I so appreciate your account. My experience of coming to believe has parallels to yours. As a Plebe at the Naval Academy, I discovered both that the flash and gold buttons had been oversell, and that I was not the conquering overcomer I had imagined myself to be. Cutting to Francis Schaefer (sorry, autocorrect keeps dropping the second f and I’m too lazy to keep correcting the false corrections), I discovered him after I became a Christian through the Officers Christian Fellowship (then OC Union). I wrestled through Schaefer’s books. As a Chinese major I took what became my favorite non-language class, taught by an Eastern Europe expert, Theory and Practice of Communism; its background in Kierkegaard and Hegel added flesh to Schaefer’s contextualizing of European culture. Long story short, the woman I married had scored interest points because she had actually spent time at the heart of Schaefferdom in Switzerland, and… when we named our daughter, we wanted to honor the Schaeffers, and gave her the middle name Schae (less masculine and less onomatopoeic than the full name would have been with the surname Miller). This being Substack, I have erred in coming close to co-opting your post (and am tempted to tell a lot more of my story), and I offer as my excuse that this represents my impoverished attempt to validate and support your experience, and to thank you for adding your voice to those who understand the vital place of Christian-based thought in our country and our world.
Lela, thank you for sharing. May God bless you in your daily walk.
Well, Lela, at the very least by sharing this you got someone to track down that book by Schaeffer online and download it. (That would be me.)
Cool. It's a great book. He wrote about 20 others and, fair warning, they're addictive.
I so appreciate your account. My experience of coming to believe has parallels to yours. As a Plebe at the Naval Academy, I discovered both that the flash and gold buttons had been oversell, and that I was not the conquering overcomer I had imagined myself to be. Cutting to Francis Schaefer (sorry, autocorrect keeps dropping the second f and I’m too lazy to keep correcting the false corrections), I discovered him after I became a Christian through the Officers Christian Fellowship (then OC Union). I wrestled through Schaefer’s books. As a Chinese major I took what became my favorite non-language class, taught by an Eastern Europe expert, Theory and Practice of Communism; its background in Kierkegaard and Hegel added flesh to Schaefer’s contextualizing of European culture. Long story short, the woman I married had scored interest points because she had actually spent time at the heart of Schaefferdom in Switzerland, and… when we named our daughter, we wanted to honor the Schaeffers, and gave her the middle name Schae (less masculine and less onomatopoeic than the full name would have been with the surname Miller). This being Substack, I have erred in coming close to co-opting your post (and am tempted to tell a lot more of my story), and I offer as my excuse that this represents my impoverished attempt to validate and support your experience, and to thank you for adding your voice to those who understand the vital place of Christian-based thought in our country and our world.