The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian View of the Church:4-5 by Francis A. Schaeffer

Author:Francis A. Schaeffer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Schaeffer, Classics, Christian
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO: The Loneliness of Man

Our generation is hungry — hungry for love, for beauty, for meaning, for stable morals and law. The “dust of death” covers all. And as in Jeremiah’s day, there is with us the unsatisfied longing for a sufficient comforter.

Jeremiah said it well in Lamentations 1:16: “For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter who should relieve [bring back] my soul is far from me.” Why did the Jews in Jeremiah’s day seek comfort and not find it, seek satisfaction and not find it? Because they had forgotten the end of man, the purpose of man. I want to commend something to you very strongly. Often when we in the evangelical and orthodox circles talk about the purpose of man, we quote from the first answer of the Westminster Catechism: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God.” And often the sentence is ended there. This completely changes our Reformation forefathers’ understanding of the Scriptures. If you are going to give the complete biblical answer, you must finish their sentence: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” That changes the whole view of life.

Our calling is to enjoy God as well as glorify Him. Real fulfillment relates to the purpose for which we were made — to be in reference to God, to be in personal relationship with Him, to be fulfilled by Him, and thus to have an affirmation of life. Christianity should never give any onlooker the right to conclude that Christianity believes in the negation of life. Christianity is able to make a real affirmation, because we affirm that it is possible to be in personal relationship to the personal God who is there and who is the final environment of all He created. All else but God is dependent; but being in the image of God, man can be in personal relationship to that which is ultimate and has always been. We can be fulfilled in the present and the future in the highest level of our personality and in all parts and portions of life.

There is nothing Platonic in Christianity. It is not the soul alone that is to be fulfilled and the body and the intellect to be minimized. There does exist an intellectualism which is destructive to Christianity, but that is not true Christian intellectual comprehension. The whole man is to be fulfilled; there is to be an affirmation of life that is filled with joy. I must say that when we look at many Christians, we do not find the excitement that Christianity should bring in their lives. We do not find them being fulfilled in the whole man in relationship to the God who is there.

And so too in the days of Jeremiah we find that the Jews had turned away from the true fulfillment. However, these ancient Jews were not nearly as bad off as the modern man of our own post-Christian world. They turned to false gods, but at least they still knew something was there.

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