"HOW SHALL WE THEN LIVE?" Francis Schaeffer

Monday, March 14, 2005

A site I always read is Al Mohler. For those of you who have followed the culture wars, I consider Dr. Mohler to be the heir apparent to the late Francis Schaeffer. It was Dr. Schaeffer who truly articulated the difference in worldviews between those who hold to the Christian ethos and those who hold to a view that man is his own God.

Worldmag

"Whatever Happened to the Human Race?( by Schaeffer and Koop) awakened American evangelicals to the anti-human technologies and ideologies that then threatened human dignity. Most urgently, the project put abortion unquestionably on the front burner of evangelical concern. The tenor of the times is seen in the fact that Schaeffer and Koop had to argue to evangelicals in the late 1970s that abortion was not just a 'Catholic' issue. They taught many evangelicals a new and urgently needed vocabulary about embryo ethics, euthanasia, and infanticide. They knew they were running out of time."

"Each era faces its own unique blend of problems," they argued. "Our time is no exception. Those who regard individuals as expendable raw material--to be molded, exploited, and then discarded--do battle on many fronts with those who see each person as unique and special, worthwhile, and irreplaceable."

"Every age is marked by both the 'thinkable' and the 'unthinkable,' they asserted--and the 'thinkable' of late-twentieth century Western cultures was dangerously anti-human. The lessons of the century--with the Holocaust at its center--should be sufficient to drive the point home. The problem, as illustrated by those who worked in Hitler's death camps, was the inevitable result of a loss of conscience and moral truth. They were 'people just like all of us,' Koop and Schaeffer reminded. We seem to be in danger of forgetting our seemingly unlimited capacities for evil, once boundaries to certain behavior are removed."

JB

No comments: