I love the way truth and compassion blend seamlessly in Francis Schaeffer’s writing. In this quote from The God Who Is There, “the plague” is referring to Albert Camus’ book of the same name, in which (according to Schaeffer – I haven’t read it) the author posits the false dichotomy of having to choose between helping the sick and fighting against God, and ignoring their plight and remaining on God’s side. But Shaeffer argues that Christians have the only clear reason to fight sin and it’s results:
A Christian can fight what is wrong in the world with compassion and know that as he hates these things, God hates them too. God hates them to the high price of the death of Christ.
But if I live in a world of nonabsolutes and would fight social injustice on the mood of the moment, how can I establish what social justice is? What criterion do I have to distinguish between right and wrong so that I can know what I should be fighting? Is it not possible that I should in fact acquiesce in evil and stamp out good? The world love cannot tell me how to discern, for withing the humanistic framework love can have no defined meaning. But once I comprehend that the Christ who came to die to end “the plague” both wept and was angry at the plague’s effects, I have a reason for fighting that does not rest merely on my momentary disposition, or the shifting consensus of men.
Also read/listened to recently:
- Hubby: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
- Me: The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis
- Miss A: still listening to Dickens’ Little Dorrit
- Mr. D: The Story of the Greeks by H.A. Guerber
- Mr. E: another volume of The Complete Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz
- Little L: Anatole Over Paris by Eve Titus
- Little R: his favorite stories from Richard Scarry’s Best Story Book Ever
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