True Spirituality

by Francis A. Schaeffer

  Christian Science and Eastern thinking and philosophical idealism are counterfeits, rather than total lies. These philos­ophies are totally wrong in their system and in their direction, but they are not stupid. The reason they trap man is not that they say nothing, but that they are perversions, they are coun­terfeits. Although we do not produce an extension of our essence, there is a revelation of ourselves; just as God did not create by an extension of his essence, but what he has created is a revelation of himself. Concerning man there is a body, and there is a real external world. But the thoughts are first, and they are central. So this is where true spirituality in the Christian life rests: in the realm of my thought-life.

  With this perspective, I would like to reexamine various elements of the Christian life, or true spirituality, as we have seen them in the earlier chapters.

  First, we have said that in the true Christian life or true spirituality, we are to be dead to all things, both good and bad, in order that we should be alive to God. This is always inward; it cannot be outward. Then we are to be as though we have been raised from death back into the external world. This is no longer internal, but external: the flow is from the internal to the external.

  Second, we have spoken of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which is in the inward man. The very word "indwell" signifies that it is internal. Then comes the fruit of the crucified, risen, glorified Lord, which flows into the external world through my body, whether it be the lips, speaking a word, or whether it be my hand with a hammer, building a shelter for someone who needs it.

  Third, love is inward. We say we are to love God enough to be contented. We are to love man enough not to envy. Those are internal, but they flow out into the external world in action.

  Fourth, the reverse of all this. The blows of the battle from the external world of man fall upon me outwardly. The blows fall in many ways—severe ostracism, the locking of a door, the burning of a book, a sharp word or a frown. All of them come upon me in the external world, but if they stayed in the ex­ternal world of my body, as though it were a machine, they would bring no tears to me. Instead they flow through my sense, my body, into that which I am in my thought-world. And as these blows come to my thought-world I either say, "Thank you" to God, as we have already considered, or I rebel against him. In either case, the result is soon seen in the ex­ternal world.

  Five, we have spoken of active passivity, and as such we have spoken of Mary in the birth of Christ. Here is what Mary Baker Eddy says in Science and Health, about the virgin birth: "Those interested in Christian Science have reached the glorious perception that God is the only author of man. The virgin mother conceived this idea of God and gave to her ideal the name of Jesus. That is, Joshua, or Savior. The illumination of Mary's spiritual sense put to silence material law and its order of generation, and brought forth her child by the revela­tion of truth." That is horrible, absolutely horrible. Mary thought of the idea, it argues, and she brought it forth. But no-thing could be further from the truth. That is simply not what occurred. What occurred is that the angel came to Mary and told her that she was going to bring forth, not something showing the immateriality of the material world, but the op­posite. The Holy Spirit conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary the baby Jesus Christ—including his very real body. But while Mary Baker Eddy is wrong, let us not forget the other aspect, that of active passivity. The first word that came from the angel reached Mary and in the thought-world she made a decision. She did not say, "I want," or "I demand my own will"; she raised herself to God and gave her body to God as the handmaiden of the Lord.

  "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me ac-cording to thy will." Mary first of all faced these things in her mind. If she had said "no," there is no reason whatsoever to think that the Holy Spirit would have brought forth physically —truly physically, in her womb—the body of Jesus Christ. Now this is absolutely, totally unique: there is only one space-time virgin birth. But in another sense, as we pointed out, this active passivity is our place. In our thought-world, we are to bow under the work of the Holy Spirit internally, and then as we, in active passivity, give up ourselves to him, the fruit of the resurrected and glorified Christ flows forth through our bodies into the external world.

  Now let us notice two things concerning ourselves—two things in answer to Eastern thinking, whether it has Western names or not, and to purposeless modern thinking. The first of these is that we are created within a finite limit; we cannot create as God created, yet it is wonderful beyond words that I, with all my limitations, am able to bring forth truly into the external world; that I am influencing, from my thought-world, as a true first cause, something that then stands here in stone or paint or steel or wood, or in the lives of other men. Howev­er, the second thing must equally be said. That is that even after I am a Christian I can be a death-producing machine; though I have life, eternal life, if I yield myself to Satan instead of to Christ, I can be an instrument of death to this external world. How sublime to be a man, made in the image of God! But how sobering, that I can bring forth out of my thought-world into the external world either that which leads to life, or that which produces death in other men.

  Here, then, are three conclusions:

  First of all, we must understand that the reality of commu­nion with God, and loving God, must take place in the inward self. There is no use talking about loving God except to understand that it takes place in the inward world of our thoughts. Even communication with men and women must be through the body into the area of the thought-world. If a man and a woman have only an external contact, this cannot be called "communication." It is only mechanical. But a real, per­sonal communication never remains external. It always goes back into the personality. This is true in the area of married life, the man-woman relationship as God meant it to be. Merely to have physical contact is not communication on a personal level. This must flow back into the area of personality. Only then it can be called communication. Thus real com­munication with man and love of man centers in our thought-world. The results may be external and the expression is ex­ternal, but the love is internal. The same is true in our love for God. The result can be external, but love itself is always in­ternal. If Christians can only learn this, very many problems concerning the Christian life would assume a different perspec­tive. Let us understand how important is the world of thoughts. It is this that distinguishes me as a man, in contrast to machines. This is what I am, and my calling is to love God with all my heart and soul and mind.

  The second conclusion is that the real battle for men is in the world of ideas, rather than in that which is outward. All heresy, for example, begins in the world of ideas. That is why, when new workers come to L'Abri, we always stress to them that we are interested in ideas rather than personalities or organizations. Ideas are to be discussed, not personalities or or­ganizations. Ideas are the stock of the thought-world, and from the ideas burst forth all the external things; painting, music, buildings, the love and the hating of men in practice, and equally the results of loving God or rebellion against God, in the external world. Where a man will spend eternity depends on his reading or hearing the ideas, the propositional truth, the facts of the gospel in the external world, and these being carried through the medium of his body into the inner world of his thoughts, and there, inside himself, in his thought-world, either his believing God on the basis of the content of the gospel or his calling God a liar. This is not merely a mystical, existentialist experience. It is not the "final experience" of a man like Carl Jaspers put in religious terms; it is not the hallucina­tory drug experience, without content. It can be expressed rationally. It is ideas, it is the content of the good news. But as far as what it means to a man is concerned, it is whether he accepts it or rejects it in the thought-world that makes the difference: if he believes God, or if he calls him a liar.

  It is for this reason that the preaching of the gospel can never be primarily a matter of organization. The preaching of the gosp
el is ideas, flaming ideas brought to men, as God has revealed them to us in Scripture. It is not a contentless experi­ence internally received, but it is contentful ideas internally acted upon that make the difference. So when we state our doc­trines, they must be ideas, and not just phrases. We cannot use doctrines as though they were mechanical pieces to a puzzle. True doctrine is an idea revealed by God in the Bible and an idea that fits properly into the external world as it is, and as God made it, and to man as he is, as God made him, and can be fed back through man's body into his thought-world and there acted upon. The battle for man is centrally in the world of thought.

  The third conclusion, and the shortest of the three is that the Christian life, true spirituality, always begins inside, in our thought-world. All that has been said in our earlier study of being free in this present life from the bonds of sin, and also of being free in the present life from the results of the bonds of sin, is meaningless jargon, no more than a psychological pill, without the reality that God thinks and we think, and that at each step the internal is central and first. The spiritual battle, the loss or victory, is always in the thought-world.

  Substantial Healing

  of Psychological

  Problems 10

  In the past chapter we discussed the problem of the thought-life. Now we are going on to consider the Christian life in rela­tion to psychological problems. This is the problem of man's separation from himself, and his relationship to himself in the world of thought. Now as God is a person, he thinks, acts, and feels; so I am a person, who thinks, acts, and feels. But that person is a unit. I can think of my parts in various ways: as body and spirit, or as my physical part and my spiritual part. I can quite correctly think of a division of myself of intellect, will, and emotions and it is right that I should think so, because these things are open to observation. But we miss the biblical concept if we miss its emphasis that man is not just the parts, but he is a unit. Our thinking should start there. There is a Francis Schaeffer who is neither just a collection of isolated parts, nor yet just a flow of consciousness. Anything that hurts that unity is destructive of the very basic thing that man is and what man needs to be.

  Once I begin to feel this, I begin to see something far, far beyond our usual restriction of the concept of sin merely to a forensic element. The forensic element is there very strongly, because God is holy, and must declare me guilty, but sin is not just a legal matter. It is something more.

  The truth is not just an abstract truth, there is a truth of what I am. Now we could think of two basic areas in con­sidering the question of man. The first is Being or the question of his existence. This is the dilemma of all men, regardless of what their philosophy is. It is the basic thing which no man can escape, that he does exist. Endless problems are thrown up to the non-Christian man as to the question of his existence, of his Being. No matter who he is, no matter what his philosophy is, he exists and there he is. He cannot ever escape this dilemma even by committing suicide, because if he commits suicide he may think that he can cease to be, but even in his own thought forms, it does not erase the fact that he has been. So we can think first of all of the problem of Being.

  The second area relates to what man is in the circle of his existence. In other words, I am, but what am I in comparison with what God is? I exist, God exists: what is the difference between the circle of my existence and the circle of his exis­tence? And on the other side what is the difference between my existence and the existence of the animals, plants, and uncon­scious materials, because they also exist. So now we have bare existence, and then differentiations of myself from God on one side and the animals, plants, and machines on the other side.

  In the area of bare existence there is no rational answer without the personal Creator, the God of the Bible. I am not saying here that there is no rational answer without the word "God," because one can have the word "God" without its having the content of the infinite-personal God who is the Cre­ator as the Bible presents him. So it is not the word "God" that is the solution. It is the existence of this God of the Bible: without the existence of this personal Creator, there is no ratio­nal answer to bare existence as such. There is no answer without an infinite reference point of a personal nature. Man needs two things as he wrestles with this question. He needs an infinite reference point, but even an infinite reference point is not high enough. The infinite reference point must be of a per­sonal nature, and that is what the God of the Bible is. On the other hand, when as a Christian I bow before this God who is there, then I can move out of the only logical position which the non-Christian can hold, and that is he must dwell cons­ciously but silently in the cocoon of his being, without knowing anything outside of himself. This is the final dilemma of positivism of any variety. It is a hopeless situation: if he is going to be really rationally and intellectually consistent he can only dwell in a silent cocoon; he may know he is there but he cannot make the first move out of it.

  Now when a Christian bows before God he can move out of this, with rationality in place. The other man, man without God, if he is going to be absolutely consistent to his position, may know that he exists, but nothing else. He cannot know that anything else exists. His problem is that he cannot live so; and no man does. Man logically and rationally cannot live in this cocoon of silence. So he is immediately damned in his in­tellect, not just by God saying, "You are a sinner," but by the being that he himself is. God has made him rational. He cannot move from this cocoon and yet he must and so he is crushed by what he is. It is not just a legal act of God that says: "You are guilty"—though that is there. What man is has separated him from himself. The tension is within man. On the other hand, when a Christian bows before the personal Creator for whom man's very existence shouts aloud, then there stretches from his feet to the end of infinity a bridge of answers and real­ity. That is the difference.

  The Christian position states two things: that God is there, this infinite-personal God; and you have been made in his image, so you are there. There is from your feet all the way to the infinite an answer which enables you to make the first move out of your intellectual cocoon. God has spoken, and what he so teaches is a unity with what he has made. Begin­ning with these two things there is a bridge stretched before you, as the moon stretches a silver bridge across the ocean, from the curve of the horizon to yourself.

  Now then, the wonder is that these answers do not end simply with an abstract, bare scholastic understanding of Bing, though that would be wonderful in itself. They end in communion with the infinite-personal reference point who is there, God himself. And that is tremendous. Then you can worship. This is where true worship is found: not in stained-glass windows, candles, or altar pieces, not in contentless expe­riences, but in communion with the God who is there—com­munion for eternity, and communion now, with the infinite-personal God as Abba, Father.

  All of this is introduction, it is a parallel to what follows: We must now ask what I am, as a man. One could give several answers, but "rational and moral" is probably the best thing to say in the twentieth century. I am, I exist, but I exist specifically as rational and moral. Immediately I am distin­guished on the left hand and on the right, as it were. First of all I am separated from God, because he is infinite and I am finite. He exists, I exist; he is a personal God, I have been created per­sonal in his image. But he is infinite and I am finite. On the other hand I am separated from the animals, the plants, and the machines, because they are not personal, and I am personal. So if I am to begin to realize my dilemma in the present life, my separation from myself, it is good to ask, "Who am I?" I am personal, I am rational, I am moral. On the side of my person­ality, I am like God; but on the other side I am like animals and machines, because they too are finite. But I am separated from them because I am personal, and they are not.

  Now the rebellion of man is trying to exist outside the circle in which God made him to exist. He is trying to be what he is not. But as he tries to be what he is not, all
the elements of what he is as man rise up against him. When man stands before judgment, and God judges him, everything that man is has already risen up and judged him in the present life.

  Let us think of this in two areas: on the one hand, in the area of rationality. In this area man tends, and never more so than in our own generation, to rely on a leap of absolute mys­ticism for the real answers, such as the problem of the unity of the whole and the purpose of man. He says on the one hand, "Why does existence have to be seen rationally?" "Why not just accept it as irrational?" Yet he is damned by himself. By the way God has made him he understands that there must be some unity. So every man has the tension within himself, brought about by what God has made him as a rational man. In contrast to the animals and machines, he is rational and his very rationality damns him. Beginning by not bowing to God, with a loud shout of rationality he ends with a jump in the dark. Yet as he jumps in the dark his own rationality is always there to demand a basic answer to the unity of the detail, and thus he is constantly embarrassed, constantly torn within himself. It is not enough for him to begin with himself and work outward. This demands an infinite rationality. So the point I am making here is that in the area of rationality there is a natural separation of man from himself.

  In the area of morality we find exactly the same thing. Man cannot escape the fact of the motions of a true right and wrong in himself: not just a sociological or hedonistic morality, but true morality, true right and true wrong. And yet beginning with himself he cannot bring forth absolute standards and cannot even keep the poor relative ones he has set up. Thus in the area of morality, as in rationality, trying to be what he is not, as he was made to be in relationship to God, he is crushed and damned by what he is.

  Think of it in another way. We can say personality is shown by that which thinks, acts, and feels. Thinking we have already dealt with under the terms of rationality. But let us think of acting. Here is will and action—but everything cuts across my will. I would do a certain thing, but I cannot put my will into infinite action, unlimited action. Even in the small area of a painter's canvas, I cannot do it. I cannot have an un­limited action in the smallest things in life, let alone the larg­est. And so if I am demanding infinite freedom, whether it is in the whole of life, or in a small area of life, I cannot have it; I cannot be God in action and practice. So again I fall to the earth, crushed with natural tensions in myself, and I lie there like a butterfly that someone has touched, with all the lovely things gone from the wings.