os guinness beyond the shadow of a doubt

I challenge this central charge of Frank's with everything in me.

There was a lie at the very heart of the work of L'Abri, and the thousands of people who over the decades came to L'Abri and came to faith or deepened in faith, were obviously conned too. Francis Schaeffer, in his son's portrait, lacked intellectual integrity. For all his softening, the portrait he paints amounts to a death-dealing charge of hypocrisy and insincerity at the very heart of their life and work. The problem is not so much that Frank exposes and trumpets his parents' flaws and frailties, or that he skewers them with his characteristic mockery.

Consider Absalom's rebellion against King David in the Old Testament, Edmund Gosse's exposure of his father Philip, the Oedipal drive in the writings of Sigmund Freud-and now Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God, a memoir that is his personal apologia at the expense of his famous father, Francis Schaeffer, who was the founder and leader of the worldwide network of L'Abri communities. The depth and wonder begin with all we know of the relationship of God the Father and God the Son, while the troubled aspects stem from the Fall. The case can be made, however, that from a Christian perspective, no relationship is more mysterious and more wonderful, yet sometimes more troubling, than that of fathers and sons. Some excerpts: If asked what is the deepest relationship imaginable, many people would say it is between lovers, or between husbands and wives. Os Guinness, in ' Fathers and Sons' ( Books & Culture, March/April 2008), takes Frank Schaeffer to task for his treatment of his father in his new book, Crazy for God.

Os guinness beyond the shadow of a doubt