Preface
Preface
This book is being published after a number of others, but in a certain sense it should have been my first. Without the material in this book there would be no L’Abri. In 1951 and 1952 I faced a spiritual crisis in my own life. I had become a Christian from agnosticism many years before. After that I had become a pastor for ten years in the United States, and then for several years my wife Edith and I had been working in Europe. During this time I felt a strong burden to stand for the historical Christian position and for the purity of the visible Church. Gradually, however, a problem came to me—the problem of reality. This had two parts: first, it seemed to me that among many of those who held the orthodox position one saw little reality in the things that the Bible so clearly said should be the result of Christianity. Second, it gradually grew on me that my own reality was less than it had been in the early days after I had become a Christian. I realized that in honesty I had to go back and rethink my whole position.
We were living in Champèry at that time, and I told Edith that for the sake of honesty, I had to go all the way back to my agnosticism and think through the whole matter. I’m sure that this was a difficult time for her and I’m sure that she prayed much for me in those days. I walked in the mountains when it was clear, and when it was rainy I walked backward and forward in the hayloft of the old chalet in which we lived. I walked, prayed, and thought through what the Scriptures taught, reviewing my own reasons for being a Christian.
As I rethought my reasons for being a Christian, I saw again that there were totally sufficient reasons to know that the infinite-personal God does exist and that Christianity is true. In going further, I saw something else which made a profound difference in my life. I searched through what the Bible said concerning reality as a Christian. Gradually I saw that the problem was that with all the teaching I had received after I was a Christian, I had heard little about what the Bible says about the meaning of the finished work of Christ for our present lives. Gradually the sun came out and the song came. Interestingly enough, although I had written no poetry for many years, in that time of joy and song I found poetry beginning to flow again—poetry of certainty, an affirmation of life, thanksgiving, and praise. Admittedly, as poetry it is very poor, but it expressed a song in my heart that was wonderful to me.
This was and is the real basis of L’Abri. Teaching the historic Christian answers and giving honest answers to honest questions are crucial, but it was out of these struggles that the reality came, without which an incisive work like L’Abri would not have been possible. I, and we, can only be thankful.
These principles, which I worked out in Champèry, were first delivered as talks at a Bible camp in an old barn in Dakota. This was in July of 1953. They were worked out on scraps of paper in the pastor’s basement. The Lord gave something very special from these messages, and I’m still meeting those who as young people had their thinking and their lives changed there. After L’Abri began in 1955, I preached these same messages in Huémoz in the late winter and early spring of 1964. This was their final form and the form in which they are recorded on the L’Abri tapes. The Lord has used the tapes in a way that has moved us deeply, not only with those with spiritual problems, but also for many who had psychological needs as well. We pray that this written form of these studies will be as useful as the tapes have been in many parts of the world.
Huémoz, Switzerland
May 1971