Findings

True Spirituality is the fruit of Francis Schaeffer’s reconsideration of Christianity after ten years of serving as a pastor. Schaeffer had reached a point of desperation. “A problem came to me,” he writes in the preface,

“the problem of reality. This had two parts: first, it seemed to me that among many of those who held the orthodox position one saw little reality in the things that the Bible so clearly said should be the result of Christianity. Second, it gradually grew on me that my own reality was less than it had been in the early days after I had become a Christian. I realized that in honesty I had to go back and rethink my whole position.”

So he did. He backed up to agnosticism, and evaluated whether his beliefs were legitimate, and whether Christianity made any real difference. The results include this book, a long list of other writings, and the founding of what was to become the thriving ministry of L’Abri in the Swiss Alps.

The basic structure of this book is to demonstrate, first, that there are thoroughly sufficient rational reasons for belief in “the infinite-personal God,” and the truth of Christianity. It satisfies the basic questions humanity struggles with. But to me the real reward was the second half of the book, where Schaeffer discusses living it out — not in the way it often looks in its institutional forms, but in our conscience, our thought lives, our psychology, and our relationships with one another.

Schaeffer is thoroughly rational, and once he’s established the intellectual basis for faith, he returns to it again and again as the ground from which we move into the new life. Mind renewal is largely a matter of making a conscious mental effort to remind ourselves of what we’ve assented to as truth. It’s not a mystical experience, or a thing that happens to someone magically after they say the sinner’s prayer. As we make this effort, we can expect divine aid, and life change from the inside out.

But he’s not an “intellectual” in the sense of finding satisfaction in ideas for their own sake. What matters most is the fruit borne by “true spirituality” — love. Our lives, and the church, should run according to biblical principles, but above all they should exhibit the reality of the supernatural by showing human beings loving one another.

My hairdresser asked me once, “What is there at church that someone from outside would want?” Good question, unfortunately. She cuts hair for pastors and “good churchpeople” all the time (including me), and to her it sounds like any unpleasant political institution or dysfunctional family. Schaeffer helps to explain why this is so often the case, and as L’Abri so beautifully demonstrated, he and his wife founded a community that represented a true, countercultural, biblical church in action.

What did I like best? I liked Schaeffer’s frequent reminders that God never relates to us mechanically (or legally, or officially), but always personally — and so we are to relate to each other. It struck a responsive chord in me, because of my accumulated frustration with programmed and systematized and corporatized Christianity. “If there is no demonstration in our attitude toward other men that we really take seriously the person-to-person relationship, we might as well keep quiet,” he writes. 

I also liked the humility Schaeffer exemplifies himself, and encourages in his readers. “Each time I see something wrong in others, it is dangerous, for it can exalt self, and when this happens, my open relationship with God falls to the ground,” he writes. “So when I am right, I can be wrong.” Whether we’re relating to our children, or to others who’ve injured us, or to a spouse, or to superiors, we’re on equal footing as creatures, and have no ground to swing into either inferiority or superiority.

Above all, perhaps it was the grace of Schaeffer’s picture that was most satisying. More clearly than I’ve seen it in a long time, I see the distinction between perfection and beauty. Schaeffer frequently describes truth in aesthetic terms, and it helps me to lay aside the perfectionism that tends to destroy joy and discover new eyes. “How beautiful Christianity is,” Schaeffer exults, “– first, because of the sparkling quality of its intellectual answers, but second, because of the beautiful quality of its human and personal answers. And these are to be rich and beautiful. A crabbed Christianity is less than orthodox Christianity.”

Although my natural (self-indulgent) tastes lead me to fiction, I’m grateful to have read this. It rocked the Christian landscape when it was first published in 1971, and reading it is a beneficial earthquake in my inner life in 2008. It’s really not possible to do it justice here, other than to offer a heartfelt recommendation to any Christian whose paradigms need to be excavated and restored.

Easter comes early this year, and in its honor I changed my header to these lovely Ukranian eggs. I’ve always marvelled at the intricacy of the patterns and the hours of patient, careful artistry they exemplify. I’ve been reading about them here. I’m not Ukrainian myself, but there’s a good-sized slavic population where I live, and several Russian orthodox churches. Sometimes they have egg exhibits (egg zibits?).

I took the girls to an Easter egg hunt extravaganza at a nearby evangelical church today. It seems like a great place. We know of it because it recently hosted Upward basketball, a noncompetetive sports league for kids that incorporates scripture memory and an emphasis on character. We were impressed by the sweet spirit of the adults involved in the program, and by the quality of the kids, and by the church’s obvious heart for its surrounding community.

But something’s bothering me about this morning. It was a well-organized event that involved lots of different activities for kids, from face painting to a bounce house to various games to a visit with the Easter bunny, who offered the pastor a basket of eggs containing different Easter symbols to be used as props for telling the Easter story. The Easter bunny wanted everyone to know that Easter wasn’t about her.

I love that there was an evangelistic boldness. But more and more, I feel dissatisfied with the formulaic approach of getting a captive audience, telling them that Jesus died for their sins, and offering to pray with them to invite Jesus into their hearts.

Stop and look at that last sentence. What person in their right mind would make a life decision based on it? It raises far more questions than it answers. Why did Jesus die? Who was he? How does his dying change anything about my sin? What’s my sin? How does he live in my heart?

During this week, I feel a need to revisit these things. I don’t want this season to pass by without such reflection… especially here, in a blog that’s about “findings.” I love how those eggs look, but I don’t want to end up like them — painted shells originally intended to hold new life.

Jared over at The Thinklings has posted some interesting pieces lately. This one, “For I was hungry and you told me to self-feed,” pretty much nails one of the things that bothered me in the church my family recently left after 9 years. And ”Stingy with the gospel: preachers and the new legalism“ as well as “The wierd modern desire for legalism” (over at Jared’s other blog, The Gospel-Driven Church) deal with another frustrating phenomenon, “Jesusless” preaching - substituting a list of things to do for the gospel.

Here’s an excerpt from “The Wierd Modern Desire for Legalism” that has me doing some soul-searching:

In my little world, there’s nothing more exciting or inspiring than knowing that Jesus has accomplished salvation and that all He has and all He has done is given to me in Him and through Him. I love talking about this reality. It is the true “anti-religion,” and yet I can sense, subtly and innocently, a minute disappointment in some people that I’m not just giving them “stuff to do.”

I would have to plead guilty to having a flatter response to the gospel than I’d like, and I’ve been a believer since I was 6. (Long time.) I love God, but there’s a certain blank stare that flits across my soul at the simple and unadorned statement of what God has done for us in Jesus. I’m not sure how to take hold of it and run with it, and even though a list of Things To Do doesn’t help, it creates the illusion that it does. “I’m just not reading the Bible enough, just not praying enough, just not believing enough” all seem like credible explanations for my deadness - even though Christ offers himself with the only condition being repentance. 

I also note with curiosity that as a child, I felt the wonder and joy of salvation a lot more than I do as an adult. My impulse is to react defensively and say, “Where does growing to maturity fit in here? Surely there’s a place for ‘working your salvation out with fear and trembling.’” But at the same time, why as I’ve grown up have I lost rather than gained spiritual passion? Without trying to blame the world, I notice that my whole mind and mode of being have developed in a culture that’s antithetical to the gospel. I mean more than that I’m a sinner; that’s true, but it’s the universal human condition. What I mean is that growing up American presents some unique illiteracies when it comes to receiving the message of the gospel.

In which case the “new legalism” isn’t really new at all. Here are some of the distinctives of being American that run counter to the gospel, and that make us literate in legalism:

• being independent;
• being ”self-made”;
• being hard working, like Ben Franklin in his handy equation of “hard work + virtue = success”;
• being free of limits imposed by authority;
• accumulating as much wealth as possible.

A very short list, but Jesus opposes all of these. About being independent, Jesus proposes willing servitude: “take my yoke upon you and learn of me.” About being self-made, Jesus says “confess your faults to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.” About working hard, Jesus says, “Mary has chosen what is better;” he also says “without Me you can do nothing.” About being free of limits imposed by authority, he offers his whole life and death. And about accumulating wealth, he demonstrates an earthly life that started and ended in poverty.

America is radically different than the culture God considered ripe for his incarnation. The gospel is received into a much more traditionless, irreligious, individualistic, ambition-worshipping context here than in the “fullness of time” when Jesus walked the earth. When he came to the Jews, he came after centuries of God’s preparation, giving Israel the categories they needed to comprehend redemption. The passover celebration. Jeremiah’s persecution for speaking the truth. Isaiah’s word pictures. The hunger for a King. (America was born out of rejection of Kingship.) There’s no way to list all the many ways God laid the foundation for Christ’s coming to Israel.

But Jesus offers himself to America too. He represents the fulfillment of all our true needs. So my question is, how has God laid the foundation for Christ here? How does he offer us, as he offered Israel, a slightly tweaked and totally revolutionized re-vision of our paltry cultural dreams? These characteristics of the American mind that seem so antithetical to Jesus: how does he in actuality fulfill the true need behind each of these misguided pursuits? I need to approach the Bible, and pray, with these questions clearly in mind. And I need preaching and teaching informed by them too… preaching in the same vein as Paul’s to the Athenians, when he spoke of Jesus as the fulfillment of their belief in ”an unknown god.”

We’re culture-bound, time-bound beings. The gospel isn’t culture-bound, but I believe God means it to be culture-specific; it speaks to all times and cultures. The Christian self-help gurus are trying to show the relevance of the gospel (but fundamentally changing it in the process) by zeroing in on part of who we believe ourselves to be. The effort fails, but there’s nothing wrong with believing in the gospel’s relevance and applicability to any age and any culture - even a young and struggling one like ours.   

This I know: anger solves nothing. At my old church, it seemed that the shepherds were angry at the sheep. My reflex is to get angry back. But as Jim Logan says in Reclaiming Surrendered Ground, “You can’t fight flesh with flesh. If you do, who wins?” Restoration of the church is a Spirit-led process. In it, I’m encouraged by this: something is in the air, and I believe it’s the Spirit, blowing where he pleases - including here, in the grassroots. 

…and it’s 40 years ago in Switzerland.

I’ve been meandering through Edith Schaeffer’s L’Abri all year, picking it up now and then. At the start she gives the stated purpose of L’Abri this way:

“To show forth by demonstration, in our life and work, the existence of God.” We have in other words decided to live on the basis of prayer in several realms, so that we might demonstrate to any who care to look the existence of God. We have set forth to live by prayer in these four specific realms:

1. We make our financial and material needs known to God alone, in prayer, rather than sending out pleas for money. We believe that He can put it into the minds of the people of His choice the share they should have in His work.
2. We pray that God will bring the people of His choice to us, and keep all others away. There are no advertising leaflets, and this book is the first to be written about the work.
3. We pray that God will plan the work, and unfold His plan to us (guide us, lead us) day by day, rather than planning the future in some clever or efficient way in committee meetings.
4. We pray that God will send the workers of His choice to us, rather than pleading for workers in the usual channels.

Now that’s radical! No “strategizing.” No capital campaigns. No advertising.

Even as I write this, however, I have to admit that I’m personally pretty conflicted on the subject of radical faith. These days I feel like we’re living at the edge of a steep cliff, not knowing what the next step will bring. I’m sick of uncertainty, and want some light to break through the clouds! At the same time this is more like the kind of life Thoreau describes - which I’ve always thought was a fitting description of the true Christian life:

I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it.

“I feel like life is a giant boulder we’re pushing uphill,” I complained to my husband last night. “Nothing at all is coming easily.” I’m sick of this. Sick of that. I pounded the table. It felt good. “I’m looking at you, but I’m talking to God,” I told him.

“That’s how it’s supposed to be,” he reminded me. “Don’t we want something more than comfort? Aren’t we looking for the abundant living the gospel describes?”

No fair, tying my deepest desire to my deepest frustration like that!

Flight requires resistance. It’s a spiritual principle as much as a physical one or an intellectual one - or more accurately, it’s a physical and intellectual principle because it’s a spiritual one. So maybe the story of Rebekah applies here, in my discomfort with life and discomfort with churchasusual. Rebekah watered all those camels for Isaac’s servant because it was in her nature; it wasn’t an aberrant act, it was something she did because that’s what kind of person she was. As I grow thankful for edge-of-the-precipice living, maybe I’ll/we’ll be drawn through that means to a church or ministry that functions in the way Edith Schaeffer describes.

And here’s the description of it on Amazon: “The buzz among evangelicals today is about relevance and reinvention, about new ways of ”doing church” through revising, innovating, borrowing, mixing, and experimenting. Yet, says Os Guinness, in our uncritical pursuit of relevance, Christians have actually become irrelevant. By our determined efforts to redefine ourselves in ways that are more in line with the modern world than are faithful to Christ, we have lost not only our identity but our authority and significance. Prophetic Untimeliness addresses this issue by giving practical, constructive solutions for living with integrity in the midst of modern pressures. Guinness explores what it means to be both faithful and relevant, and how to be truly relevant without being trivial or trendy. Readers will be challenged to develop ”resistance thinking,” an approach inspired by C. S. Lewis that balances the uncomfortable truths of the gospel with the pursuit of relevance. Only by being true to Christ and living with integrity and wisdom will we meet the needs of a world that is hungry for some really good news.”

I heard Os Guinness speak on Christian calling years ago at my college. I still have the tapes. (Yes, tapes.) Wonderful. I agree with the thesis of this book and wrote about it briefly here. But now it’s time to see what one of the masters has to say! 

I want to record a few excerpts from Buechner’s Listening to Your Life and Pearcey’s Total Truth. I’m getting them in before year’s end because they confirm some observations about church that have pretty much flattened me under a boulder of disillusionment this year. But thankfully, after some wrestling, some prayer, some whining (okay maybe a lot of whining–?), and some positive church experience, I’m beginning to pull out of disillusionment and into the certainty that there are Godly alternatives to what’s described here. The challenge for 2008 is to be clear-eyed, and at the same time, to let God renew my mind. (Hmm, that sounds like a definition of maturity. Never my strong suit.)

First Buechner. He gives a visceral description of some problems, but no solution:

The church often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the dysfunctional family. There is the authoritarian presence of the minister– the professional who knows all of the answers and calls most of the shots– whom few ever challenge either because they don’t dare or because they feel it would do no good if they did. There is the outward camaraderie and inward loneliness of the congregation. There are the unspoken rules and hidden agendas, the doubts and disagreements that for propriety’s sake are kept more or less under cover. There are people with all sorts of enthusiasms and creativities which are not often enough made use of or even recognized because the tendency is not to rock the boat but to keep on doing things the way they have always been done.

Now for Pearcey. Her book is about developing a Christian worldview, and the following excerpt is taken from a context of moving toward solutions. She touches (with the objectivity and expertise I desperately lack) on phenomena I’ve written about, especially here and here:

Many ministry leaders have uncritically absorbed a nonbiblical view of business and success. “They are deeply infused with an American capitalist culture concerning the gospel,” writes historian Joel Carpenter. They unconsciously assume “that God measures success by the numbers, that more money means more ministry, which means more success for God’s kingdom. So they tend to measure their own success as disciples and servants of the Lord by the size of their ministry.”

Do we recognize a pattern here? We are witnessing history come home to roost. In earlier chapters on revivalism, we watched the seeds being sown. The appeal to emotions. The pragmatic attitude of using whatever works. The habit of borrowing marketing techniques from the commercial world. The celebrity style of leadership. The focus on measurable results. “Religion is a work of man,” Charles Finney said, meaning that conversions can be induced simply by manipulating the right conditions. All too often, today’s ministries exhibit the same naturalistic attitude, the only difference being that they have access to vastly more sophisticated marketing and promotional techniques.

“The nonprofit economy has become more like the for-profit world,” writes Thomas Berg. . . . Sometimes the marketing hype shades into subtle deception. . . . This is the ultimate danger of doing the Lord’s work in the flesh: It may eventually lead to outright sin. We can be so driven by ministry goals that we are blinded to the use of unethical methods. Without really thinking, we begin to stretch the truth to enhance our image and attract donors. A former high-ranking executive in a parachurch organization told me he had resigned after discovering an internal “culture of lying”– a regular pattern of shading the truth and cutting ethical corners in order to look better and win influence– all for the good of the ministry, of course. It is a modern form of thinking we can “speak lies in the name of the Lord” (Zech. 13:3).

I got my husband the new Casting Crowns cd, The Altar and the Door, for Christmas. Today in the car it was playing, and in the first song there’s a bridge where talking can be heard over the music, the gist of the talking being that modern Christians miss the point drastically and hurt the cause of Christ. At one point, the speaker says, “Maybe the best thing we can do is just get out of the way.”

At that point a confident, 6-year-old voice spoke up decisively from the back seat: “They’re wrong. The best thing we can do is worship Him!”

Point well taken! Let’s see: the song recommends withdrawal; the 6yo recommends positive action. The song focuses on human failure; the 6yo focuses on redemption. The song is angry; the 6yo is hopeful and confident in God.

I like Casting Crowns very much. But in this case, I’m ruling in favor of the 6-year-old. 

I really enjoyed being in church today. There was something so wholehearted and direct about it. I found the worship very engaging, with some great leadership on the guitar. I don’t know why, but I’ve felt pretty dead lately during the worship segment of the service. Maybe I’ve been grieving. What I loved most about my old church was playing the piano with my friends on the worship team. For the first time this morning, I felt a desire to play again.

I’ve never heard “Do You Hear What I Hear?” done as a worship song before, but I’ve loved the song since learning it in my piano lesson around age 11. The pastor pointed out how subversive it is: the shepherd boy speaks to the mighty king. The categories of class are upended. This is one example of the way the gospel turns things upside down. The Kingdom of God does away with politics as usual.

Anyway, I found myself weeping. That’s usually a good thing, despite the fact that I’m not a graceful weeper–more of a snotty-nosed gasper.

Another thing that got to me this weekend was the old Bing Crosby movie Going My Way. It belongs to a more innocent age, and makes no pretense of being “realistic.” It used to be a must-see every Christmas, along with Miracle on 34th Street and Holiday Inn, but I haven’t watched it in years. I found myself moved to tears by the simple kindness in the story, and the closing scene just destroyed me.

I think it’s partly because kindness matters to me. By nature, I’m a volatile, selfish person. But by grace, I can become a kind, gentle person. That’s who I want to be more than anything.

The other reason I was so moved has to do with a different sort of longing for kindness, one I ignore till I walk unsuspectingly into it–like falling down an abandoned mineshaft. I’m not sure if it’s a personal desire to be shown kindness, or more of a longing to see the Kingdom come. That’s what we’re made for–the new Heaven and the new Earth, ruled by the true King. Something as unpretentious as a 1944 black and white movie can give me a glimpse of it and trigger the fiercest longing.

I’ve been following a 61-day chronological Bible-reading plan I got from Biblegateway. (It’ll take me longer than 61 days.) Leviticus 26 is strong medicine. It shows me how God’s character is the source of truths I’ve read in 2 other books lately–Boundaries with Kids and Total Truth.

God is the ultimate boundary-making parent. “If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit” (26:3) He will make all of nature an abundant resource and give peace, safety, and protection from enemies (26:4-13).

BUT the results are pretty chilling if you make idols or fail to carry out his role for you: “I will destroy your sight and drain away all your life,” he says. You’ll be defeated by enemies. Your crops will fail. You will “flee even when no one is pursuing you” (26:14-23). Yikes! God sees this as “correction,” and if we refuse to accept it, it gets worse: “I will abhor you,” he warns (26:30). All kinds of death and destruction and hardship will come. 

Finally, he says that repentence will trigger his mercy (26:40-46). But even then, the sin must be paid for. He’ll stop “abhorring,” but he’ll let the Israelites stay slaves for awhile in foreign lands while the land continues to recover from their bad stewardship. “They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees,” he says. “Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely” (26:43-44).

God is laying out the boundaries very clearly here–how he interwove the spiritual and physical worlds to work according to his just laws. He spells out what the consequences will be for breaking these laws. Boundaries with Kids outlined exactly this method in parenting. You have to spell out the consequences beforehand so the kids can read the outcome in terms of their own decisions.

But wow, what consequences are laid out here! I shared it with my husband when I read it, and we talked for awhile, going back over some big decisions we’ve made over the last year, just to make sure we had nothing to hide from God. It was a good, confirming, heart-searching time, and we ended up reassured that we were on the right track. But I’m thankful for a passage like this that makes me really, REALLY want to be sure I’m being honest with God.

The emphasis on paying for sin even after you’ve repented reminded me of I Cor. 3:12-14: “If any man builds on the foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through flames.”

This teaching has always been a favorite of my husband’s, a good measuring rod for any endeavor. It shows that even in the New Testament, God is a parent that allows his children to learn from consequences. It’s worth thinking about how to translate this into my earthly parenting.

This passage appeared in Total Truth a few days after I read it in the Bible. (I love it when that happens.) Pearcey is talking about doing God’s work in God’s way, not man’s way. She writes, “We can go so far as to say that if Christians win their battles by worldly methods, then they have really lost. Visible results can be deceptive. . .  The opposite is likewise true: If Christians use the weapons God has ordained~if we lay our talents at His feet, dying to our own pride and ambition, obeying biblical moral principles, empowered by His Spirit, guided by a Christian worldview perspective~then even if by external standards we seem to have lost, we have really won. Outsiders looking on may conclude that we have failed. Even Christian friends and leaders may shake their heads disapprovingly and advise us that we’ve made a mistake. But if we have genuinely given our lives over to God’s purposes and are being led by Him, then we have won a battle in the unseen world.” (363)

I’m thankful for the way God communicates with us through several sources at a time. It gives me peace.

These words from Nancy Pearcey are food for thought (and confirmation of thought already fed):

“A Christian church may be biblical in its message and yet fail to be biblical in its methods. Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, said that the Lord’s work must be done in the Lord’s way, if it is to have the Lord’s blessing. We must express the truth not only in what we preach but in how we preach it. A Christian organization may be doing the Lord’s work–but if it is acting on human zeal and willpwer, using secular methods of promotion and publicity, without visible love among staff and coworkers, then it is merely another form of human achievement, accomplishing little for the Kingdom of God….

Working in the flesh, they may well produce impressive results in the visible world. Churches and parachurch ministries may generate a great deal of publicity, hold glamorous conferences, attract huge crowds, bring in large donations, produce books and magazines, and wield political influence in Washington. But if that work is done in the flesh, then no matter how successful it appears, it does little to build God’s kingdom. When the Lord’s work is done in merely human wisdom, using human methods, then it is not the Lord’s work any longer.

The only way the church can establish genuine credibility with nonbelievers is by showing them something they cannot explain or duplicate through their own natural, pragmatic methods~something they can explain only by invoking the supernatural.” (363)

(In church on Sunday, the pastor made a similar point about not hindering the power of the gospel by focusing on the way it’s presented.)