Over the weekend I stumbled across an old book by Francis Schaeffer, Escape From Reason. As I began to peruse through it, I was again startled by the timliness of Schaeffer's writing. Escape was published over 35 years ago.
In the Forward to Escape From Reason, Francis Schaeffer says,
Every generation of Christians has this problem of learning how to speak meaningfully to its own age. It cannot be solved without an understanding of the changing existential situation which it faces. If we are to communicate the Christian faith effectively, therefore, we must know and understand the thought-forms of our own generation. These differ slightly from place to place, and more so from nation to nation.
Schaeffer goes on to explain that, “there are characteristics of an age such as ours which are the same wherever we happen to be.” From here, he outlines a history of Western thought and the effects on society.
Toward the end of his book, Schaeffer summarizes by saying:
There are two things we need to grasp firmly as we seek to communicate the gospel today, whether we are speaking to ourselves, to other Christians or to those totally outside.
The first is that there are certain unchangeable facts which are true. These have no relationship to the shifting tides. The make the Christian system what is is, and if they are altered, Christianity becomes something else. This must be emphasized because there are evangelical Christians today who, in all sincerity, are concerned with their lack of communication, but in order to bridge the gap they are tending to change what remains unchangeable. If we do this we are no longer communicating Christianity, and what we have left is no different from the surrounding consensus.
But we cannot present a balanced picture if we stop here. We must realize that we are facing a rapidly changing historical situation, and if we are going to talk to people about the gospel we need to know what is the present ebb and flow of thought-forms. Unless we do this the unchangeable principles of Christianity will fall on deaf ears. And if we are going to reach the intellectuals and the workers, both groups right outside our middle-class churches, then we shall need a great deal of heart-searching as to how we may speak what is eternal into a changing historical situation.
It is more comfortable, of course, to go on speaking the gospel only in familiar phrases to the middle classes. But that would be as wrong as if for example, Hudson Taylor had sent missionaries to China and then told them to only learn on of three separate dialects that the people spoke. In such a case, only one group out of three could hear the gospel. We cannot imagine Hudson Taylor being so hard-hearted. Of course he knew that men so not believe without a work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, and his life was a life of prayer for this to happen, but he also knew that men cannot believe without hearing the gospel. Each generation of the church in each setting has the responsibility of communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting.
In a parallel way we are being as overwhelmingly unfair, even selfish, towards our own generation, as if the missionaries had deliberately spoken in only one dialect. The reason we often cannot speak to our children, let alone other people’s, is because we have never taken the time to understand how different their thought-forms are from ours.
As one of those called to be “in the world and not of it”, I wrestle with the liberty given me and how to apply it, not just in a cognitive fashion but where the feet meet the street.
Last week in talking with a group of men, all Christians over the age of 35, verses from the Bible were discussed regarding our liberty as believers in Christ. As I later reflected on these verses I now discovered myself to be significantly acculturated to the evangelical “country club”. My heart and my mind don’t want to admit it, but my language and my lifestyle belie it.
This is why I believe works such as Jim Petersen’s The Insider are so important to me, and hopefully others. Roger Thoman has an excellent ongoing review of and comments on this book at The HouseChurch Blog. Both the book and the accompanying workbook are well worth the investment for anyone who is seriously thinking about how to impact the world around you. While you're at it, read Petersen's Church Without Walls. It gives an introduction to those who feel that there is more to being a Believer than meeting behind the four walls of a church building.
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