God worked a miracle when He brought Francis and Edith Schaeffer together, because their parents had raised them with such opposite values.  Only God could prepare them to accept and love one another.  With their different experiences and education, only God could blend them into a couple and enable them to help troubled people from all over the world.

Francis Schaeffer's great-grandfather "Franz" and his wife, Carolina, emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1869 to escape European wars, hardship, poverty, and famine.  Franz came to work on the railroads, which hired thousands of Chinese and European immigrants.  The same year they arrived in America, rail workers completed the world's first transcontinental railroad and linked the East and West Coasts.  Joining many others from their homeland, the Schaeffers settled in Germantown, now a colorful neighborhood in northwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  The historic steam locomotive Old Ironsides made its first run through Germantown in 1832, and the expanding nation needed many young men to lay more railroad track, build steam engines, and switch cars in the train yards.  Franz worked in these busy train yards.  Coal burning locomotives made his work dirty, exhausting, and dangerous.  Many men worked too hard and took risks, hoping for promotion to conductors and engineers someday.

In 1876, seven years after the Schaeffers came to America, Carolina gave birth to their only son, Francis August Schaeffer III.  Sadly, just three years after his birth, a railroad accident killed Franz.  The burden of supporting the family fell on Carolina, so at a very early age Frank dropped out of school and went to work full time.  His early childhood hardships influenced him to reject the Lutheran church and all ministers.  Perhaps they did not reach out and help the needy as he thought they should.  He thought church was only for the rich.  He thought pastors did not know how to work.  He believed Christianity was worthless.

Frank married Bessie Williamson, who was also from Germantown.  Bessie's grandfather, William Joyce, came to America from England and settled in Germantown in 1846.  Her mother, Mary Joyce, married Wallace Williamson in 1877.  Ten years later, when Bessie's father died, her mother had to care for her four children and an elderly father all by herself.  Bessie experienced childhood hardships similar to those of Frank.  They had to turn their home into a laundry to care for the family.  Bessie became angry and bitter from the experience of helping her mother long hours each day.  She hated the washing and ironing and caring for a large household.  She recalled her childhood with pain.  Though she attended the Evangelical Free Church and worked in Christian Endeavor, she refused to accept the gospel or allow Jesus Christ to transform her bitter selfishness with his loving presence.

             When Bessie was thirty-two years old, she gave birth to her only child, Francis August Schaeffer IV.  Fran was born on January 30, 1912 in his parents' home on Pastoria Street, Germantown, Pennsylvania.  Remembering her own difficult childhood, Bessie resolved to have only one child.  Because of their German and English backgrounds, Fran's parents had received some religious training as a part of their culture, but they turned from this and gave little thought to raising Fran in a Christian home.  After God called Fran to be a minister, they told him bluntly they did not want any son of theirs to be a pastor.

The Schaeffers lived in an historic area, and Fran developed an appreciation for the sacrifices and the spiritual values of America's founders from exploring and hiking around his neighborhood.  German Mennonites under the leadership of Francis Daniel Pastorius founded Germantown in 1683.  The first paper mill in the colonies was built in Germantown in 1690.  During the Revolutionary War, General Howe defeated General George Washington and the colonial army in Germantown on October 4, 1777.  Later, in 1793 and 1794, President George Washington made Germantown his summer home.

As Frank and Bessie raised Fran, they expected him to follow in his father's footsteps and work honestly with his hands.  They did not respect ministers and they had never seen the Christian faith make any positive difference in anyone's life.  After Fran became a minister, perhaps their attitude influenced him to work hard and faithfully to demonstrate the reality of God both intellectually and practically in all that he did.  Fran's father was hardworking, and taught his own son responsibility, the importance of manual labor, and the necessity of caring for one's family no matter what the personal sacrifice.  Raised in a blue-collar (working-class) home, Fran never looked down upon working in the trades or in any other honest industry.  As he trained to work in the trades, he learned the value of all types of work from his hardworking father.  Later, as a minister, he lifted up hard physical labor and working with your hands as the calling of God, just as much as some might be called to the intellectual labor of the pastor, teacher, or missionary.  Many times he said, "The call to the ministry is no higher calling than any other."  Each person is responsible before God to do His will in whatever vocation or profession God calls him to fulfill.  Throughout his ministry, Fran cared for all unbelievers, because he had been raised by unbelievers to be an unbeliever.

Together, Frank and Bessie Schaeffer raised a healthy, strong, active, intelligent boy, who loved life and enjoyed others.  He made worthwhile friendships in the Boy Scout Troop that met in the local Presbyterian Church.  Scouting came to America from England in 1910 so churches could reach out to young boys, especially those who had no church home.  In the early days, the Boy Scout Motto was "Be Prepared for the Second Coming of Christ."  The Boy Scouts drew Fran into the church and Sunday School.  However, because the preacher did not base his sermons on the Bible, Fran did not find them helpful.  The honest believers in the church inspired Fran, and he appreciated what a church could do to help others.

Fran learned many important values from his unbelieving father: he learned to persevere and work hard, and the value of doing an honest day's labor for an honest day's wage.  He saw that nonchristians could be "good people," even better than some who claimed to be Christians.  But as Fran grew in understanding, he recognized that no one can earn salvation by their good works or by going to church.  Fran came to understand that both believers and unbelievers can do many wonderful things, because God made people in His image with abilities that should be used for His glory and honor.

Without regard to God's purposes, Fran's parents planned his life for him.  They spent whatever they could afford to give him opportunities they had not enjoyed in their own childhood.  They took him to the beach in Atlantic City, New Jersey and on other family outings.  But Fran and his father found their main enjoyment from working hard together in the trades.  They had no greater "fun" than working side by side, and Fran's father dreamed of his son becoming an engineer.  They remodeled their home together and Fran ran the electrical wiring.  His parents determined that he would get a degree in engineering and design, and then go to work with his father.  They wanted him to do something practical.  They did not challenge Fran intellectually or show concern for his spiritual growth.  Their values and vision did not extend beyond living and working for what this life can give.  They just wanted Fran to support himself and his family materially with a higher standard of living than they had enjoyed.  Yet, everything Fran learned from working with his hands he would later use to repair and maintain his family's homes in America and Europe.  Fran learned how to manage on a meager budget: he could repair things when they broke or make them better.  With Fran's early education in the trades, God met many of L'Abri needs "in advance" when they arose.  God began preparing Fran to meet the many and varied physical needs of L'Abri, as well as the spiritual needs of every person he would meet, even before Fran received the Lord as his Savior.  God knew exactly what Fran would need in pioneer missionary work, so God used Frank to teach Fran practical skills, even though Frank did not think God cared about people.

Because Fran was not raised as a Christian, he did not see much meaning to life.  Though his school records showed he was highly intelligent, he simply did not apply himself to his studies.  He saw no reason to work hard or strive for excellence in intellectual endeavors until after he came to faith in God: then he became a straight A student.  He attended Roosevelt Junior High School and Germantown High School, taking classes in the vocational and technical areas.  Upon graduation, his parents planned for him to study engineering at Drexel Institute, so he prepared by taking courses in mechanical drawing, woodworking, metalwork, electrical design, and construction.  By the time he graduated, he could lay flooring, build garages, lay brick, spread concrete, and do plumbing.  During his high school years, he learned many practical skills that he would later use to overcome difficulties.  He learned to be practical-minded and hardworking from his parents, and these values along with his early education would be absolutely essential after God led him to decide to live by faith as a missionary.  God began preparing Fran for the hard work of building L'Abri even as a child.  L'Abri became "the shelter" in Europe and America for young people like Fran who did not know they were searching for God until they found Him.  His work as a missionary would require much more than giving "honest answers to honest questions" around a cozy fire or writing books and making films: the things that made him famous.  God prepared him, before he came to faith in Him, to do the hard and difficult manual and intellectual labor He had planned for him.

Unlike the home Fran eventually created for his own children, there were no philosophical or theological discussions or questions among his parents and him.  His parents had no "love for wisdom," and they did not care to "reason about God."  They had no concern for cultural things, and they knew nothing about what they were missing.  Although they did not stimulate Fran's interest in the arts or music, Fran's interest grew in these areas in junior high school.  He proved to be a capable public speaker, and at the age of eleven entered and won a speech contest sponsored by the Boy Scouts.

Because Fran cared about others, at the age of seventeen he began teaching English to a Russian immigrant.  He needed to buy an English grammar for him, so he went to the book store and found what he wanted.  After he went home, he found they had wrapped up the wrong book; and discovered instead, he had an introduction to Greek philosophy.  The philosophy book interpreted life only from the human point of view.  It's teachings relied on human reason alone and left many unanswered questions.  But it grabbed Fran's interest and opened the door to intellectual pursuits.  Fran's studies in philosophy led him to discover the basic philosophical questions about the meaning of life.  Seeking answers to these questions, he listened carefully to the preaching of his pastor.  He did not find the answers from his sermons, because he seemed to preach only about doing good deeds, things Fran already did.  Fran later learned that the preacher taught from the liberal theological position, using ideas that came into many of the mainline protestant churches in the early 1900's.  Such teaching was sometimes called "the social gospel."  Liberal theology teaches that the Bible contains errors; therefore, God cannot be trusted to speak without making mistakes.  Most liberal theologians deny many of the Bible's positive teachings about Jesus, including His virgin birth and miracles, the value of His death in our behalf, and His second coming.  They do not believe that everything Jesus said in the Bible is true.  Theological liberals sometimes teach that God has never really spoken to people; and the Bible is nothing but people's thoughts and hopes about what God "might" be like.  Before Fran knew what theological labels to use for different systems of thought in the churches, he learned that neither philosophy nor liberal theology could answer his questions or give meaning to life.

The book Fran unwrapped and read "by mistake" was not the Bible, because God knew the book Fran first needed to read in order to prepare him to study and understand the Bible.  God wanted Fran to know the right questions, so He could show Fran that the Bible had the right answers.  But before Fran read the Bible, he concluded that the Christianity he learned at church could not answer the deep questions about life.  Fran thought that perhaps he needed to be honest about his unbelief and quit going to church.  His father Frank had done just that.  But first, he decided to be fair and read the Bible for himself to see if it had the answers he sought.  He read the Bible as he read any other book of philosophy or history.  He began at the beginning and read straight through to the end.  From reading Genesis to Revelation, he discovered that the Bible contained the answers to his philosophical questions.  In the course of about six months, at the age of seventeen, the truth of God and the Spirit of God led Fran to become a Christian.  However, he did not know anyone else who believed as he did.

Although filled with the excitement of a new and growing faith, Fran could not talk to his parents.  They would not have understood how he could have moved from not knowing whether or not there was a God (from being an agnostic), to reading philosophy, to reading the Bible, and then to finding the answers he sought in the Bible.  Later, when he tried to explain his faith to them, they dismissed his ideas without discussion.  Looking back upon that time, Fran observed, "What rang the bell for me was the answers in Genesis, and that with these you had answers--real answers--and without these there were no answers either in philosophy or in the religion I had heard preached." 1.   Much later he wrote the book Genesis in Space and Time, because without the Book of Genesis nothing else in the Bible holds together or makes sense.

One hot August evening in 1930, out of curiosity and without knowing that God was leading him, Fran wandered into an old-fashioned tent meeting revival.  He walked down the aisle on the clean sawdust that the workers had sprinkled on the ground, and he quietly sat down on one of the creaky wooden folding chairs.  The preacher on the raised wooden platform looked out at the people with piercing but kindly eyes as he spoke with enthusiasm.  After his sermon, the preacher called for repentant sinners to come forward as the congregation sang old hymns and the pianist played. 

For a hundred years in America, revivalists had traveled from town to town.  They often raised a tent, led people in rousing songs, and preached so people would commit their lives without reservation to serving Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.  The revivalists hoped to bring dead churches back to life by inspiring Christians to do their duty.  Revived Christians could then lead sinners to repent of their sins and turn to God.  Revivalists also preached so sinners would "hit the sawdust trail" and come forward to a kneeling bench or rail.  In front of the raised platform, they encouraged sinners to repent, pray, and give their lives to Jesus Christ. 

Fran listened carefully to the man when he preached from the Bible.  Fran had never heard such preaching before.  Here he heard the real gospel preached according to the Scriptures, just as he had learned from his own independent study.  He also found many other Christians, people who knew God just as he knew Him.  At the altar call, when the preacher asked people to come forward and give their lives to Christ, Fran went forward and took the side of God with those who believed in the God of the Bible.

Fran decided to become a Christian because Christianity is true, and later he decided that this is the only reason to become a Christian.  Since the Bible's teachings are reasonable and true to life, they make sense.  The Scriptures, grounded in God's acts in history and people's lives, give a logical presentation of the truth.  People can talk about, explain, and share the reasonable system of Christian thought with others.  The Bible contains the only answers to the meaning of life and the questions life poses.  Later Fran wrote, "The basis for our faith is that certain things are true.  The whole man, including the intellect, is to act upon the fact that certain things are true.  That, of course, will lead to an experiential relationship with God, but the basis is content, not experience" 2.

From his experience and his studies, Fran compared ideas.  He distinguished truth from falsehood, both logically and historically, as he read philosophy and compared it to the Bible.  Christian faith was true to life, and the Christian system answered the questions life posed.  He found that people don't invent the questions of life and then invent the answers.  Rather, people discover the questions life poses.  Many times these questions are the same questions from generation to generation.  Then, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, many people discover that the Bible, though written long ago, gives the answers to their questions.  While a teenager, Fran learned what he often later preached: the Bible is true in all that it affirms, and the Bible is God's revelation to save lost and dying people.  Searching people discover the questions of life, and then they find that God has already thought of the questions and given the answers in the Bible.  As a pastor and missionary, Fran used many truths as strong arguments for the authority and reliability of the Bible as a revelation from God.

After finding the truth about God and having that truth confirmed independently at a tent-meeting revival, Fran had more choices to make.  He had decided to believe in, trust, and obey Jesus Christ, rather than continue living his own life on his own terms or according to other people's plans.  When he accepted Jesus as his Savior, he also received Jesus as his Lord.  God did not overpower him or program him to make him into a Christian.  God did not force him to make a decision against his will.  In spite of great struggles, Fran walked joyfully and willingly in the path God chose for him.  God led Fran gently by the compelling truth of His Word, the Bible.  He enlightened him by the power of the Holy Spirit, and Fran made an intelligent and responsible choice to follow Jesus wherever He might lead.  Then Fran prayed for God to help him make all his future choices day by day.  For these and other reasons, Fran never tried to manipulate others or stimulate them to make only an emotional decision to give their lives to God.

As he learned to preach to his generation, Fran said that God had made significant people in a significant history.  Just as God works in history and can change history, people can also make significant changes in history.  God holds people responsible for the choices and changes they make, and these choices can make a difference throughout eternity.  Though God prepared Fran for his life's work, He did so through the tough choices Fran made as he faced the challenges of reality and those who did not know God.

Shortly after becoming a Christian, Fran experienced the Holy Spirit's call to the Christian ministry.  As he felt the joy of that calling, he knew what a heartbreak this would be to his parents!  He knew how antagonistic they would be.  How could he convince his parents to accept this change of vocation, especially when they felt all ministers were little more than parasites upon society?

© Copyright L. G. Parkhurst, Jr. Revised Edition 2008
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