Francis Schaeffer's 'How Should We Then Live?' was published in 1975, making it 11 or 12-years older than I am. No matter. Schaeffer could have just as easily have been writing today.
The thoughts and accounting here are not old, they are timeless. And their timeliness may only be greater today than when he first published because the fruition of some of what he explains is more and more becoming apparent as secular humanism wreaks more havoc than many would have been willing to suppose four-and-a-half decades ago.
As Ezekiel 33:10-11 puts it, in the passage from which the title of Schaeffer's book drew its inspiration,
“And you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, Thus have you said: ‘Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them. How then can we live?’ Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?"
And just before that, in verses 7-9.
"So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul."
And thus we do so live.
