like you mentioned, Nathan, you mentioned sarcasm, you use sarcasm, you use irony a lot, because, as I’ve discovered in studying the Bible, that’s what God uses. God mocks the people of the earth who rebel against Him. Jesus mocked the Pharisees. John the Baptist, I mean, and, of course, John the Baptist lost his head. I always kind of view that my ministry kind of imitates John the Baptist because he’s speaking truth to power.

Tim Moore: That’s exactly right. And that’s what I love about what you do. You speak truth to power, you don’t pull punches, and so you are very, very bold and proclaiming sometimes the emperor has no clothes. Whereas others kind of ease around that truth, you are very forthright. And you’re exactly correct. Scripture is filled with sarcasm. I think of Elijah mocking the prophets of Baal when he says, “Oh, maybe you’re not crying out loud enough, or maybe your god’s in the toilet or asleep.” And so he’s making fun of them with sarcasm. That happens at other places, too. You’re exactly right. Jesus Himself, I think, is mocking the Pharisees, and God mocks those who would challenge His authority.

Nathan Jones: Look at Psalm 2. He sits on His throne.

Tim Moore: Yeah.

Nathan Jones: And He laughs. He laughs at the nations roaring against Him. I always wondered, you hear a lot of these cartoonists when they’re young. Were the kids in class who were always scribbling while the teacher was teaching, was that you?

Gary Varvel: My teachers would tell you yeah, that was me. And I became known as the cartoonist, the guy who draws cartoons. And, and I worked for the school newspaper. A lot of high schools don’t have the school newspaper anymore. And I really don’t know what I would’ve done had I not had that outlet because that’s where you learn. And that was, they gave me also, you know, it taught me very early on the power of the pen, because people I wouldn’t have known that knew who I was, but they knew because they saw my cartoons in the school newspaper.

Nathan Jones: Well, you mentioned prayer, and that’s really important because, it’s funny, editorial cartoonists work for magazines and newspapers, like you say, and so they have to go with the kind of the party line and a lot of them tend to be liberal. And it’s strange, as I follow different editorial cartoonists over the years, they get more and more liberal. But you don’t, you have always stayed strong and conservative and biblical, and I love that you’ve added that biblical aspect to it. How old were you when you got saved?

Gary Varvel: I was 12. And, you know, I would like to say that I was a faithful follower of Christ right then. But my teen years, I, you know, was—I strayed a little bit. But it was at the time that I met my wife and we started, when we started dating, I think the Lord started changing me a little bit. And then seriously after we got married and then we were expecting our first child, which God gave us a little girl, that was kind of the key moment where the Lord really kind of spoke to me.

In fact, I was reading the Word of God doing my devotional time before I went to work one day and I prayed, “Lord, I don’t want my daughter following in my footsteps,” because she wasn’t born yet, so I didn’t know it was my daughter, but… I want, but I got… “You’re going to have to change me because I can’t change myself.” And He did change me, and He changed me through a couple of things. The Word of God, prayer, and going to church more regularly. So we started going Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. You know, if the church doors were open, we were there. And God put around me friends that helped me in the walk and discipled me, and that was a huge turning point. So my kids grew up in a home where they never knew a time when I wasn’t faithfully walking with the Lord.

And fortunately for us, through much prayer, our children have all made our faith their own. So, individually, so my daughter’s married to a pastor and my oldest son is a Christian filmmaker, actor, director, and then my youngest son also is a videographer and actor, and he has a regular job working, doing video stuff, but he also is faithfully following Christ. And that, I tell you what, there’s not a greater blessing than that.

Tim Moore: There’s not a greater blessing. You mentioned the fact that you had to be changed by the Lord. And I find that in your cartoons, whether they are overtly religious or not, it is obvious that you are informed by the Word of God, that you are presenting a biblical worldview. And I think some Christians have the wrong-minded idea that unless you’re doing something overtly religious, then you’re not serving the Lord, whereas that’s not a scriptural attitude. The Scripture says whatever you do, do unto the Lord, but you very obviously use this venue as a mission field to share biblical truth. And yet, as you said a moment ago, it is still work. And so whatever our work is, whatever our vocation is, we can still serve the Lord regardless of what profession we’re involved in.

Gary Varvel: As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more committed. You know, teaching, I was an adult Bible study teacher, and I taught a young couple’s class, I taught that for 25 years. And when you spend every week studying the Word of God for the lesson that’s coming ahead, and then what happened was because I was working in the news industry, as things would happen in the news, it would make me think, oh, this applies to our Bible study, and so I would apply that text and then show people how it’s playing out in the world.

And now God has given me a ministry through, you know, I have a newsletter called “Varvel’s Views From The Right,” you can sign up at garyvarvel.com or you can go to garyvarvel.substack.com, and there I kind of combine the two things. So I do editorial cartoons, but I also write about current events from a biblical standpoint. You know, for instance, today, my newsletter today, I mentioned, you know, I voted for Trump three times and I’m glad he won this time, but he’s not the answer to America’s problems. The answer is Jesus Christ. Because we—you know, I quoted that John Adams said that our Constitution was made for religious and moral people, it’s wholly inadequate for the government of any other.

And so when I say that, what—we need people in America who can control themselves. They need to be, they need to have a moral base, and that moral base has to be in the Bible. And so, how do you get there? It’s not from some president; he’s not going to change people’s hearts. Only Jesus Christ can change people’s hearts because He changed mine.

Tim Moore: That’s exactly true. And yet, when you present your cartoons, and we have a number of them we’re going to share with our viewers today, you present that kind of attitude, let the Lord God Almighty, let His Word change a heart, but that will lead you to a perspective on everything that’s going on, whether it’s politics, whether it’s just cultural matters. And so you have some very poignant ways of communicating that. Nathan has some examples here. Even as President Trump has recently been reelected, you recognize that even the protection during the assassination attempt up in Pennsylvania, there was sort of a divine protection, and I think Trump himself came to realize that. But your cartoon conveys in a single panel a reality that others just touch on.

Nathan Jones: Yeah, because it’s interesting. Tim and I are preachers, so we say things with unfortunately a lot of words, right?

Tim Moore: A lot of words.

Nathan Jones: But you get in a complete—I mean, you’ve got this idea of Trump being divinely protected by God when the assassination attempt happened just by putting God’s hands around him. How do you come up with these ideas? Are they inspired or…

Gary Varvel: Well, when I saw the video, immediately, you know, in real time of him, you know, turning his head, he just slightly leaned forward and turned his head at just the perfect time, well, what are the odds that that would happen unless God caused it to happen? And it… Yeah, and so, so yeah, and so, just as… So when I wrote my newsletter about that, I did the cartoon and I wrote my newsletter about the bulletproof George Washington, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that story, it used to be in, yeah, it used to be in history books, and it should be taught all the time because God preserved the life of George Washington in a particular battle in the French and Indian War when the Indians were shooting at him and they wouldn’t hit him. And so if he recognized that, and I think God, you know, I think this was a wake-up call for Trump. He even recognized that this was the Hand of God.

Tim Moore: No, but you touch on other things, how Trump has avoided being indicted. Well, he was indicted, but he just seems to go forward, and we’re not lauding President Trump per se, but we’re just capturing the truth that you recognize. And even in the election that just came past, realizing that on the left there are worldviews that are diametrically opposed to the Word of God, whether it’s support for abortion, whether it’s all the other panoply. And even as President Biden was about to leave office, just the disastrous policy decisions he was making on behalf of the country. There are grave ramifications, and Christians should be informed from a biblical worldview. I just find it so, again, poignant that you bring these truths out with much fewer words than Nathan and I ever need as writers and as speakers.

Gary Varvel: You know, I heard somebody one time say that cartoonists are, we’re all in the battle for ideas, you know, we’re trying to win the hearts and minds of people, and that’s the battle. And so a cartoonist is like a bomber pilot who drops a big bomb, whereas you guys are on the front lines, you’re like the military infantry and you’re shooting bullets, and the bullets are words, and it takes a lot of bullets sometimes to accomplish the effect. Now, sometimes my cartoon can be devastating to the enemy, but sometimes if I miss the mark, then I look terrible.

Nathan Jones: But it’s interesting with people today and having a kind of a shorter attention span. You know, a lot of people just scroll, they’ll read that, they’re called headliners, they’ll read the headliners, but there are people who get all their news from editorial cartoonists because it’s fun. And so if you don’t get that idea across, that’s probably the only news that they’ve read on that subject.

Gary Varvel: That’s very true. And, I know, especially I know a lot of young people who just don’t follow the news, they’re not interested, even though the news is going to affect them. What, the other thing, yeah, so if they look at my cartoon, it takes them what two to three seconds, five seconds at the most, and I try to keep it as simple. I’ve had people tell me I’m pretty simple, and that’s okay.

Tim Moore: But you’re getting through at the heart level, you’re getting through in a way with humor and, as we said, with satire. So even these ideas of young people in particular being changed by the culture around us, or as they go off to school, and the cultural dynamic of some of the agendas that are being pushed on our young people, and yet it has grave ramifications. So that, I think, was born out with all the protests on college campuses, with all the gender confusion that so many young people are going to come to their senses eventually, but many lives will be devastated. And of course, that blends over even into what’s happening, into the Middle East. So, some of your tremendous cartoons touching on the horrors in Israel. I mean, they are so beautiful and poignant to convey truth from, again, I can’t say it enough, from a biblical worldview, from a Christian perspective.

Gary Varvel: Well, I’ve always been fascinated with prophecy and that’s why I watch you guys. And in my own study, I remember this goes back to when my father and I would have discussions about the Book of Revelation, the Book of Daniel, and it was just fascinating to think that we could be the generation when Christ returns, and it looks more and more that way all the time, especially since Israel’s back in the land and they’re being attacked by all their enemies. And this current battle, this current war, where they now have dispatched Hamas and Hezbollah, it looks like that we may be, for the first time in my lifetime, we may possibly go through a short period of peace there where they’re not personally threatened every day with somebody bombing them.

And that made me think of Ezekiel 38. So Ezekiel 38 says it’s going to be, that they’re going to be attacked by these nations, Gog, Magog, Togarmah, and all those, and Persia, which is Iran, that they’re going to be attacked when Israel’s living in a time of peace after a war, and it’s going to be in the last days. And it seems like this could be what we’re watching take place. So, what I feel more pressed about doing is sometimes I’ll do, in my newsletters, I’ll inform people about the latest thing that happened over there but as an opportunity to share the Gospel. That’s the main thing, because I want, you know, whoever’s reading my stuff, and I know I make people mad with what I’m saying, but my main goal is to try, at this season in my life, is to try to point people to Christ.

Tim Moore: Well, you certainly do that, which is why, and our viewers should know, that in our Lamplighter magazine, it has been a thrill for me to be connected with you and with your syndicate, and we feature virtually every edition of our Lamplighter at least one of your cartoons, sometimes two, that are so poignant and really convey the very ideas that we’re trying to share about the Lord’s soon return, about the Gospel. But you do it in a way that, quite frankly, I always go right to the editorial page myself and I go right to the cartoon, I like to eat my dessert first. And so to me, it’s always one of the greatest treats to get to the cartoon section of an editorial page because it just, it kind of makes my day. And you do that for our readers for each edition that you appear in.

Nathan Jones: And, Gary, your son has followed in your footsteps, right, as he’s making movies and all. Did he create a bible prophecy movie called Disciples in the Moonlight?

Gary Varvel: He did, you know, he got interested in being an actor when he was 16. He came to me and said, “Dad, I want to be an actor.” And of course I chose an unusual career, I’m not going to tell my son, “No, you can’t do that.” But I was concerned because, you know, usually actors go to Hollywood, and I told him, I said, “Here’s my concern, Son. If you go to Hollywood just in order to eat, you’re going to be tempted to compromise your faith.” And so I said, “What if you became the director? Then you put yourself in your own movies and then you control everything.” Well, he’s kind of a type A personality, that really suited him, and so he started making his own films and, wow, I mean, he’s just really good, he’s grown so much.

And when he was in college, he felt like the Lord was calling him to use the talents that God had given him to present the Gospel. In fact, he started House of Grace Films after we did our first film called The Board, B-O-A-R-D, which you can find at houseofgracefilms.org, that’s his film company. Anyway, he—The motto for our film company, and I’m the chairman of the board, is that we’re using the most powerful medium of our age to communicate the most powerful message ever told. That’s the purpose of House of Grace Films. And so, just recently, we did a movie called The War Within back in 2014, but this past year we came out with a movie called Disciples in the Moonlight, not written by me, it was written by a friend of ours.

And it’s about—and here’s the premise of the movie, it’s a future America in which the Bible’s been outlawed as hate speech. So, the government has written their own government-approved version and they’re doing a Bible buyback, but it causes seven Bible smugglers to rise up and try to smuggle the true word of God to underground churches in neighboring states, and how the Homeland Security is after them. And so it’s kind of a drama, it’s a suspense thriller, and it’s unlike most Christian movies you’ll ever see, but the message through the whole thing is very strong about the Gospel.

Tim Moore: We will hope you’re not like Babylon Bee, that your sarcasm turns out to be prophetic in terms of our government with another left-leaning administration. Well, Gary, what are some of your favorite artists? You mentioned Al Jaffee, some of the cartoonists in Indianapolis, which I’m familiar with. Are you one that likes the Gary Larson’s and Bill Watterson’s and Michael Ramirez? Who are some of your favorites?

Gary Varvel: Michael Ramirez is a good friend of mine, and we have talked many times about, you know, what we do and a little bit about faith. He’s Catholic and I’m not, but… But then, you know, I think when I was really getting started, when I was young, I saw the work of Jeff MacNelly, and Jeff MacNelly won the Pulitzer Prize three times. He probably could have won it every year, he was so good, but his work really inspired me. Pat Oliphant, when he first came over here from Australia, and he… And this was in the ’60s, so I saw some of his early stuff, and wow, it really knocked me out. It was so loose and different than what the traditional editorial cartoons looked like.

And those two guys especially really inspired a whole new generation of cartooning, that we all are kind of the disciples of those guys, I think. And now fast-forward to, this was in the early 2000s, I went to a cartoonist convention, and which now there’s so few of us who actually have jobs, but I was standing around with some other guys and we said, one of the guys said, “Do you realize how fortunate to be born when we were because we’re probably the last generation of editorial cartoonists who can make a living doing this, working for a newspaper?” And newspapers have always been the method in which cartoonists were employed, but the newspaper business is, let’s just face it, I call it the rotary dial telephone of this generation.

And people just don’t do it, especially young people. They don’t get a newspaper. They look at every, all the news they get on their phone or some type of mobile device. And so, as the money went away, the revenue went away from newspapers, we had to find a new way of making a living, and so. And I didn’t know, you know, when I left the newspaper in 2019 after a 40-year career, I didn’t know how I was going to make a living, but the Lord has provided.

Tim Moore: So, on that note, as we are about to run out of time, it saddens me that we don’t have the same kind of newspaper outreach, although most of the newspapers have become so liberal. Maybe the Lord has pronounced a judgment even on that medium. But you still are able to reach people like Nathan and I, who subscribe to your emails and your e-newsletter, obviously you have a tremendous book that I would recommend to our viewers of many of your cartoons over the last number of years. How could our viewers today stay in touch with you and get a daily dose of Gary Varvel humor and insight?

Gary Varvel: Well, I would encourage you to sign up for my newsletter. That’s the best way, because then I just email my stuff to you and you will see, you know, I have people every once in a while say, “Oh, well, I follow you on Facebook.” I said, “Do you get my newsletter?” “No, but I get you on Facebook.” And I said, “You’re seeing not even half of what I do.” Because Facebook, although I have like, what, 27,000 followers on Facebook, if I post something, maybe 1,000 people see it, you know? And I follow people on Facebook, I never see what they do or what they post. And that’s just the way it works, that’s the way social media is. And you hope to hit, you hope to reach somebody.

But if you, the more people who sign up for my newsletter, and you can sign up for free at garyvarvel.com, the more people who sign up, then you’ll see everything I do. And I do, I write about a lot of different things because I was a Sunday school teacher for so long. I have a series that you can find on my newsletter, God’s 7,000-year timeline, and I wrote about that, I wrote about the importance of Israel in Bible prophecy, and I’ve done stuff on marriage, which usually I get a lot of responses from that, a lot of people are struggling in marriage, and the Bible has a lot to say about that.

Tim Moore: Well, Gary, I’m so glad that you have been faithful to bear testimony to the Lord through your gifted artwork, and you continue to do so, and I’m also glad that people are beginning to see the foolishness of what has passed as wisdom just in our secular age these past few years. Maybe there’s been a corner turn. But I want to thank you for being a part of this episode of Christ in Prophecy. We will stay in touch, and again, we will feature your wonderful art as often as we can through all our various mediums. Maybe we’ll even start putting some more on our website or at least linking people in to your gift.

Gary Varvel: Thank you so much, and God bless you, Tim and Nathan. I appreciate your ministry. Thank you.

Closing

Tim Moore: You know, some people are reluctant to speak truth to power. I am very glad God raises up people like Gary Varvel to cut through the fog of secular relativism. And I really enjoy his art and his humor, just as I enjoy the gifted musical ability of Christians like Steven Curtis Chapman and Keith and Kristyn Getty. But the truth is that all of us who are in the body of Christ have a special giftedness that we should be using faithfully.

Nathan Jones: Scripture says that some were called to be evangelists, some as pastors, some as teachers, and certainly some were also called to lead worship and teach Sunday school and pour into children. Others are gifted encouragers. There are no unneeded members and no unusable gifts in the body of Christ. All our gifts are meant to converge to glorify God and assist fellow believers.

Tim Moore: Our prayer today is that you come to recognize the gift God has given you and that you purpose to exercise that gift. In such a time as this, we need all hands on deck. Jesus is coming soon. And when He arrives, may He find us investing the gifts and talents He’s given each of us in a manner worthy of our Lord. As I said during our show featuring Pat Marvenko Smith, the Lord has graciously knit us together here and now as the body of Christ in the world today. No member of that body is more important than another. Some members may draw more attention just as a nose is more prominent than an elbow. But without elbows, our mobility would be severely restricted. In fact, we could never scratch our own nose! So the God who creates noses and elbows has blessed all of us by sprinkling gifts among His children. We’ll see you again next week. Until then, stay on task using all the gifts God has given you. Godspeed!

End of Program