In Schaeffer's garage

I don't know how widely known this is because I didn't read it in a book but got it from the horse's mouth at the chapel at L'Abri in Huemoz-sur-Ollon, Switzerland. In the course of one of our informal gatherings-just Francis Schaeffer and a few dozen hairy, bell-bottomed twentysomething seekers-he told us about the time his wife, Edith, bore patiently with him through his crisis, as he paced his garage alone, thinking through the Faith from square one.

Square one is where I want to always start my thinking, whatever my problem or challenge may be. In this thinking-from-scratch mode there is only one ground rule: Faith. Believing God and putting His Word over all other words, all other reports, all testimonies and theories and homespun wisdom. I am in the process of smoking out my personally confused beliefs one by one as the situation arises, surprised by the sheer magnitude of this infestation.

Whether the question at hand is "How should I spend this money?" or "What is the right way to handle this relationship problem I'm having?" or "Should I marry that man?" or "What's the best way to answer my friend's question?" I want to think Christianly. Thinking Christianly is not a wooden and academic matter of applying "doctrine," but goes to the matter of faith that undergirds doctrine. Doctrine does no good without the pinpoint faith to believe that God backs up his Word.

Faith in Jesus is an eminently practical guide; it sifts through all argumentation, unfolding your way before you, like a carbide lamp for the coal miner navigating a labyrinth of caves. If you make decisions without the guide of God's truth, it is not as if you are "free." Instead, you have just indentured yourself to that other master: worldly desire.

I have come up with a few stock questions I put to myself when trying to decide on a course of action-aids to faith, you might say:

There is no Christianity but the moment-by-moment kind. That I learned from Francis Schaeffer, the man who bothered to think from scratch in his garage.