Francis Schaeffer the man

Many of us know Francis Schaeffer as the philosophical figure in Swiss clothes and a goatee beard giving him the appearance of a guru on the Swiss Alps of a place of refuge called L'Abri. He is well-known as an iconic figure because of his books such as "The God Who is There", "Escape From Reason" and a list of others. Most would imagine he was a great scholar seated in the halls of learning far from the ordinary lives of everyday people. But we are surprisingly wrong.

Schaeffer came from a poor family in a distant county of America. His parents were illiterate and he himself had no books to read until he worked for a rich foreigner who lent or gave him a book on philosophy. That is how he came to love the subject of Philosophy so as to write books from a Christian angle that would counter the Postmodern ideas that would plague the world in the 1960's. I think the Lord provided the means for him to go to college, poor though he was, and then to a Christian Seminary to turn out as a Presbyterian pastor. He was saved in a Presbyterian church, met his wife Edith who helped to nurture him in the refined ways of middle class society, she coming from a good educated family of some means.

Francis Schaeffer came into the Christian community for "such a time as this", that is as a man raised up to help the Church meet the intellectual challenges of Postmodernism. That is the intellectual aspect of the man.

I am more interested in the less known achievements of the man. He was not really a scholar with great credentials despite his books and writings; he was not an original thinker and did not claim to be such; his was the rare gift of reducing the obscure thinking in simple writing which the ordinary people could understand - the gift of the populariser. With his knowledge of both the Bible and Philosophy, he taught Christians how to answer and overcome the challenges offered by Relativism, Humanism and the whole gamut of Postmodernism.

What is more important than his intellectual contribution was teaching the fractured and deeply divided Evangelical Church how to convey the Truths of Scripture in the spirit of love. He had been nurtured by the Presbyterian Church in America, had seen the bitterness of the doctrinal splits between the Orthodox Presbyterians and the liberals (witnessed the carnal name-calling and legalistic disputes and quarrels over doctrines). He saw also divisions over such issues as drinking alcohol: Christians fighting one another with tongs and hammers, tooth and nail over social issues. Edith and he realised that what Evangelical Christianity needed was a model of how to reach out to people differing from us in unconditional love (Agape love) and loving them to win them over (not by preaching down at them, not by dictating doctrines to them). Hence the couple went to Swiss Alps and started the communal living of L'Abri.

Through the L'Abri community Schaeffer and wife reached a new generation of seekers (young intellectuals seeking answers) who were to impact Evangelical Christianity for generations to come. A few names will suffice: Dr Os Guinness (who grew up in Kluang, Malaysia), Jerram Barrs, Jerry Falwell, Dr. Everett Koop, to name a few.

L'Abri has lived on in the lives of the people who were impacted as young seekers, who have not grown up to be influential figures in their own social circles. This is the greatest impact of Francis Schaeffer.