Schaeffer on True Spirituality

1. The true Christian life, true spirituality, does not just mean that we have been born again. It must begin here, but it means much more than that. It does not mean only that we are going to in heaven. It does mean that, but it means much more than that. The true Christian life, true spirituality in the present life, means more than being justified and knowing that I am going to heaven.

2. It is not just a desire to get rid of taboos in order to live an easier and looser life. Our desire must be for a deeper life. And when I begin to think of this, the Bible presents to me the whole of the Ten Commandments and the Law of Love.

3. True spirituality, the true Christian life, is not just outward, but it is inward -- it is not to covet against God and men.

4. But it is even more than this: it is positive -- positive in inward reality, and then positive in outward results. The inward thing is to be positive and not just negative, and then sweeping out of the inward positive reality, there is to be a positive manifestation externally. It is not just that we are dead to certain things, but we are to love God, we are to be alive to him, we are to be in communion with him, in this present moment of history. And we are to love men, to be alive to men as men, and to be in communication on a true personal level with men, in this present moment of history.

When I speak of the Christian life, or freedom from the bonds of sin, or of true spirituality, the four points listed above are what the Bible says we should mean, and anything less than this is trifling with God -- trifling with him who created the world, and trifling also with him who died on the cross. This is what we are to have in mind when we begin such a study; otherwise, there is no use even to talk about experiential freedom from the bonds of sin or about an experiential reality of the Christian life, or true spirituality. If this is not in our minds, at least in some poor comprehension and at least in some poor aspiration, we might as well stop. Anything else is trifling with God, and because it is trifling with God, it is sin.

Schaeffer is incredible! Such a mind, such a heart...

Schaeffer and joy

I found this to be a sobering truth as I read the first chapter of Francis Schaeffer's book Pollution & The Death Of Man.

Near the end of his life, Darwin acknowledged several times in his writings that two things had become dull to him as he got older. The first was his joy in the arts; and the second, his joy in nature. This is very intriguing. Darwin offered his proposition that nature, including man, is based only on the impersonal plus time plus chance, and he had to acknowledge at the end of his life that it had had these adverse effects on him. I believe that what we are seeing today is the same loss of joy in our culture as Darwin personally experienced: first of all in the area of arts, then in the area of nature. The distressing this about this is that orthodox Christians often have had no better sense about these things than unbelievers. The death of "joy" in nature is leading to the death of nature itself.

I think it is true that Christians have a much more careless attitude about nature. People can enjoy nature as they pass, but they can just as easily turn a blind eye as we ravage earth and destroy nature. To make a difference will require world-wide reform, but all reforms have to start with the individual before they can get bigger, let us start to enjoy God's creation. Conservation and protection are how we bring glory to God through nature, not pollution and disruption. Enjoy nature, nature itself points the believer to God.

Francis Schaeffer, a man of tears?

John Fischer wrote a very good article for Christianity Today about Francis Schaeffer being a compassionate, broken, man of tears. Here was one (of many possible) quote from the article that effected me. The whole article moves me to want to study and get to know Schaeffer's life and work more though. If you have a few minutes, I strongly suggest the article.

Jesus asked us to love our enemies. Part of loving is learning to understand. Too few Christians today seek to understand why their enemies think in ways that we find abhorrent. Too many of us are too busy bashing feminists, secular humanists, gay activists, and political liberals to consider why they believe what they do. It's difficult to sympathize with people we see as threats to our children and our neighborhoods. It's hard to weep over those whom we have declared enemies.

Perhaps a good beginning would be to more fully grasp the depravity of our own souls and the depth to which God's grace had to go to reach us. I doubt we can cry over the world if we've never cried over ourselves.

To be sure, Francis Schaeffer's influence has declined in recent years, as postmodernism has supplanted the modernity he dissected for so long. Schaeffer is not without his critics, even among Christians. But perhaps, in the end, his greatest influence on the church will not be his words as much as his tears. The same things that made Francis Schaeffer cry in his day should make us cry in ours.