Francis Schaeffer on Truth

Truth doesn’t depend upon agreeing with me.

That statement comes from an article by R. Greg Grooms called “Remembering Francis Schaeffer,” which appeared in the Summer 2002 issue of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, which was titled, “The Legacy of Francis Schaeffer.”  Here is the quote in its fuller context:

For Schaeffer, adopting a creed did not prevent dialogue, but rather was the basis upon which he communicated with those who disagreed with him.  When my Catholic mother-in-law-to-be came to Switzerland in 1978, she attended the discussion Schaeffer led each Saturday evening in the mountainside chapel near his home.  It was typical of the discussions that Schaeffer fostered in those years, full of conflicting opinions and extravagant personalities.  What struck her most forcefully about the discussion was the diversity of viewpoints it contained.  “I can’t believe you let these people disagree with you so much, Dr. Schaeffer,” she said afterwards.  “That’s the heart and soul of what we do here,” he replied.  “Truth doesn’t depend upon agreeing with me.”

The Jesus you didn’t know existed (because he doesn’t!)

We took an afternoon trip to Borders today and I briefly passed through the Religion section on my way to Computers and then on to the Business section.  A couple books in Religion caught my eye and this was one of them: Jesus: A Story of Enlightenment by Deepak Chopra.

One of the first things I noticed (as intended by the publisher) was a blurb on the front cover by Eckhart Tolle (I have no idea who he is) that reads:

A gripping tale of one man’s archetypal journey through confusion, doubt, and despair to self-annihilation and the realization of his true identity as the ‘light of the world.’

If you stop and ponder that for a moment or two, and assuming you’ve read at least one of the four Gospels in the New Testament, that should strike you as mildly disturbing.  “Journey through confusion, doubt, and despair?”  I will grant that Jesus grew in his understanding and comprehension of who he was, fueled largely by much time reading Scripture and in prayer, but still, he was and is God in human form.

Division AND Truth (notice the conjunction)

Lord willing, I’ll be teaching on James 3:13-18 tomorrow evening.  Part of my preparation was to read J. A. Motyer’s commentary on James from The Bible Speaks Today series.  He made an observation about division and truth that is worth repeating:

Church history would have a very different tale to tell — as would, indeed, the bit of church history that is being written in our own day — if Christian people had paid attention to the fact that James contrasts division and truth.  Over and over again the formation of a party, the growth of a clique, the promotion of a split have been justified as standing for the truth.  It is said that, unless we divide, the truth cannot be safeguarded; the body from which we are dividing has rejected all truth, or this truth or that.  But when Paul withstood Peter to the face over the really cardinal issue of the truth of the gospel (Gal. 2:14), he did not separate, form a party, send word to the churches he had founded that they were now a new denomination.  The sad thing is that we who are born into a divided, wretchedly denominational situation are inured from birth to separation, and we have lost James’ realization that in Christian division, as in time of war, truth is the first casualty.

Which reminds me of something Francis Schaeffer once said. . . . “Truth doesn’t depend on agreeing with me.”