Hanging with Francis

I am taking part of my sojourn here at New Home to re-read some items which I have read before but need a bit more time to mentally roll over in my mind (I've got nothing but time right now). Currently, I am in the process of re-reading Francis Schaeffer.

I've read Escape from Reason, A Christian Manifesto, and True Spirituality, am working my way through The God Who Is There, and have The Coming Evangelical Disaster (with The Mark of a Christian) to go (and that is scarcely all that the man wrote). In reading his work, one cannot help but take notice of the fact of the sweep of his knowledge base (philosophy, theology, the arts) and his ability to follow the flow through history.

His level of intellectualism and methodical reasoning also give me pause, because he represents a line of though which has become increasingly absent from the church, and it's ability to interact with the world. Not just the church though; it's the world as well.

We've lost the ability to think, to look hard at an issue and ponder its application. It is difficult to fathom that within 2-3 generations we lost this ability; we are, as someone so eloquently put it, "entertaining ourselves to death". The world has by and large lost the ability to honestly deal with the nature of truth, having drowned it out in a flood of shallow entertainment and adherence to idealistic nihilism that proclaims "I am correct no matter what" conveniently ignoring the implications and ends of their thought patterns and beliefs; the church has lost the ability to honestly deal with the world by retreating into an faith without intellect and proclamation without engagement.

The world I cannot directly help, as it has little interest at the moment in correcting itself. The church, as the body of Christ, I am commanded to help, or at least try to: the question is, does it have the same interest in being helped?