Thursday, May 10, 2012

Death in the City

I just finished reading a little book by Francis Schaeffer entitled, "Death in the City." It is a look at our modern/postmodern culture through the lens of the prophet Jeremiah and the first chapter of Romans. I would highly recommend it.  Here are a couple of quotes from the closing pages:

"If a Christian does not pray, if he does not live in an attitude of prayer, then no matter what he says about his doctrine... [h]e is living in unfaith"

"Maybe now we begin to see why in the evangelical church we often have a feeling of dustiness, unreality and abstraction. I think the reason is that many are functioning as though they know less about the universe than the pagan knows. They have moved over in unfaith and are living as though the universe is naturalistic. No wonder there is a dustiness! In such a case the evangelical church is a museum of dead artifacts representing what once was living practice of the doctrine we still say we believe."

"Being a Bible-believing Christian, then, not only means believing with our heads, but in this present moment acting through faith on that belief. True spirituality is acting at the given moment upon the doctrines which one as a Christian says he believes."

"reformation and revival - the return to pure doctrine and the return of individuals and groups to a proper relationship to the Holy Spirit."