|
 In
his book, “No Little People” Francis Schaeffer dares to
include a chapter on “The weakness of God’s Servants.” We
try to quote enough to deal fairly with this thought mover.
*****************
“I
have said that sin is a serious business and we must never
minimize that. But we are also being less than biblical if we
slip into romanticism and utopianism... Utopianism is terribly
cruel because it expects the impossible from people. These
expectations are not based on reality. They stand in opposition
to the genuine human possibilities afforded by the realism of
the Scriptures.
Utopianism
can cause harm. In the home, in the man-woman relationship,
nothing is more cruel than for the wife or husband to build up a
false image in his or her mind and then demand that the husband
or wife measure up to this false romanticism. Nothing smashes
homes more than this. Such behavior is totally contrary to the
Bible’s doctrine of sin. Even after redemption, we are not
perfect in this present life. It is not that we avoid saying sin
is sin, but we must have compassion for each other, too.
Utopianism
is also harmful in the parent-child relationship. When apparent
demands more from his child than the child is capable of giving,
the parent destroys him as well as alienates him. But — and
this is a special twentieth-century malady — the child can
also expect too much of his parents. It cuts both ways. All over
the world, perhaps especially in the Western world,
|
|
children are expecting too much
perfection from adults. And because the parent does not measure
up to the child’s concept of perfection, the child smashes
him.... If we demand, in an of our relationships, either
perfection or nothing, we will the nothing.
Utopianism
enters another area to injure Christians, especially serious
Christians: A Christian can build up a romantic, idealistic
concept of himself and begin expecting absolute perfection from
himself. This, too, is a destructive monster.... Many Christians
vacillate between being permissive in regard to sin toward
themselves, on the one hand, and demanding perfection from
themselves, on the other. They end up battered and crushed
because they do not live up to their own image of perfection.
The worst part is that often this image does not have anything
to do with biblical standards, with the true law and character
of God.
A
Christian must understand that sin is sin and yet know that he
should not establish for himself a model of “perfection or
nothing.” In other words, a Christian can defeat himself in
two ways: One is to forget the holiness of God and the fact that
sin is sin. The Bible calls us to an ever deeper commitment in
giving ourselves to Christ for him to produce his fruit through
us. The other is to allow himself to be worn out by Christians
who turn Christianity into a romanticism. The realism of the
Bible is that God does not excuse sin but neither is he finished
with us when he finds sin in us. And for this, we should be
thankful.”
[Previous
Article] [Next
Article]
|
