Frank Schaeffer interview on the Sean McDowell Show
Admittedly, as a rational apologist I had trouble listening to Mr. Schaeffer’s (propositional) statements and beliefs. But when I forced myself to re-engage and put on my aesthetic apologetics lens, I was able to see some existential overtones, which evoked imagination so I was better able to sympathize with his story. And by “story,” I don’t mean some flippant term that pigeon-holds his entire life, but a narrative within the moral tradition of his seemingly atheistic existentialism. I was able to appreciate his grandpa role wanting to pass on his “survival of the kindest” to his grandchildren, which is a virtue intrinsic to his moral framework. How he grounds his morality, however, is another matter.
It appears that in his stage of “spiritual” development (moral is probably the better word), it’s such that his faith in any god, let alone the Judeo-Christian deity, requires more certainty than he can muster. So, he leans on the faith of others to give his life meaning, which is one reason why he can attend church as an atheist. All this to say, he seems content that his narrative needs the (horizontal) narrative of others to give his narrative meaning. To be fair, the telos of all human beings is best accounted for by personal narratives. With that said, the lack of a (vertical) narrative between him and his Creator is something I hope he re-introduces into his story.
We don’t have the luxury of eternity to make up our minds, as he alludes to, but then again if we did, we’d be as God, knowing all, which is a strange way to look at mortal life. This is why there’s no escaping faith, which can be nurtured in a prison cell (just listen to the voice of martyrs) or in a flea infested room (just listen to Corrie and Nollie ten Boom).
I’d like to close by saying that as a Christian author (whose passion is to pen poetry and short stories with themes of psychology, theology and ethics that corroborate the Scriptures, not just because that’s the religion of my choosing, but because the Christian worldview offers the best literary scaffolding to address the existential dialectics of faith and doubt, hope and despair), my personal conviction is that story is the best method to share one’s beliefs with the world because story is indistinguishable from meaning, which we crave by the boatload. Right or wrong, true or false, story accounts for some meaning. But if we’re going to all that trouble to tell a story, we might as well use reason to speak truth to people who are designed to be set free by that truth, which is what gives it eternal meaning not just temporal meaning.