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The Moral Absolutes Rest Upon God's Character. The Moral Commands He Has Given To Men Are An Expression Of His Character. Men As Created In His Image Are To Live By Choice On The Basis Of What God Is. The Standards Of Morality Are Determined By What Conforms To His Character, While Those Things Which Do Not Conform Are Immoral.

-Francis Schaeffer

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The Moral Absolutes Rest

Francis Schaeffer

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The Moral Absolutes Rest Upon God's Character. The Moral Commands He Has Given To Men Are An Expression Of His Character. Men As Created In His Image Are To Live By Choice On The Basis Of What God Is. The Standards Of Morality Are Determined By What Conforms To His Character, While Those Things Which Do Not Conform Are Immoral.

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Christian Art Today Should Be Twentieth-century Art.

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Truth Carries With It Confrontation.

If God Exists And We Are Made In His Image We Can Have Real Meaning, And We Can Have Real Knowledge Through What He Has Communicated To Us.

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... You Are Not Christ's Disciple, In The Sense Of Following Him, If This Is Not Your Way Of Life: Rejected And Slain Daily!

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How Should An Artist Begin To Do His Work As An Artist? I Would Insist That He Begin His Work As An Artist By Setting Out To Make A Work Of Art.

But The Dignity Of Human Life Is Unbreakably Linked To The Existence Of The Personal-infinite God. It Is Because There Is A Personal-infinite God Who Has Made Men And Women In His Own Image That They Have A Unique Dignity Of Life As Human Beings. Human Life Then Is Filled With Dignity, And The State And Humanistically Oriented Law Have No Right And No Authority To Take Human Life Arbitrarily In The Way It Is Being Taken.

The Soul Is Not More Important Than The Body. God Made The Whole Man And The Whole Man Is Important.

The Spiritual Battle, The Loss Of Victory, Is Always In The Thought-world.

The Purpose Of Apologetics Is Not Just To Win An Argument Or A Discussion, But That People With Whom We Are In Contact May Become Christians And Then Live Under The Lordship Of Christ In The Whole Spectrum Of Life.

The Lord Is The General, And He Has The Right . . . The Sovereign Right . . . To Put Us Where He Wants In The Battle.

There Is No Use Of Evangelicalism Seeming To Get Larger And Larger, If At The Same Time Appreciable Parts Of Evangelicalism Are Getting Soft At That Which Is The Central Core, Namely The Scriptures.

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One Of The Greatest Injustices We Do To Our Young People Is To Ask Them To Be Conservative. Christianity Is Not Conservative, But Revolutionary.

The Church's Or Christian Group's Methods Are As Important As Its Message.

The Difference Between Christian Thinking And The Non-christian Philosopher Has Always Been At This Point. The Non-christian Philosopher Has Always Said That Man Is Normal Now, But Biblical Christianity Says He Is Abnormal Now.

Thank God For The Reality For Which We Were Created, A Moment-by-moment Communication With God Himself.

Christianity Believes That God Has Created An External World That Is Really There; And Because He Is A Reasonable God, One Can Expect To Be Able To Find The Order Of The Universe By Reason.

Eve Doubted God, And I As A Child Of God Am Now To Be Exactly The Opposite: I Am To Believe Him. Eve Doubted, And Mankind In Revolt Doubts God. To Believe Him, Not Just When I Accept Christ As Savior, But Every Moment, One Moment At A Time: This Is The Christian Life, And This Is True Spirituality.

Ours Is A Post-christian World In Which Christianity, Not Only In The Number Of Christians But In Cultural Emphasis And Cultural Result, Is No Longer The Consensus Or Ethos Of Our Society.

Christian Art Is The Expression Of The Whole Life Of The Whole Person As A Christian. What A Christian Portrays In His Art Is The Totality Of Life. Art Is Not To Be Solely A Vehicle For Some Sort Of Self-conscious Evangelism.

Reformation Is A Return To The Sound Doctrine Of The Bible. Revival Is The Practice Of That Sound Doctrine Under The Power Of The Holy Spirit.

Truth Always Carries With It Confrontation. Truth Demands Confrontation; Loving Confrontation Nevertheless. If Our Reflex Action Is Always Accommodation Regardless Of The Centrality Of The Truth Involved, There Is Something Wrong.

There Are Two Main Reasons Why We May Not Be Bringing Forth The Fruit We Should. It May Be Because Of Ignorance, Because We May Never Have Been Taught The Meaning Of The Work Of Christ For Our Present Lives.

You Must Not Lose Confidence In God Because You Lost Confidence In Your Pastor. If Our Confidence In God Had To Depend Upon Our Confidence In Any Human Person, We Would Be On Shifting Sand.

Hudson Taylor Said, "the Lord's Work Done In The Lord's Way Will Never Fail To Have The Lord's Provision." ...the Lord's Work Done In Human Energy Is Not The Lord's Work Any Longer. It Is Something, But It Is Not The Lord's Work.

If One Starts With An Impersonal Beginning, The Answer To Morals Eventually Turns Out To Be The Assertion That There Are No Morals.

Christians, Of All People, Should Not Be Destroyers. We Should Treat Nature With An Overwhelming Respect. We May Cut Down A Tree To Build A House, Or To Make A Fire To Keep The Family Warm. But We Should Not Cut Down The Tree Just To Cut Down The Tree. We May, If Necessary, Bark The Cork Tree In Order To Have The Use Of The Bark. But What We Should Not Do Is To Bark The Tree Simply For The Sake Of Doing So, And Let It Dry And Stand There A Dead Skeleton In The Wind. To Do So Is Not To Treat The Tree With Integrity.

To Fail To Exhibit That We Take Truth Seriously At Those Points Where There Is A Cost In Our Doing So, Is To Push The Next Generation In The Relative, Dialectical Millstream That Surrounds Us.

Most People Catch Their Presuppositions From Their Family And Surrounding Society The Way A Child Catches Measles. But People With More Understanding Realize That Their Presuppositions Should Be Chosen After A Careful Consideration Of What World-view Is True.

The Reality Of Living By Faith As Though We Were Already Dead, Of Living By Faith In Open Communion With God, And Then Stepping Back Into The External World As Though We Are Already Raised From The Dead, This Is Not Once For All, It Is A Matter Of Moment-by-moment Faith, And Living Moment By Moment. This Morning's Faith Will Never Do For This Noon. The Faith Of This Noon Will Never Do For Suppertime . The Faith Of Suppertime Will Never Do For The Next Morning. Thank God For The Reality For Which We Were Created, A Moment-by-moment Communication With God Himself.

Christ's Crucifixion Was On A Hill, By A Road, Where Everybody Who Passed By Could Not Only See His Pain, But Also His Shame. It Was Not Done In A Shadow, Hidden Away Somewhere.

This Is Not An Age In Which To Be A Soft Christian.

Are You Still Thirsting? Christ Gives The Invitation Not Only To Others But To You. He Is The Fountainhead. He Has Died And Is Risen. He Offers The Only Way To Eternal Life, Asking Only That You Admit Your Need, Raise The Empty Hands Of Faith, And Accept His Gift. What Is Eternal Life? It Is Meaning In Life Now As Well As Living One‚s Life Forever. Drink Deep. Jesus Offers A Brimming Cup.

...that Is Our Calling: To Show That There Is A Reality In Personal Relationship, And Not Just Words About It.

Truth Demands Confrontation. It Must Be Loving Confrontation, But There Must Be Confrontation Nonetheless.

True Spirituality Consists In Living Moment To Moment By The Grace Of Jesus Christ.

Man, Made In The Image Of God, Has A Purpose - To Be In Relationship To God, Who Is There. Man Forgets His Purpose And Thus He Forgets Who He Is And What Life Means.

In God's World The Individual Counts. Therefore, Christian Art Should Deal With The Individual.

Doctrinal Rightness And Rightness Of Ecclesiastical Position Are Important, But Only As A Starting Point To Go On Into A Living Relationship - And Not As Ends In Themselves.

If Christians Win A Battle By Using Worldly Means, They Have Really Lost.

Isolating The Student From Large Sections Of Human Knowledge Is Not The Basis Of A Christian Education. Rather It Is Giving Him Or Her The Framework For Total Truth, Rooted In The Creator's Existence And In The Bible's Teaching, So That In Each Step Of The Formal Learning Process The Student Will Understand What Is True And What Is False And Why It Is True Or False.

There Is Nothing More Ugly Than An Orthodoxy Without Understanding Or Compassion.

We Are Not Being True To The Artist As A Man If We Consider His Art Work Junk Simply Because We Differ With His Outlook On Life. Christian Schools, Christian Parents, And Christian Pastors Often Have Turned Off Young People At Just This Point. Because The Schools, The Pastors, And The Parents Did Not Make A Distinction Between Technical Excellence And Content, The Whole Of Much Great Art Has Been Rejected With Scorn And Ridicule. Instead, If The Artist's Technical Excellence Is High, He Is To Be Praised For This, Even If We Differ With His World View. Man Must Be Treated Fairly As Man.

Things, Things, Things. Always More Things, And Success Is Seen As The Abundance Of Things.

Reality Is Not Meant To Be Only Creedal, Though The Creeds Are Important. Reality Is To Be Experienced, And Experienced On The Basis Of A Restored Relationship With God Through That Finished Work Of The Lord Jesus Christ On The Cross.

We Must Not Only Be True. We Must Be Beautiful.

The Ancients Were Afraid That If They Went To The End Of The Earth They Would Fall Off And Be Consumed By Dragons. But Once We Understand That Christianity Is True To What Is There, True To The Ultimate Environment - The Infinite, Personal God Who Is Really There - Then Our Minds Are Freed. We Can Pursue Any Question And Can Be Sure That We Will Not Fall Off The End Of The Earth.

The Central Problem Is Always In The Midst Of The People Of God, Not In The Circumstances Surrounding Them.

This Shift From The Judeo-christian Basis For Law And The Shift Away From The Restraints Of The Constitution Automatically Militates Against Religious Liberty.

Biblical Orthodoxy Without Compassion Is Surely The Ugliest Thing In The World.

Today We Have A Weakness In Our Education Process In Failing To Understand The Natural Associations Between The Disciplines. We Tend To Study All Our Disciplines In Unrelated Parallel Lines. This Tends To Be True In Both Christian And Secular Education. This Is One Of The Reasons Why Evangelical Christians Have Been Taken By Surprise At The Tremendous Shift That Has Come In Our Generation.

In Passing, We Should Note This Curious Mark Of Our Own Age: The Only Absolute Allowed Is The Absolute Insistence That There Is No Absolute.

The Moral Absolutes Rest Upon God's Character. The Moral Commands He Has Given To Men Are An Expression Of His Character. Men As Created In His Image Are To Live By Choice On The Basis Of What God Is. The Standards Of Morality Are Determined By What Conforms To His Character, While Those Things Which Do Not Conform Are Immoral.

Tell Me What The World Is Saying Today, And I'll Tell You What The Church Will Be Saying In Seven Years.

People Drift From Generation To Generation, And The Morally Unthinkable Becomes Thinkable As The Years Move On.

We Have The Right To Rid Our Houses Of Ants; But What We Have No Right To Do Is To Forget To Honor The Ant As God Made It, Out In The Place Where God Made The Ant To Be. When We Meet The Ant On The Sidewalk, We Step Over Him. He Is A Creature, Like Ourselves; Not Made In The Image Of God, It Is True, But Equal With Man As Far As Creation Is Concerned. The Ant And The Man Are Both Creatures.

It Is Only As We Consciously Bring Each Victory To His Feet, And Keep It There As We Think Of It - And Especially As We Speak Of It - That We Can Avoid The Pride Of That Victory, Which Can Be Worse Than The Sin Over Which We Claim To Have Had The Victory.

In My Reading Of Philosophy, I Saw That There Were Innumerable Problems That Nobody Was Giving Answers For. The Bible, It Struck Me, Dealt With Man's Problems In A Sweeping, All-encompassing Thrust.

A Christian Should Use These Arts To The Glory Of God, Not Just As Tracts, Mind You, But As Things Of Beauty To The Praise Of God. An Art Work Can Be A Doxology In Itself.

He Who Loses The Arts Loses The Culture.

Belief Does Not Change What Is.

If There Is No Absolute Moral Standard, Then One Cannot Say In A Final Sense That Anything Is Right Or Wrong.

The Arbitrary Division Between Church And State... Is Used, As An Easily Identifiable Rallying Point, To Subdue The Opinions Of That Vast Body Of Citizens Who Represent Those With Religious Convictions.

Humanism Is Not Wrong In Its Cry For Sociological Healing, But Humanism Is Not Producing It.

No Totalitarian Authority Nor Authoritarian State Can Tolerate Those Who Have An Absolute By Which To Judge That State And Its Actions. The Christians Had That Absolute In God's Revelation.

If There Is No Absolute Beyond Man's Ideas, Then There Is No Final Appeal To Judge Between Individuals And Groups Whose Moral Judgments Conflict. We Are Merely Left With Conflicting Opinions.

Our Trusting The Lord Does Not Mean That There Are Not Times Of Tears. I Think It Is A Mistake As Christians To Act As Though Trusting The Lord And Tears Are Not Compatible.

Sometimes The Greatest Deterrent To A Great Marriage Is Believing You Have A Perfect Marriage.

Modern Man Has Both Feet Firmly Planted In Mid-air

Modern Man Has No Real "value" For The Ocean. All He Has Is The Most Crass Form Of Egoist, Pragmatic Value For It. He Treats It As A "thing" In The Worst Possible Sense, To Exploit It For The "good" Of Man. The Man Who Believes Things Are There Only By Chance Cannot Give Things A Real Value. But For The Christian The Value Of A Thing Is Not In Itself Autonomously, But Because God Made It.

They Are Equal Reality. They Are Two Streams Of Present Reality, Both Equally Promised. The Christian Dead Are Already With Christ Now, And Christ Really Lives In The Christian. Christ Lives In Me. The Christ Who Was Crucified, The Christ Whose Work Is Finished, The Christ Who Is Glorified Now, Has Promised (john 15) To Bring Forth Fruit In The Christian, Just As The Sap Of The Vine Brings Forth The Fruit In The Branch.

Ignorance Is In Relationship To Content; It Is Not Just A Spirit Of Ignorance. In Verse 21 It Speaks Of "the Truth In Jesus." Truth Is Content, Truth Has Something To Do With Reason. Truth Has Something To Do With The Rational Creature That God Has Made Us. The Dilemma Here In The Internal World Is Not Just Some Sort Of Grey Fog, It Is In Relationship To Content.

Modern Man Has Not Only Thrown Away Christian Theology, He Has Thrown Away The Possibility Of What Our Forefathers Had As A Basis For Morality And Law.

There Would Have Been No Bach Had There Been No Luther.

The Command Is To Love Him, Not Just To Think About Him, Or Do Things For Him. We Are Not To Stop With A Proper Legal Relationship - For Example, To Think Of A Man As Legally Lost, Which He Is, In The Sight Of A Holy God - Without Thinking Of Him As A Person. Saying This, We Can Suddenly See That Much Evangelism Is Not Only Sub-christian, But Subhuman - Legalistic And Impersonal.

In Face Of This Modern Nihilism, Christians Are Often Lacking In Courage. We Tend To Give The Impression That We Will Hold On To The Outward Forms Whatever Happens, Even If God Really Is Not There. But The Opposite Ought To Be True Of Us, So That People Can See That We Demand The Truth Of What Is There And That We Are Not Dealing Merely With Platitudes. In Other Words, It Should Be Understood That We Take This Question Of Truth And Personality So Seriously That If God Were Not There We Would Be Among The First Of Those Who Had The Courage To Step Out Of The Queue.

Christianity Is Not A Series Of Truths In The Plural, But Rather Truth Spelled With A Capital 't.' Truth About Total Reality, Not Just About Religious Things. Biblical Christianity Is Truth Concerning Total Reality - And The Intellectual Holding Of That Total Truth And Then Living In The Light Of That Truth.

God Has Communicated To Man, The Infinite To The Finite. The One Who Made Man Capable Of Language In The First Place Has Communicated To Man In Language About Both Spiritual Reality And Physical Reality, About The Nature Of God And The Nature Of Man.

The Christian In The One Whose Imagination Should Fly Beyond The Stars.

... These Are The Two Factors That Lead To The Destruction Of Our Environment: Money And Time-or To Say It Another Way, Greed And Haste. The Question Is, Or Seems To Be, Are We Going To Have An Immediate Profit And An Immediate Saving Of Time, Or Are We Going To Do What We Really Should Do As God's Children?

God Has Ordained The State As A Delegated Authority; It Is Not Autonomous. The State Is To Be An Agent Of Justice, To Restrain Evil By Punishing The Wrongdoer, And To Protect The Good In Society. When It Does The Reverse, It Has No Proper Authority. It Is Then A Usurped Authority And As Such It Becomes Lawless And Is Tyranny.

It Is Not Enough For The Church To Be Engaged With The State In Healing Social Ills, Though This Is Important At Times. But When The World Can Turn Around And See A Group Of God's People Exhibiting Substantial Healing In The Area Of Human Relationships In Their Present Life, Then The World Will Take Notice. Each Group Of Christians Is, As It Were, A Pilot Plant, Showing That Something Can Be Done In The Present Situation, If Only We Begin In The Right Way.

We Must Realize That The Reformation World View Leads In The Direction Of Government Freedom. But The Humanist World View With Inevitable Certainty Leads In The Direction Of Statism. This Is So Because Humanists, Having No God, Must Put Something At The Center, And It Is Inevitably Society, Government, Or The State.

If Christianity Is Really True, Then It Involves The Whole Man, Including His Intellect And Creativeness. Christianity Is Not Just 'dogmatically' True Or 'doctrinally' True. Rather, It Is True To What Is There, True In The Whole Area Of The Whole Man In All Of Life.

Today The Separation Of Church And State In America Is Used To Silence The Church. When Christians Speak Out On Issues, The Hue And Cry From The Humanist State And Media Is That Christians, An All Religions, Are Prohibited From Speaking Since There Is A Separation Of Church And State.

...when I Accept Christ As My Savior... I Am Immediately In A New And Living Relationship With Each Of The Three Persons Of The Trinity.

The Ordinary Christian With The Bible In His Hand Can Say That The Majority Is Wrong.

Here We Are Told That Christ Really Lives In Me, If I Have Accepted Christ As My Savior. In Other Words, We Have The Words Of Jesus To The Thief Of The Cross, 'today Thou Wilt Be With Me In Paradise.' Christ Can Say, 'today Thou Wilt Be With Me In Paradise,' And Mean It. To Die Is To Be With The Lord. It Is Not Just An Idea, It Is A Reality. But At The Same Time, Christ, The Same Christ Who Gives The Promise Just As Definitely, That When I Have Accepted Christ As My Savior, He Lives In Me.

In Fact, Philosophy Is Universal In Scope. No Man Can Live Without A World View; Therefore, There Is No Man Who Is Not A Philosopher.

I Hesitate To Add, But I Will, That This Is Fun. God Means Christianity To Be Fun. There Is To Be A Reality Of Love And Communication In The Christian-to-christian Relationship, Individually And Corporately, Which Is Completely And Truly Personal.

If Men Act Upon The Teaching Of The Word Of God, And As Proportionately Men Live According To The Teaching And Commands Of The Bible, So They Have In Practice A Sufficient Psychological Base. I Will Find You A Man Dealing With Psychological Problems On The Basis Of The Teaching Of The Word Of God, Even If He Never Heard The Word Psychology, Or Does Not Know What It Means.

The Basic Problem Of The Christians In This Country In The Last Eighty Years Or So, In Regard To Society And In Regard To Government, Is That They Have Seen Things In Bits And Pieces Instead Of Totals.

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