What We Believe: Basic Principles

BASIC PRINCIPLES

In accordance with this statement it is our intention to embody these beliefs through the following eight principles:

1. Devotion to Christ and a reality of prayer as we live in daily dependence upon the Lord.
2. Confidence in Biblical Truth.
3. Conviction of the Reality of the fall.
4. Commitment to genuine humanness expressed in servant hood and love, and displayed in supernaturally restored relationships.
5. Commitment to apply God's truth to the whole of life and to encourage Christians to make a contribution to the wider culture.
6. The appreciation of God's gifts in all of life.
7. The need to understand the culture we live in and our responsibility to communicate to it.
8. The preparedness to give honest answers to honest questions in such a way that the unbeliever may be faced with the truth claims of Christianity.

-Adopted from a statement by Jerram Barrs.

BASIC PRINCIPLES UNPACKED

1) Devotion to Christ and a reality of prayer as we live in daily dependence upon the Lord.Francis Schaeffer would often say that the heart of Christianity is the relationship between the Bridegroom and the Bride: the love that Christ has shown us in giving Himself up to death on the cross as the substitute for our sins, and the love we ought to show to Him as our hearts are overwhelmed by gratitude for all He has done and continues to do for us. Without the centrality of this love Christianity can and will degenerate into a form of godliness without its power.

We are called to live with the love of Christ as the motivating force of our inner being, and actively to depend on the power of God as we seek to serve and obey Him. Prayer, moment by moment prayer, is to characterize the people of God, for we are living in a supernatural universe, one open at all times to God's intervention in our lives and in this world. It was this conviction that led the Schaeffer’s to believe that L'Abri should be a demonstration of God's existence and of the truth of Christianity as those in the work depended on Him day by day and as He graciously answered their prayers.2) Confidence in Biblical TruthThe Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments describe themselves as revelation, communication in language, from the infinite personal God to us, His creatures. The Bible claims divine inspiration for all that it affirms, and therefore also claims to be infallible or inerrant in its teaching. This is true whether it is addressing matters of faith and practice or matters of history and the created order.

The Bible was, of course, written by human authors and should be read, as with any other book, according to the rules of historical grammatical exegesis. Yet, this book is the living Word of God, able to make us wise to salvation and sufficient to teach us all we need to know for life and godliness.3) Conviction of the Reality of the fall:The disobedience of Adam and Eve, their rebellion against God at an early stage of human history, brought the whole race as their descendants into a state of sin and judgment. The reality of this fall expresses itself in seven separations:a) God in his perfect righteousness can have nothing to do with evil and is, therefore, justly angry with us his creatures. This wrath of God is daily experienced by us and our fellows for we were created for loving fellowship with our Maker, and yet we sense his just indignation against us, an indignation which will last eternally for those not reconciled to him through Christ.

b) We are those whose hearts are filled with pride and self-worship rather than humble devotion to the Lord. There is a deep reluctance within us to love and serve our Creator, for we are alienated from him.

c) We are also alienated from ourselves: that is, within each one of us we find the disintegrating power of sin. We do not faithfully express God's holiness and so we experience guilt and shame. We are not what we should be, we are unable to do what we wish, nor do we even accurately know what is deep in our own hearts. This inner brokenness demonstrates itself in the extremes of inordinate self-love and self-hatred and in psychological disorder.

d) This separation within our own persons is also expressed in our bodies. Pain, sickness and debility that comes with advancing age demonstrate this physical corruption. Death, our final enemy, manifests this reality most fully as it tears apart body and spirit and brings our bodies down to the grave.

e) We are alienated from each other. Even in our most cherished relationships: marriage, family and friendship, we discover ugly passions in our hearts: pride, envy, resentment, bitterness and hatred. These passions are at work in every facet of human society: in hostility between individuals, social groups, classes, races and nations. This inner enmity may break out in discrimination, violence, warfare and even genocide.f) There is separation between us and creation around us. Instead of our dominion being made known in faithful stewardship of the earth we pollute and damage our environment and recklessly destroy our fellow creatures.

g) Even creation itself suffers separation as it has been subjected to the curse. The earth resists our attempts at dominion so that our daily work can be burdensome and even unproductive, and the natural order experiences disintegration and violence. Christ, through his triumph on the cross and in his resurrection, has overcome, is overcoming and will overcome fully all of these separations.4) Commitment to genuine humanness expressed in servant hood and love, and displayed in supernaturally restored relationships. Within the Trinity there has been love and personal communication through all eternity. We have been created in the likeness of this personal God though our humanness has in every aspect of our nature been desperately flawed by sin and its effects. Christ, God's Son, came into this world, lived as a perfect human being, died and rose again in order to restore us to fellowship with God and to overcome all the consequences of the fall in our lives.

Christ is at work restoring us to true humanness as we become conformed to His likeness by the power of the Spirit. This will mean that wherever there is true faith in Christ there will be a life which begins to imitate the love of Christ. The Apostle Paul calls us to have the mind of Christ as we think more highly of one another than of ourselves and as we give ourselves to a life of service, loving one another as Christ has loved us.

Christ is the peace between us and God and between us and one another; therefore the divisions which so often exist between people, whether personal, cultural, racial or economic, ought to be overcome by those who have come to know Christ. Though it will not in this age be perfect, yet, in our homes and families, in our friendships and our churches, in our workplaces and neighborhoods this supernatural restoration of relationships ought to be realized wherever there is true Christianity.5) Commitment to apply God's truth to the whole of life and to encourage Christians to make a contribution to the wider culture. Scripture makes no distinction between the sacred and the secular, that is, it does not encourage us to think that some activities, such as prayer or evangelism, are more spiritual than other activities, such as caring for children or manual labor. Rather we are taught that Christ is the Lord of all of life and that our calling is to honor Him in all that we do. We are to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ and to seek to serve Him in every human activity. Often Christians retreat from the wider culture, believing it to be completely dominated by ideas and practices which are contrary to God's commandments. Developing our own subculture will provide protection from the world for ourselves and our children, many Christians feel, and so society is abandoned to go its wicked way. Yet, God has not abandoned the human race, humans all still bear the divine image, and therefore His Glory can still be perceived in all human cultures despite the terrible corruptions of sin. As Christians we are called by the Lord not to withdraw from the world but to be in it, living as salt and light in it, rejoicing in all that is good in human society, and committing ourselves to make a difference in our own small way in whatever calling we are placed by the Lord.

The Christian's call is to seek God's kingdom in all of life and to work at limiting the effects of the fall. This is true not only in our own human relationships but also in our relationship with the environment. We receive this earth and all its creatures as good gifts from God and as a responsibility of stewardship. Christians above all others ought to care for the creation. Our calling is both to exercise dominion over the earth for the benefit of humanity and also to pass our world on the next generation in as good or better order than we received it.6) The appreciation of God's gifts in all of life.

God is the maker and giver of every good gift. The universe displays His delight in creating what is good, beautiful and true. As those made in his image, we are called to enjoy God's creation and to delight in using body, mind and imagination to express our own creativity and to enrich the lives of others as we do. For example, whether it is the appreciation of great art in all the varied disciplines, or whether it is the "hidden art" of serving a well prepared meal, or digging a ditch, we should honor, and be thankful for the depth and richness which art brings to our lives. Likewise, through the sciences we can understand and appreciate the beauty and wonder of God's order in creation and through our productive and creative work we can take delight in the shaping of our environment and the expression of our uniqueness and humanity.7) The need to understand the culture we live in and our responsibility to communicate to it. Christ became incarnate in a particular culture at a particular time in history. He knew his contemporaries, for He was one with them, raised and educated as they were, shaped by the same ideas and customs, and yet He lived in obedience to His Father's will in all that He did and said. On every page of the gospels we see His deep knowledge and understanding of the times in which He lived and of the people to whom He sought to make known the good news of the kingdom.

To resist the ideas and practices of the culture in which we live we have to understand them and bring them before the bar of Scripture. Reflection on the Word and on the world are necessary, both for holy living and also for wise communication of the gospel to those around us. Paul spoke the same truth, but he presented it in different ways depending on whether he was in a synagogue with Jews and God-fearing Gentiles, or whether he was on Mars Hill with pagans. To communicate faithfully we have to work at understanding the intellectual climate of the times in which we live, and we need to give ourselves to people in love if we want to know what idols captivate the hearts of our contemporaries.8). The preparedness to give honest answers to honest questions in such a way that the unbeliever may be faced with the truth claims of Christianity. God has made truth known in His Word and so we may urge the unbeliever and the believer to come to Scripture with his or her questions. Because Christianity is the truth, people should not be afraid to ask the questions which trouble them. Paul reminds us that the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world, and that therefore they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

There will always be good and sufficient answers available for those who seek with an open heart and mind. This is so, whether we desire to show that a Biblical world view makes sense of life in a way that no other world view does, or whether we wish to defend the historical truth of the Biblical revelation.

All people are rebels against God in their hearts and minds, so we recognize that evangelism is not simply a matter of persuading people of the truth of the Christian message. We present the truth and the reasons for believing it, and at the same time we pray for the Holy Spirit to humble the mind and heart of the hearer in order that they might be open to the truth and be convinced by it.

-Adopted from a statement by Jerram Barrs.