Francis Schaeffer, the Anti-Conservative?

One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative...If we want to be fair, we must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status quo.

These are the words of Francis Schaeffer. It seems that they are timely words for the Church today. We so often convey that the only message that we have as Christians is the need to adhere to a particular moral agenda. In taking a look at the Church's interaction with the culture at large, it seems that we often have little to offer those who reject any sort of moral standard (or simply the standard that they don't like) than an alternative set of morals. We hear a lot about how God's way is the right way and how marriage, the family, and society in general would be so much better off if only people would start doing things God's way. I believe this is true. I also believe that this is at best a peripheral declaration for the community of Christ.

One of the most devastating courses of actions that we can take as believers is to communicate to others that the solution to their problems is to simply adhere to "traditional moral standards." As the Church, we have been given a message that is revolutionary in the most fundamental sense. The reality of the perfect obedience, death, and resurrection of Christ on our behalf, as well as the promise of redemption for the entire created order radically redefines existence as we know it. No longer is a comfortable suburban lifestyle, or the achievement of a traditional morally upstanding society, hearkening back to a by-gone era, the best we have to hope for. We now are called to live as those who no longer trust that living the proper way or adhering to certain standards will gain us anything. It has been revealed to us that what we think of a moral lifestyle, even one that adheres to "traditional moral values," is actually corrupt to the core because of sin, despite any outward appearances. In place of a hope in our own goodness, we have been revealed the One who was good in our place and died on our behalf.

With a message such as this, why would we want to communicate anything less? While it is easy to fall into the tendency to chide those whose actions we know are sinful (I do it all the time), we cannot simply offer another set of actions as the solution. I believe that, as Schaeffer says, this is especially relevant to the way that we communicate the Christian faith to youths (and yes, I realize that I am included in that category). The tendency of young people to reject traditional standards in favor of what is seen as more radical or cutting-edge is not a bad one! Even when this tendency takes the form of an acceptance of a radical left-wing political agenda, or some other youthful "idealism" we must realize that this it comes from an inborn desire for something greater than traditional conservatism or right-living can bring us. The revolutionary desire is only natural in someone who is surrounded by a world of sin and has seen the righteousness of God in Christ. Let our message not be one of conservatism, but rather one of a radical revelation of Christ!