It is much more comfortable, of course, to go on speaking the gospel only in familiar phrases to the middle classes. But that would be as wrong as, for example, if Hudson Taylor had sent missionaries to China and then told them to learn only one of three separate dialects that the people spoke. In such a case, only one group out of three could hear the gospel. We cannot imagine Hudson Taylor being so hard-hearted. Of course he knew men do not believe without a work of the Holy Spirit, and his life was a life of prayer for this to happen; but he also knew that men cannot believe without hearing the gospel. Each generation of the Church in each setting has the responsibility of communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting.In a parallel way we are being as overwhelmingly unfair, even selfish, towards our own generation...The reason often we cannot speak to our children, let alone other people's, is because we have not taken the time to understand how different their thought-forms are from ours...So what is said in this book is not merely a matter of intellectual debate. It is not of interest only to academics. It is utterly crucial for those of us who are serious about communicating the Christian gospel in the twentieth century.
-Francis Schaeffer, Escape from Reason
Last night when I reread this section, it reminded me of a discussion/debate in the women's bible study I teach at my church. As we discussed Paul's passion for the gospel and the role of apologetics in evangelism, I was once again confronted with the false dichotomy of the heart and mind. Certainly we have no power outside of or independent of God to persuade anyone to have faith in Him, but apparently I've delluded myself into thinking that more people than not accept the role of the intellect as an instrument of God.
What I was able to gather in our discussion was that God's power is only actualized when the fact of Jesus' sacrifice for our sins is invoked in an outreach situation. This made me wonder if perhaps Romans 1:16 is being totally misunderstood:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Romans 1:16
God's power certainly is not limited to what we would consider the doctrinal content of the gospel, but I have a feeling that this is exactly the nature of my battle this week.
