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Posted on 10/07/2011 1:10:41 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Once a self-identified founding member of the American “religious right,” Franky Schaeffer now says that “religion is dumb” and “man made.” Although Schaeffer grew up among some of the most influential evangelicals of the twentieth century, and worked as one of them during much of his adult life, he now believes the Bible is a fraud and that Christianity teaches “misogynistic” practices.
Schaeffer, the son of the late evangelical theologian, philosopher, and founder of the L’Abri Fellowship, Francis Schaeffer, discussed his newest book at the Kansas City Public Library on September 27, 2011. His recent book, Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway tells the story of Schaeffer’s conservative Christian upbringing, and how his mother, Edith Schaeffer, is “a woman who’s better than her theology.” Her theology is that of the “religious right” that Schaeffer now hates and the book tells the story of how the religious right has supposedly ruined America, as politics have “been folded into ‘bring America back to God.’” More broadly, he said, the book’s message is to “not make generalizations about each other,” because there are many people just like his mother among evangelicals.
The problem, Schaeffer explained, is belief with certainty. “Certainty kills,” he explained,“no one ever bombed an abortion clinic or a mosque after yelling ‘but I could be wrong.’” That example he said, “sums up the difference of my philosophy now and where I would have been speaking 35 or 40 years ago to you about all my certainties of who the bad guys are and who the good guys” are. Now he believes, with seeming certainty, that the Bible is the “unauthorized [biography] about the deity” written by “bronze age schmucks who were finding ways to control their wives and daughters ... who in hindsight were trying to say ‘see? God made us do it so it’s ok.’”
“Life is not long enough to conclude anything, it’s only enough to try your best along the way,” Schaeffer said, and further, “if salvation is correct doctrine, then everyone is lost.” To those who hold religious beliefs he said, “believe me, you will someday reach a point where you know that was dumb.” Schaeffer said his life, “for better or worse, worse mainly, happens to intersect the rise of the the religious right in America, which also happens to have ruined the United States.” He believes a deity exists, and accepts some select moral teachings from Christianity but, “Jesus had to be separated in my mind from a political movement before I could even consider looking at the teaching again as anything but an appendage of a system that failed.”
Schaeffer presented his views as an alternative to the opposing views of “new atheists” such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and orthodox Christians. “Secularism” is not the answer, he said, it “is not what it’s cracked up to be,” but also, “it’s not God’s fault that there’s dumb stuff in the Bible.” According to Schaeffer, we are not “stuck with the stupidity of Christianity,” but are free to create our own conception of God, reality, and morality. Not believing in the Christian God “doesn’t mean that a God that loves me … and created love and personality and relationships in a universe that otherwise would be dark and cold isn’t out there.”
For many years a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Schaeffer believes that “the God of the Bible [is] distinct from any deity that might be out there, he, she or it.” It is dogmatic belief in the Bible and the God of the Bible that, according to Schaeffer, has ultimately caused “the rise of the religious right and the decline of the country it has so impacted.” He claimed there is a “direct relationship between the religious right” and “what’s happening worldwide with our economy right now,” because “the people who are in Congress are ideologues” driven by “theologicized politics.” This is problematic because “when you put a theological twist on anything, the person who disagrees with you is therefore lost” and in disagreements, “you’re not mistaken about abortion or tax policy, you’re an agent of Satan.”
Schaeffer claimed he neither sides with the right or the left because he has “seen the same blood in your eye fundamentalist zeal in both camps.” In the end of his talk, he was at least somewhat consistent, and said “if you disagree with me, you’re not going to hell, you’re probably right!”
Well, maybe there’s hope for little Frankie because his Dad came to the same opinion and he decided to start from scratch and find out if God was real. He wrote some of the best books and lead many intellectuals to the Lord. One of my favorites is “He Is There and He is Not Silent”. Feel sad for him because he just sounds angry. Saw Francis Schaeffer at the airport once and he was about 5ft tall and in his Swiss knickers. Quite a sight. Great man!
Lol
He goes from fundamentalist, to strict Eastern Orthodox, to secularist. Sad.
If a police officer talks to 8 witnesses at a crime scene and finds that each has a different version of what happened, he can’t throw up his hands and state that the truth is unknowable.
So it is with life - sometimes you have to dig a little deeper...
“THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE TRUTH”
...Are you absolutely sure?
Give them that reply next time someone says that to you.
How did he come to that conclusion? Enforced amorality and atheism for a man who wants to fit into the mainstream.
However, each of us make our own decisions, and there are many who manage to hold to their faith despite the failings of those around them. It appears that Franky chose the route of bitterness and rejection instead of forgiving those who disappointed him, and crying out to God to help him live a more authentic and faithful Christian life.
I remember long ago talking with a man who rejected his religious faith and wrote what he said was a devastating refutation of Christianity and the Bible. However, he did not have the heart to have it published, explaining that he did not want to have a hand in destroying the faith of others. I hope that God had mercy on that man's soul.
The Apostle Paul warns: "not not let many be teachers, for they will have a double judgment." By writing what is apparently a polemical book against Christianity, I fear that Franky Schaeffer has placed himself in grave spiritual danger.
Wasn't this a Ron Reagan thing - trash the parent as a way to 'make it'... Kind of a way for the talentless children of conservatives to get attention. Seems there are others - anyone with a list?
Franky Schaeffer didn't start having problems until about three or four years after his father's death.
His then-dream (decades before Sherwood Films came along) was to produce and direct big-budget films that didn't compromise the Christian message, nor compromise on filmmaking quality. His first film was called Wired To Kill. It was a huge commercial and financial disaster. Franky didn't allow his financial backers (mostly evangelicals) to see the script before he took their money.
Franky's crisis of faith coincided with the fallout over his terrible films. IMO it was no coincidence. Franky's been harboring a grudge against his family and evangelicalism ever since.
Schaeffer is certain he is correct.
Francis Schaeffer was his father. His father was a great Christian philosopher, thinker, teacher.
It is scary.
On the other hand (and this meant to be encouraging), when such an apostasy occurs, there is usually some glaring moral fall—i.e., something so glaring that it takes no finely-tuned “discernment” to ferret it out: an illicit affair or marriage, frequenting the bus stops or smut shops, etc. I am not speculating or attributing, just sayin’. In lives where there is no such elephant-in-the-room moral lapse, total intellectual rot is rare.
Ping to my post #49. IMO you may find your smoking gun.
People who claim to believe in nothing want to tell the rest of humanity what is right or wrong. And they usually haven’t thought out their position well enough to know that they have no basis to tell anyone anything.
Franky has become a bitter man!
Even Pilate said, about Jesus, “I find no fault in this man.”
I believe every man would make that statement, if he focused on the: “Holy, perfect Son Of God.” Yet it is the greatest understatement of all times.
Just think: “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through His Son Jesus Christ.” (John 3:17)
“But He (God)made Him (Jesus) to be sin for us, who had no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Cor. 5:21)
“Being confident of this very thing, He that hath begun a good work in you, will perforn it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil. 1:6)
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
1 Corinthians 1:13-25
Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so no one can say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.) 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. 18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”[c]
20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
Gee, isn't that close to the same line the serpent fed to Eve in the garden? "You shall be like God."--Genesis 3. Just more moral relativism. As Ecclesiastes says "there's nothing new under the sun."
Yah, Frankie. Christians hate sex. That’s why they have such large families. orc.
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