True Spirituality - Reverse Migrants

Back in December, I started writing on observations I had made while reading Francis Schaeffer's book True Spirituality. I'd intended to write a number of blog entries on that book. However, time and circumstances have prevented me from doing so for the last few months. I now have the opportunity to write more, so I will take that opportunity now. I will include here the notes I made during a spiritual retreat back in September. Those notes follow:

I've read through the chapter on Christ's resurrection in True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer strongly stressed the space-time element of Christ's resurrection AND ascension. He refutes well those who would place Christ's suffering, death, burial and resurrection to the realm of legend or an "other" category.

I especially found useful his discussion on the passages in Romans and Galatians in which Paul writes of our own death, burial and rising with Christ. Schaeffer understands these passages as stating that our present-moment Christian life must be lived as if we have already died physically, gone to Heaven and come back for our resurrected body. We must live by faith as dead to this world and live to the power and presence of God.

This brought to mind a number of thoughts. We should be living the life of the future world NOW! We should live as "reverse migrants." In today's world, there are people who migrate from one country to another, and, in many lives, live the life of their first country while living in their new country (i.e. style of dress, language, food, etc). They live the life of their past culture in the present day.

Christians are called to be "reverse migrants." Most definitely not in the sense of reverting to a pre-Christian set of beliefs and ethic but in the following: Christians are called to live the life of their future culture in the present day. We should live a life which anticipates the truth and reality of the age to come.

True Spirituality

Last Sunday, I finished reading "True Spirituality" by Francis Schaeffer. It helped me think through issues such as what the New Testament means when we read repeated references to our dying with Christ and rising with Him.

The book was written in 1971. Some of Francis Schaeffer's concerns in this book sound prophetic when read 36 years later. In my next few blog entries, I'll be providing quotes from this book and my comments in relation to those quotes. Let me leave you with this quote now:

May I put it like this? If I woke up tomorrow morning and found that all that the Bible teaches concerning prayer and the Holy Spirit were removed (not as a liberal would remove it, by misinterpretation, but really removed) what difference would it make in practice from the way we are functioning today? The simple tragic fact is that in much of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ – the evangelical Church – there would be no difference whatsoever. (Page 171)