05.30.09
My Comments on Crazy for God Part 2
I have a quiet moment to continue commenting on Frank Schaeffer’s book, Crazy for God, How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of it Back. I doubt I’ll be able to comment on everything I want to say in this post, but I’ll chip away at it this morning, and maybe make a continuation later. The reason I feel I have so much to comment on this book is because I find that it deals with a lot of things that I’ve dealt with in the past and currently. Not that I grew up with very religious parents like Frank, or that I was in any sort of lime-light, but rather I notice a lot of the hypocracy in people in general and particularly how that influences Christians and how we view the world, including the Christian world view vs the secular world view. Frank writes about the snobbishness of Christians as well as their prudishness, and then even the in-fighting amongst ourselves among other things. There is much to say.
While I don’t mean it to be condemning, per say, Frank does point out some truths about a section of the Christian community. And again, while I do agree with some of the things Frank points out (like the craziness of the mega evangelical personalities and their followers), there are other things he mentions that I wish he explained more fully because it would have been nice to have more details. For instance, Frank describes, on page 391, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family as “a power-crazed political manipulator cynically abusing his followers.” Wow. Ouch. I will admit that I have never gotten too involved with any high-powered evangelical. I have seen a few and have followed “some” of them such as reading some of Dobson’s writings and listening to some of his broadcasts. I used to be on their mailing list and received their newsletters. But, never have I gotten fanatical about any of them as I knew they were all just mere men just like the rest of us. However, amongst many of the evangelicals, I did hold Dobson as one of the more sane ones with a lot of practical sense. So reading Frank’s assessment of him surprised me. However, upon more reflection, I do recall this latest Presidential election in 2008, where I was sorely disappointed in Dobson, and quite frankly surprised. For Dobson to so staunchly oppose McCain, then turn on a dime once Palin jumped on board really sent up a red flag for me. I had not expected Dobson to be so wishy washy and to so easily ignore sound Biblical doctrine like women not leading men, and that women should put their families first before career (Palin’s unwed pregnant teenaged daughter was a glaring indication that she was not supervising her children well enough, and certainly becoming Vice President would not help it any especially with a “new” down-syndromed child in the picture), etc. What I came to realize was that Dobson wasn’t as admirable as I had originally thought. Previously I thought Dobson was doing a good job of voicing out the importance of the family, but never realized that he was “political.” Why I missed that, I don’t know, but the recent Presidential elections did prove that out. Apparently, Frank knew this many years ago as he apparently felt this way about Dobson about 20 years ago while helping to raise funds on the 700 Club. I must not have been paying close enough attention to Dobson in those past years, but it came glaring out in 2008 when he used his religious weight and followers to get into the political arena. Very disappointing, but just another eye-opener for me not to put my trust in man.
The other high-powered evangelicals that Frank names, I’ve heard of, but never paid much attention to primarily because when I was a kid, I remembered the likes of Oral Roberts and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and others. They looked and sounded like a bunch of con-artists. I wasn’t even “born-again” at that time because I don’t think I even knew what that was, but could see how phony they were, nonetheless. But once I did become a born-again Christian and started to actually read the Bible, I found that Jesus was much different than any of those high-powered evangelicals. Jesus’s message was much different. After I became a born again Christian, I found people like Henry Morris of Institute for Creation Research, Zane Hodges of Dallas Theological Seminary, Francis Schaeffer founder of L’Abri, James Dobson founder of Focus on the Family, and others. These were the people who I thought revered the Bible and Jesus’s teaching. As I mentioned above, I was recently disappointed by Dobson, and then that disappointment was confirmed by Frank’s assessment of him in Crazy for God.* Then in the same book, I find that Francis Schaeffer, the other person I thought highly of, also had significant shortcomings. Upon more reflection, I can see the error, now. While Francis’s message that God could be explained with reason using our intellect, there is much more to following God than using and displaying wisdom. Sure the Bible strongly encourages wisdom. Wisdom is said to be more valuable that gold and silver, but when I consider it, Solomon was the wisest man ever to live, yet he fell away from God. And when I consider what the Bible tells us what the fruit of the spirit is, I notice that wisdom is not mentioned as one of them. . . the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance (Gal 5:22-23). There is a purpose for everything, but caution must be taken to apply things appropriately. While Francis was quite wise (I still think he was quite genius in his writings regarding the disparity of man without God, his conviction of the inerrancy of the Bible, and his appreciation for the arts, etc.), his son Frank reveals that he was given to anger and his appreciation of the intellect and the arts made him somewhat “snobbish.” And most of all, seeing how disfunctional Francis’s own family was, shows me that perhaps all those “wise” revelations Francis had regarding man and philosophy and arts was given more attention than was merited. And as Frank points out, moving into the political arena just really futher messed everything up by corrupting his values as “compromises” started to be part of the norm.
Okay, I should leave it here for now, but know that I still have lots more things to comment on. I did start looking for some YouTube videos of the other evangelicals to get an idea of what Frank was talking about, heheheh. I can definitely see some of what Frank describes. I also checked out another one of Frank’s books called, Portofino, ha! I’ve only started it, but have already gotten some chuckles. It’s a fictional story, but apparently it loosely portrays his family. Or as some have suggested, not so loosely portrays his family. I had no idea that his family life was so bizzare, but in all fairness, it probably isn’t really much different from any other family, both Christian and non-Christian alike. We all have our hang ups and quirkiness even if it’s not surrounded by Biblical issues.
Okay, more later. . .
Marlakins
*While I can see what Frank meant about Dobson being politically manipulating, I do take issue with Frank’s assessement that Dobson “used” the Schaeffer’s platform of protecting the unborn child as a stepping stone to gaining more power or furthering his own agenda/s. I think Dobson could have truly believed in fighting for the anti-abortion cause, and sure he may have gained momentum while on the anti-abortion platform, that doesn’t mean that he can’t have other issues he’s passionate about. Abortion could have been only “one” interest for Dobson just like abortion was only one interest for Francis. There are many other issues, and there’s nothing wrong with supporting multiple issues. Who says that we can only support one issue at a time? So I’m not sure I get why Frank seems to be sore that Dobson got on the anti-abortion issues while also raising other family issues. Perhaps that’s where I would have appreciated more explanation.
