2 The Legal, But Not Only The Legal
Today most non-Christians exclude any real notion of law. They do this because they have no absolute anywhere in the universe, and without an absolute one cannot really have any morals as morals. For them everything is relative; they have no real circle of law. For them there is no circle inside which there is right, in contrast to that which is outside the circle and therefore wrong. To the Christian this is not so. God does exist, and he has a character; there are things which are outside the commandments he has given us as the expression of his character. For example, there is therefore a proper legal circle in regard to the visible church. The visible church should be a true church. It will not be a perfect church, but it should be a true one. And marriage is the proper circle for sexual relationships. The new morality, following the new theology and lacking the Christian epistemology, the Christian Scripture, and the Christian God, can find no real legal circle and so finds no way to set boundaries.
The fault of orthodoxy is that though it has a legal circle, it tends too often to act as though merely to be within the legal circle is enough. We should be thankful for the legal circle—a real absolute, something we can know and within which we can function—because it means that we do not have to act on the assumption that we can, or must, weigh all the results of our acts out to infinity, when, being finite, we cannot see the results of our acts more than one or two steps ahead. Having to act as a finite god is painful. But what a tragedy to think that because we are in the proper legal circle, everything is finished and done—as though marriage, the church and other human relationships are static and that only the legal circle is important.
Even in justification, many Christians who are perfectly orthodox in doctrine look back upon their justification as though it were the end of all, at least until death comes. It is not. Birth is essential to life, but the parent is not glad only for the birth of his child. He is thankful for the living child that grows up. Whoever saw a couple get engaged simply because they wanted to enjoy the marriage ceremony? What they want to do is to live together. So it is with becoming a Christian. In one way you can say that the new birth is everything; in another way you can say that really it is very little. It is everything because it is indispensable to begin with, but it is little in comparison with the living existential relationship. The legal circle of justification does not end statically; it opens to me a living person-to-person communication with the God who exists.
In marriage, in the church and in other human relationships the same thing applies—the proper legal relationship must be there, but if it is static it becomes a dusty monument. It is no longer beautiful. It becomes a flower that dies under a glass. It can only be beautiful if inside the proper legal circle we have a personal relationship which speaks of the personal God who is there. This is our calling, not only to exhibit something substantially real to a watching world but to enjoy it ourselves. I am called to love God with all my heart and soul and mind, and I am called to love my neighbor as myself: each person involved in the proper circle and in the proper relationship.
If we say that personality is not an intrusion in the universe but central, the world has a right to see the Christians, both individually and corporately, living on a personal level. Men must see that we take personality seriously enough, by the grace of God, to act upon it.
There must be an observable indication of this in the midst of the daily life in this present abnormal world, or we have denied the central Christian presupposition.
HUMAN PEOPLE IN OUR CULTURE
When we use the phrase “it is only human,” we are usually referring to something sinful. In this sense, the Christian should feel a calling not to be “human”; but in a more profound sense, the Christian is called to exhibit the characteristics of true humanity, because being a man is not intrinsically being sinful man, but being that which goes back before the Fall, to man made in the image of God.
Therefore, Christians in their relationships should be the most human people you will ever see. This speaks for God in an age of inhumanity and impersonality and facelessness. When people look at us their reaction should be “These are human people”: human because we know that we differ from the animal, the plant and the machine, and that personality is native to what has always been. This is not something only to put forward intellectually—when people observe us their reaction should be “These are human people!”
If they cannot look upon us and say, “These are real people,” nothing else is enough. Far too often young people become Christians and then search among the church’s ranks for real people, and have a hard task finding them. All too often evangelicals are paper people.
If we do not preach these things, talk about them to each other, and teach them carefully from the pulpit and in the Christian classroom, we cannot expect Christians so to act. This has always been important, but it is especially so today because we are surrounded by a world in which personality is increasingly eroded. If we who have become God’s children do not show him to be personal in our lives, then in practice we are denying his existence. People should see a beauty among Christians in their practice of the centrality of personal relationships—in the whole spectrum of life and in the whole culture. This is equivalent today, when many think both man and God are dead, to the songs of wonder and exultation in the Old Testament, sung because God is a living God and not a lifeless idol.
On the final day of a series of lectures I was giving at a Christian college some years ago, the president of the Student Council handed me the following letter written on Student Council stationery:
Dear Dr. Schaeffer,
You have helped me a great deal this week to spot some of the reasons for my rebellion against both the evangelical form of orthodoxy, and to some degree against God. For this I can’t thank you enough, nor can I thank God enough for helping me to see myself a little more clearly. The difficulty, of course, comes in the implementation of my conclusions into my own being, though I trust this will occur.
I am also concerned about the effect that your messages may have on the rest of the campus and on evangelicalism as a whole. You have asserted that Christianity is both a system, orthodoxy, and a personal association with Christ. As such there are some absolutes which we as Christians can depend on and demand of others if they are to be considered truly Christian. With this I agree, although I may not hold to all the absolutes which you have indicated are necessary for the Christian “system.” But the matter which is of concern to me is that there are many here at (——) and in evangelicalism who, because they believe they have true truth, impose their own societal and evangelical, subcultural absolutes on those of us who have had “the roof blown off.” The result is that students are often forced into either accepting evangelicalism, with all of its absolutes, be they Victorian or early twentieth-century, or out into total despair. Believe me, sir, when I say there are many at (——) in this position. In fact, this is what has finally driven many into neo-orthodoxy and skepticism.
This brings me to my final point which is simply this: Now that you have succeeded in “blowing the roof off” for some students, and have instructed evangelicalism to go and do likewise, would you please tell us how evangelicalism can eliminate some of these extraneous absolutes which make orthodoxy (as we know it) almost impossible to swallow. How can evangelicals really become the salt of the earth when many of their absolutes forbid them to even come into contact with the earth? How does the evangelical house clean out enough dust to make it the orthodox house, and then perhaps we will be relevant to the twentieth-century man?
Very Sincerely,
(——)
Student Council President
I do not think that I would agree with this student in all the details involved, but I do agree that there is much dust to clear out. Our task is to deal with the dust, but not to burn down the house in order to remove it.