Back in the 1960’s a cultural revolution swept what we call western culture. A heady mix of rock music, sexual freedom and altered states of consciousness through drugs or Eastern meditation, led to a whole new mindset and understanding of life. It was like a coming of age, where freedom, peace and love were there for the taking! The church and Christianity belonged to the past age!
One of my mentors when I was coming to biological adulthood in the early 70’s, was a man called Francis Schaeffer. He established a retreat and teaching community at a village called L’Abri in Switzerland. Many young people who questioned the revolution flocked to this centre.
Schaeffer wrote many influential books around this time, with titles such as The God who is There, The Church Before the Watching World, the Church at the End of the 20th Century, the Mark of the Christian. These were stirring, perceptive, and strident calls for faith and active discipleship.
Another of his books was called Escape from Reason. Schaeffer argued that Christian faith was reasonable – that reason led us to faith, as the Christian faith was the true explanation of reality. It was the revelation of truth. On the other hand, other approaches were an escape from reason and required a leap of faith because they failed to account for the reality of the world.
By so doing Schaeffer provided a framework for seeing faith and reason being locked together. He also equipped a generation with a framework to critique, rather than unwittingly accept, the changes happening in western culture. He also challenged the church to rise to its calling in the context of a changing world.
Much water has flowed under the bridge since this time, and Schaeffer passed away some decades ago, but his perceptions about truth and reality still ring true to me. Our faith involves our minds, our thinking. The New Testament points to this in so many ways: people believed in the resurrection because of the evidence for it; people were called to evaluate and consider Jesus’ claim to be the way, the truth and the life; people were warned to beware of false teaching and false prophets, of wolves in sheep’s clothing; people were told parables they had to think about to discern truth, etc.
That’s the way it works: here it is; here is the evidence; think about it; ask questions about it; examine it; decide about it. Faith cooperates with reason to explore and examine truth, whether scientific, philosophic or what we call ‘religious’.
Following Christ is an invitation to think freshly and creatively about the life and mission He has given us. May He enable us to do just that and invite others to think about the claims Jesus makes upon their lives.