I found Sherry's post fascinating... along with the linked blog. As I was reading some of Franky's blog entries, there were a number of reactions. One, I wondered how much of his struggle was due to being the child of zealots, and how much was just plain old celebrity status syndrome. There are more than a few parallels.
What that doesn't explain is this phenomenon of equally fanatical rejection of a parents zealotry; because if you read carefully, Franky S. reports hearing from children of many types of "believers" who identify with his public confessions. Come to think of it, remember the son of Madelyn Murray O'Hare a number of years ago? That played big on the evangelical circuit for awhile.... and it was the same tortured resentment of the person as a parent and the demands of a cause. Many of us work through our childhoods...just not everyone is so well publicized in the effort.
I witnessed some of this during my time on the forums, and I wondered at it: the angry, angry, hostilities that are fermenting against dedicated Christianity. As dedicated Christians, this bears some closer examination from us.
I have a personal interest, also.
When I was saved, born-again, committed my life to Christ ( take your pick of the terms) I moved along a pathway of trying to discover what committed Christianity involved. Maybe that is why I liked Francis Schaeffer so well, we were on the same pathway. Were there mistakes? There were many, but oftentimes that resulted from trying to work out what lacked in the previous generation to us. And unless, and until, we came to observe and accept with a grace the foibles and mistakes .... we, too, have been angry and hostile. The 'sixties' were proof. This doesn't at all erase real problems and faults; it only portrays the humanity of it all!
Personally, some of my older children struggled with their Christian upbringing. Like all problems, I viewed this as something that needed "working out". The same emotional work that is often done in relationship: listening, talking, trying to see perspective. Not all of us have the patience to go there. And that is when it degrades into muttered bitternesses and long held resentment. The more public a figure is, the more investment in ignoring the rebuke of such discussions. "Public" can simply mean a pastor, or a well-thought-of businessman, or a woman on a speaking circuit.... anything where reputation is at stake. Come to think of it, that could be any of us in our cultivated public place of how we are perceived by our community, or church. That is awfully hard to give up for the sake of working on relationships.
Where are my children now? They are working on their own lives, and the demands of finding themselves in marriage and having their own children has been a place where they are coming around in understanding. In their Christian walk, they hold onto their core faith in God ( and I didn't see indications Franky Schaeffer isn't also doing this), but they have questioned lots of things....some of them "my things", and some of them "the Churches" things...which I also join with them in taking another look, this time through their experience.
Perhaps what Franky Schaeffer misses so much is that there isn't a 'Francis Schaeffer' in the Evangelical community as a whole for him. To me, that is the worst indictment handed down to us. We have become unable to listen to one another's pain, and are, instead, too dedicated to protecting our carefully constructed public images. Unable to look with honest eyes when someone enters our temples and knocks over a few of our tables.
One of the things, though, that I picked up from Sherry's post is the need to understand what "honoring thy father and mother" looks like in our struggle to understand. I couldn't quite get what Franky's portrayal of his mother consisted of... it seemed like loving and mutual poking fun at some points... and something more ominous at others. I have my own struggle understanding just what God's view of honor actually is. As Americans, we have unspoken and conflicting codes on this.
Perhaps more than anything this is what is key in working out many of these resentments. In our questioning, have we discarded honor? And can we long survive our own self-destructive desire to tear down our predecessors? What do we pass on to the coming generations when we hack wildly, rather than surgically cut away, the mistakes of our forebears?
