Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Sunday, August 16, 2009 11:34:01 AM
Having started with Francis Schaeffer, after three years I must come back to him to make my point that conservatism depends on the Reformation base that God is not silent, but He has spoken and revealed absolute truth about man and law.
The future of constitutionalism depends on its original Reformation base. Here are Schaeffer’s words from 30 years ago from his book, A Christian Manifest. Christians must recognize that we are engaged a cultural warfare and that the future of the culture is at risk…
“…truth in regard to final and total reality, not just religious reality, but total reality, whether it is material-energy, shaped by impersonal chance, or by the living God and Creator, will determine our position on every crucial issue we face today; our views on the value and dignity of people…the kind of life the individual and society lives…the direction that law will take, and whether there will be freedom or some form of authoritarian dominance.”
Will we resist authoritarian government in all its forms regardless of the label it carries and regardless of its origin? The danger in regard to authoritarian government is that Christians will be still as long as their religious activities, evangelism and life-styles are not disturbed.
We are not excused from speaking, just because the culture and society no longer rest as much as they once did on Christian thinking. Moreover, Christians do not need to be in the majority in order to influence society.
John the Baptist raised his voice, on the basis of the biblical absolutes, against the personification of power in the person of Herod, and it cost him his head. In the Roman Empire the Christians refused to worship Caesar along with Christ, and this was seen by those in power as disrupting the unity of the Empire; for many this was costly.
If we as Christians do not speak out as authoritarian governments grow from within or come from outside, eventually we or our children will be the enemy of society and the state. No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have a real absolute by which to judge its arbitrary absolutes and who speak out and act upon that absolute.
To make no decision in regard to the growth of authoritarian government is already a decision for it.
[Francis Schaeffer, How Should we Then Live, 1976]