Franklin Graham Responds to Billy Crystal God Comments Today

No, because I don't trust Him. That was Billy Crystal's answer, in his own words, when CBS asked whether he still speaks to God, and the bluntness of it is what has made a short television interview into a story that churches are still discussing two weeks later.

Actor and comedian Billy Crystal said on CBS Sunday Morning, which aired 11 October, that he no longer speaks to God since losing his home and belongings in the Palisades wildfire in January 2025 and the December 2025 murder of Rob Reiner, who directed Crystal in When Harry Met Sally, the Christian Post reported. Crystal said too many bad things had happened, and that the Earth is in bad shape and this is a weird, scary time.

Crystal made faith the centre of his 2004 one-man show 700 Sundays, about the 700 Sundays he spent with his father before his father's death, the Christian Post reported. That history is what makes his present words land so hard, because this is not a man who never spoke of faith, but a man whose faith was once the subject of his most personal work.

Billy Crystal God Comments: No Longer Trusts God After Fire and Murder

Crystal's words to CBS should be quoted in full, because paraphrase would soften a statement he plainly meant to be heard as it was said. He was asked whether he speaks to God, and he answered with a direct no, followed by the reason he gave for it.

No, because I don't trust Him. Too many bad things have happened. The Earth is in bad shape. This is a weird, scary time. So no, not anymore.

That quotation is Crystal's, as reported by the Christian Post and ChurchLeaders, and it is presented here as his own account of his faith at this moment. The two losses he named, his home in the fire and his friend Reiner, are the losses he himself tied to the change, and this article does not add other causes to his account.

Crystal's latest one-man show, 860, premiered on Broadway the week before the Christian Post report, and the tragedies are the subject of that show, the Christian Post reported. The show's title and subject mean the same grief Crystal described on television is now being performed on stage, night after night, in front of a live audience.

Crystal told CBS he still looks for reasons to laugh, saying that laughter is a healer, the Christian Post reported. That small insistence, in the middle of so much grief, is the other half of the interview, and it shows a man still reaching for the thing that has always carried him through, even while he says he no longer speaks to God.

Franklin Graham Response to Billy Crystal: Trust God

Evangelist Franklin Graham responded in a post, urging Crystal and everyone else to trust God with your life and to put your faith and trust in His Son, Jesus Christ, who took your sins to the Cross, died, was buried, and on the third day, God raised Him to life, the Christian Post reported. Graham's response was made publically, and was direct and pastoral in tone, and it was aimed at Crystal by name.

Graham wrote that God is real, trustworthy and true, and that He loves us, ChurchLeaders reported. He also wrote that the Bible says we all have an appointment with death and then the judgment, and that the decisions we make now will determine where we spend eternity, in the same report.

God is real, He is trustworthy and true. He loves us.

That quotation is Graham's, as reported by ChurchLeaders, and it is the heart of his answer to Crystal. Where Crystal said he does not trust God because too many bad things have happened, Graham answered by asserting God's trustworthiness and love, and by urging Crystal to put his faith in Jesus Christ.

The exchange is a reminder of how public grief and public faith now meet, because a television interview and a social media post can become a conversation watched by millions within hours. Readers following other public figures speaking about faith can read Chris Pratt on faith and what he will pass to his children, Mike Posner saying following Christ has changed his life, and Russell Brand telling Hannity that faith in Jesus keeps him sober after 22 years, each of which shows a different public figure working out faith in public.

Crystal's story is not finished, and Graham's response is best read as an invitation rather than a conclusion. The actor who once built a show around 700 Sundays with his father is now building a show around loss, the evangelist who answered him is urging him to trust the God he says he no longer trusts, and the audience for both men is watching to see what happens next. Whether Crystal's answer changes, and whether the laughter he still reaches for leads him back to the faith he once put at the centre of his work, is a question only time, and Crystal himself, can answer.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.