What I Learned Most From Frances A. Schaeffer

Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you-- (Philemon 1:8-9 - ESV)

I became a Christian before I became a teenager. I lived most of my Christian teenage life with a lot of zeal but not according to knowledge. My apologetics was not focus on defending the existents of God or truth claims of Christianity. Instead my focused was on trivial issues like why is the King James Version of the Bible is the only Bible or defending moralism such as avoiding rock music, R-Rated movies, and other typical “Blue Laws” stuff. The tragic part of my teenage years was that there was no one who disciple me in the faith to help grow in knowledge. I craved knowledge. The hunger for the truth of God without the spiritual guidance led me to read really bad theologies like Chick Publications. During my teenager years my entire understanding of the Christian faith was almost entirely based on the Chick publications. I was poisoned with this spiritual trash!

Even while reading the spiritual trash I had some exposure to a few decent apologetic books. I had such zeal to defend the truth claims of the Christianity during my teenage years. I looked forward to the challenge of matching wits with my fellow pagan teenagers who can’t see that Christianity is RIGHT!

During the last semester of my senior year in high school I went to work for a Christian bookstore. The bookstore also had a film rental library. My responsibility at the time was to maintain the film library. Often I would watch some of the films in the library during my lunch break. One day I started to watch episodes of a film series How Should We Then Live by Frances Schaeffer. I was so intrigued by Frances Schaeffer that I started to read some of his books. For the first time I was hearing truth angles of the Christian faith that I was not getting in my spiritual diet from Chick Publications.

My method of apologetic changed over the years because of this man. The one thing I learned most from Frances Schaeffer’s apologetics was that apologetics should always be motivated by love, never to use to win arguments with skeptics. My method of confronting the skeptics during my high school days was to keep coming back with more aggressive refined arguments. My thinking was the more refined the arguments the more the skeptics will have to be compelled to see it MY WAY! It would frustrate me when the skeptic seems to not see the clear evidence for the Christian faith and convert! What I learned from Schaeffer that it is not about winning arguments but presenting the truth in love.