The human dilemma . . .

Today I wanted to offer you something to think about that comes from Francis A. Schaeffer. I've been perusing his The God Who Is There lately, and I came across the following material that I found both shocking and culturally relevant to post-modern Christians in a twenty-first century world. Let me know what you think. The quotes below come from pages 193ff of Schaeffer's book.

The historic Christian position is that man's dilemma has a moral cause. God, being non-determined, created man as a non-determined person. this is a difficult idea to anyone thinking in twentieth-century terms because most twentieth-century thinking sees man as determined. He is determined either by chemical factors, . . . or by psychological factors . . . . In either case, or as a result of the fusion of these two, man is considered to be programmed. If this is the case, then man is not the tremendous thing the Bible says he is, made in the image of God as a personality who could make a free first choice. Because God created a true universe outside of Himself (not as an extension of His essence), htere is a true history which exists. Man as created in God's image is therefore a significant man in a significant history, who could choose to obey the commandment of God and love Him, or revolt against Him. There is no reformed theologian, however strong his reformed theology might be, who would not say that Adam in this way was able fundamentally to change the course of history.

This is the wonder of man and the wonder of history. . . . Man can understand and respond to the One who, having made him and communicated with him, called upon him to show that he loved Him by simple command, 'Don't do this'. . . . This is the infinite-personal God calling on personal man to act by choice. . . . He could so act by choice because he was created to be different from the animal, the plant and the machine.

To ask that man should have been made so that he was not able to revolt is to ask that God's creation should have ceased after He created plants and animals. It is to ask that man should be reduced to machine programming. It is to ask that man should not exist.

If one begins to consider the Christian system as a total system, one must begin with the infinite-personal triune God who is there, and who was communicating and loving before anything else was.

That's a lot to take in for one day, but I wanted to add a postscript. This morning in philosophy class I acknowledge that the only true knowledge of God begins with God's initiation. That is, God is reaching out to me to communicate to and relate with me. That is the record of Scriptue, and, I argue, the record of human history and experience. I cannot come to God on my own abilities or knowledge, even though those things may be gifts from that same God. No, the only way to have a relationship with God is through the initiative he shows to us all in the grace of Jesus. Chew on these things for a while and let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading!