T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L N E W S L E T T E R O F L´ A B R I F E L L O W S H I P
November 2009
L’Abri
INTERNATIONAL
Oscar Wilde once quipped
that sentimentality is what
happens when cynicism
goes on a bank holiday. We
hear more often about the
mistakes and dangers of
cynicism, and perhaps we as
Christians are more
guarded against it. But what
about the mistakes and
dangers of sentimentality?
I became intrigued by sentimentality during
the time I spent writing a book on cynicism
(Seeing Through Cynicism, IVP). Though in a
sense they are polar opposites, these two
visions of life are actually quite deeply related. Cynicism is often a fruit of disillusioned
sentimentality. But what exactly is this ground
in which cynicism can grow? Jeremy Begbie
of Regent College describes a sentimental
way of understanding and living in the world
as having three primary aspects: it denies,
LETTER TO THE
L’ABRI FAMILY
page 5
Sentimentality ...
and its costs
evades or trivializes evil; it centers on selfreferential emotion; and it resists any appropriate, costly action into the world. These
three pitfalls form a certain perverse coherence.
Pitfalls
First, honesty about the depth of evil in the
world is eclipsed by entertainment, distraction and a preoccupation with niceness,
warmth, comfort and peace of mind. Children are told by countless programs and
shows, for example, that the world is wonderful, that everybody loves them and that
they can have what they want simply by wishing for it. The Disney industry has given us,
in the words of one scholar, a world “without dirt, cruelty or complexity” – and also
Dick Keyes
without God – but with plenty of niceness,
simplicity, optimism and superb marketing.
This influence is not limited to any specific
age group. Many people young and old maintain a total diet of stories in film and print
which have impossibly unrealistic happy endings. This vision amounts to not facing or
dealing with the brokenness that is in myself,
my neighbor and in the world. It is a deep
self-deception.
The second pitfall, the self-referential emotion on which sentimentality centers, is a little
harder to grasp. An example would be loving another person not for who they are,
but for the way that person makes me feel
about myself. There is quite a difference! At
the end of the day being in love with being in
love has very little to do with the other per-
Dear Friends,
This International Newsletter features an article from Dick Keyes,
director of the Southborough branch
of L’Abri. The article is based on
material which Dick has presented
in various lectures on the topic.
As Dick explains, the trivializing effect of sentimentality carries a serious risk for believers in their own
faith. As meaningful truths are reduced to slogans and comforting
images, we are left unprepared to
face the hard realities of life - realities which the Bible speaks openly
and clearly to us about.
Furthermore, sentimentality weakens our ability to share the truth of
the gospel with others. The real vision of hope which Jesus brought in
word and deed to people is often
watered down into something shallow and dishonest. It ends up being
more a betrayal of what Christ
taught than a true testimony.
If you would like to hear more, a
series of recorded lectures by Dick
on sentimentality can be ordered
from Sound Word Associates at
www.soundword.com.
On page 5 you will find the latest
Family Letter from Frank Stootman,
director of the newest residential
branch of L´Abri in New South
Wales, Australia. There you will find
a brief update on the latest news
from the work “down under.”
As always, if you have any questions, comments or tips for us concerning our website or this newsletter, please feel free to contact us at
[email protected].
Hope to hear from you!
Blessings,
The L’Abri Workers
son – someone else could easily take his or
her place.
This can extend far beyond romantic relationships. Sentimentality is not so much empathy for other people in their joy or pain,
but an involvement in their lives for the experience of my own feelings about them. In
another common example, injustice may be
the occasion for my anger. But my anger may
actually be driven more by my approval of
myself for these strong feelings of righteous
indignation than it is by my actual care for
the victims of the injustice. It is possible to
feel passionately, but with little “sense of
other”.
There is, of course, a place for legitimate and
necessary self-awareness, and mutuality is a
natural and healthy part of any relationship.
But in these forms the self-focus becomes
rather “pathos feasting on itself”. Tennyson’s
fifty page poem “In Memoriam” is at first
glance about the death of his close friend,
but it is actually about Tennyson’s own faith
and emotions in crisis.We read almost nothing about the man who died. More recently,
the extraordinary response to the death of
Princess Diana has been noted in interview
after interview in which people experienced
her death as something that had happened
to them personally and wanted to talk about
how it had made them feel.
Third, with sentimentality there is no suggestion or encouragement toward appropriate action in response to these feelings –
especially if the appropriate response may
be costly. This conclusion follows naturally if
I believe that there is nothing seriously wrong
in the world which really demands change
and if our lives are centered on an attempt
to feel good about ourselves. Then we are
unlikely to reach out very far to other people.
Of all the emotions that we have experienced while watching television, for example,
how often were we moved to do anything?
Neil Postman suggested that (apart from
advertising!) the only thing on television that
we actually do anything about is the weather
report.
Christians
Given that such sentimentality jars very hard
against Biblical Christian faith, we might expect the Christian community to be an oasis
or shelter from it.The sad thing is that Christians, who have the right message to confront sentimentality, have instead too often
been seduced by it. Many of the themes that
we emphasize so hard in L’Abri are
correctives to a sentimental consciousness
not just in society at large but in the Christian community as well. We talk of the radical fallenness and brokenness of the world
to people who seem never to have taken its
measure except as theory. We talk of both
looking for and living out what is true, not
just what is comfortable, nice and builds selfesteem, and we get blank stares. On the other
hand, when sentimentality has been shocked
into disillusionment, we must challenge the
It is possible to feel
passionately but with
little sense of “other”
very understandable but misguided cynicism
which results.
Time and again we see how the idea of God
can be co-opted to serve the full sentimental agenda in such a way that His actual word
is not heard at all. But this is nothing new.
God warned Ezekiel (Ezekiel 33) that when
he spoke God’s words to the people about
their approaching destruction, they would
hear him only as a crooner of love songs.
Jesus got similar treatment in his home town
synagogue (Luke 4) when he announced that
the messianic age, the hinge pin of human
history, had at last arrived in the hearing of
that congregation on that very day! Were
they excited? Amazed? Afraid? Challenged?
Not really. They were impressed, though, by
the fine, moving words that he used. When
he finally forced his way through their sentimentality, they mobbed him and tried to
throw him off the nearest cliff.
When the apostle Paul wrote that we should
“rejoice with those who rejoice and weep
with those who weep” (Romans 12:15), he
intended our emotions to go beyond the selfreferential. He is telling us to be engaged and
respond to the precious dignity of another
person who is real, valued and important to
God.Without this “sense of other” we might
simply be using the situation for the sake of
our own emotional experience. Or worse,
we might get it exactly backwards.We might
weep with their rejoicing, because it makes
us feel that we have missed out on what they
have. We might rejoice with their weeping,
because it makes us feel more successful by
comparison.
The apostle James also tangled with sentimentality. He wrote, “if a brother or sister is
naked and lacks daily food, and one of you
says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and
eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their
bodily needs, what is the good of that?”
(James 2:15-17). It is possible to have wonderful sentiments about peace, warmth and
nourishment for others and to do nothing
at all to help those same people. It is even
possible to think very well of yourself for
having these warm, charitable sentiments.
James nails all three aspects of sentimentality in what he called “dead faith”. These
people were trivializing the evil of another’s
suffering. They were pleased with their own
self-referenced feelings of compassion. They
allowed the needy person to go away distraught, cold and hungry.
Irony
The irony of it all is that sentimentality does
not deliver the comfort, peace and niceness
that it promises. Collectively, sentimental
niceness tends to discourage honesty. This
prevents open discussion about conflicts or
upsetting issues and therefore obstructs any
potential healing or growth. Individually,
sentimentality also leads to frustration. A life
spent in denial of what is wrong in the world
Today we are constantly encouraged to deny or trivialize suffering and evil
and focusing on good feelings about oneself
is going to be a life of superficiality and
disillusionment. Even today’s entertainment
industry may not be able to silence or mask
it forever.
The poet David McCord wrote about someone that he knew: “Deep down, he is very
shallow”.This is another reality check to sentimentality. It is the realization that perhaps,
I have become a shallow person.What a terrible thing if that is true of you or me, that
deep down, we are very shallow. There is no
depth to us. Go as deep as you want and
and in the world, with God’s help. This is a
strange and paradoxical truth. It is not an
invitation to mourning as complaint, self-pity
or nostalgia. It is rather a call to mourn as
God himself mourns, in sadness seeing suffering, evil and sin but working to change it.
Jesus’ promise seems to be for blessedness
or fulfillment at a deep level as we are able
to do this.
Choices
As we think of several of the pressure points
of sentimentality the consequences become
We may turn to sentimentality for selfprotection, but the consequences backfire
you still get superficiality, self-preoccupation,
vanity and triviality.
This is exactly what happens if we are unwilling to engage in the unpleasant, the upsetting, the suffering of life. If we avoid life’s
complexity and confusion, if we can’t face
pain in ourselves or others, if what we feel
most deeply always references ourselves,
then sure enough, we have already become
deep down, very shallow.
Jesus clarified our choices. He said, “Woe to
you who are laughing now, for you will mourn
and weep” (Luke 6:25). We can choose to
live life “laughing now” and try to keep on
laughing, to live in a bubble of happiness, flippancy and denial. But he maintained that this
effort was doomed and would end in mourning and weeping. His other option was the
beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:3).
We can mourn the brokenness in the world
and work against it in ourselves, in others
clear. What sort of a person do we become
if we deny and trivialize our own sin? We
become self-righteous, pompous, self-satisfied, self-deceived, fearful and eventually miserable. We will alienate ourselves from others because we are always excusing or making light of our mistakes and refusing to be
honest about ourselves.
What sort of a person do we become if we
deny or trivialize our own suffering, let’s say
our anxiety, doubt, depression, anger, sense
of inferiority, inadequacy? We become fake,
hollow people driven by fear of discovery. A
variation of this theme that we see a lot is
those who have not been able to admit
doubts about God – uncertainties about
their faith, or anger with God. Doubt that is
3
denied gains enormous power as we become more phony, “pretend good Christians”.
What sort of person do we become if we
don’t relate to other people in their suffering? Involving ourselves in others’ suffering
can be costly of time and energy. It means
not always knowing what to say, it means
very long conversations, bearing heavy loads
with them, all commitments that we might
not want and don’t have time for. It is easy
to see why we might want to avoid other
people in their suffering. But what do we
become? We become more and more selfish, more shallow, more superficial, phony in
our concerns. What if our most important
relationship is with our TV set?
What sort of person do we become if we
don’t honestly confront conflicts with other
people? We want to keep the world a happy
place and especially have everyone in it happy
with us.We become inwardly fearful people,
fearing the conflicts that we have avoided.
But in doing this we set ourselves up for far
worse conflicts, compounded conflicts more
difficult to resolve than they would have
been had we faced them earlier. And those
conflicts are usually forced on us when we
are finally not able to run away from them.
We also may end up moving a lot, socially
or geographically. As conflict looms, we run
away to not have to deal with it.
Honesty
So, we may turn to sentimentality for selfprotection, but the consequences backfire.
Following life’s path of least resistance goes
ity check, and especially for believers. If we
are drawn into sentimentality ourselves, we
are less able to live out or even communicate the gospel. Our own example becomes
a barrier to taking Christ seriously.
We must challenge this tendency. Honesty
about brokenness – our own brokenness, the
brokenness of others and the brokenness of
the world in general – really is redemptive.
Addressing the things that the sentimentalist
is scared to address is actually far more fulfilling and engaging. It frees me to take life
seriously and to be open to what real redemption can mean. And as I live in reality in
ing, and yet we possess everything” (II Cor.
6:8-10).
Paradoxically, in serving God in God’s power,
Paul was willing to suffer in his full battle
against darkness and evil in the world, and
he experienced life at its depth with profound fulfillment and vitality. It is this deep
mystery which the shallowness of sentimentality flees and avoids. The gospel gives no
guarantee that all things we be quickly, easily
or in this life completely solved. But such an
engagement is surely what we are intended
for. It is the path Christ opened for us to
become more, rather than less, human.
If we are drawn into sentimentality,
we are less able to live out and
communicate the gospel
eventually the other way. If follow the path
of sentimentality we become superficial, insensitive people.
But interestingly enough, most people do
not want to be dishonest.They do not want
to be shallow, hollow, phony or without a
sense of the other. In a way, an awareness of
our vulnerability to sentimentality is a real-
4
this different way, I am able to discover a far
deeper and fulfilling life.
We will not find life in self-protection from
the world in all its “dirt, cruelty and complexity”.The apostle Paul’s life-experience was
not one of shying away from this brokenness.
He wrote, “we are treated as impostors, and
yet we are true; as unknown, and yet we are
well-known; as dying and see – we are alive;
as punished, and yet we are not killed; as sorrowful, yet we are always rejoicing; as poor,
and yet we make many rich; as having noth-
Dick Keyes is Director of the Southborough
branch of L’Abri near Boston, MA. He is the
author of Beyond Identity: Finding Your Way
in the Image and Character of God (2003),
Chameleon Christianity: Moving Beyond
Safety and Conformity (2003) and Seeing
Through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the
Power of Suspicion (2006). He is currently
working on a book on sentimentality.
To the Praying Family ...
Australian L’Abri Now a Branch!
Last time Jock McGregor in the USA wrote to you
of the “far-flung” Korean and Canadian branches.
From Korea you can continue on your journey for
a ten hour flight in a somewhat southerly direction
... until you land in Sydney, Australia (or take the
thirteen hour short cut direct from Los Angeles!).
Welcome to the newest branch of L’Abri – in
Elderslie, near Camden on the southwest edge of
Sydney.
L’Abri Fellowship (Australia) was established in
1989 as a resource centre. Visitors have been
welcomed here for many years following the encouragement of Francis Schaeffer in the 1980’s to
do what could be achieved with the resources that
were available. Conferences and seminars have
since then maintained a steady interest in the thoughtful approach to the Christian way of life espoused by L’Abri.
Please give thanks to our Lord that, as of April 18, 2009, the Australian work is now regarded officially as a fully
operating branch. The work is becoming more residential in nature, along with the continuation of seminars and
provision of L’Abri study resources.
The directors, Frank and Heather Stootman, can accommodate in a large
home up to six student guests who may stay for periods of approximately
two weeks. The small community provides an informal hospitable atmosphere in which the Christian worldview may be explored through good discussions and personal study.
Dear praying family, please include the new Australian branch
in your much valued prayers for
the ongoing work in all L’Abri
branches:
that the Lord may send
Frank and Heather Stootman
those earnestly seeking answers
to their questions; that the right
priority mix may be found between outside lecturing commitments and
serving individuals in the branch context; and for provision of the resources and the Lord’s strength to do his work.
Yours in the
Fellowship of Jesus,
Frank & Heather Stootman
Australian L’Abri
P.S. Aussies & Kiwis!
Consider going to L’Abri
in your own backyard!