Free Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer Page B

How could what we believed be ignored or called stupid when people from “the top universities” were coming to Christ though us?
    Debby met Udo Middelmann at L’Abri when he came as a guest for a weekend, then came back several times. Udo, also tall, handsome, and extremely bright and accomplished, was the son of a German diplomat. He was a law student in Germany when he first visited. By the time of his later trips to L’Abri, he had graduated. He met Ranald, and Ranald “led Udo to Christ.”
    All three brothers-in-law got their theology degrees. And all three thereby went against the wishes of their families. John and Udo graduated from Covenant Seminary in St. Louis. Ranald went back to Cambridge for his theological degree.
    My future brothers-in-law had to become our kind of people before my sisters could marry them. My sisters were very good at training their husbands, just as Mom had trained Dad.
    After my brothers-in-law had converted, the ultimate power struggle with unseen and far-away “non-Christian” in-law parents was won. My brothers-in-law chose us over their own flesh and blood, in the ultimate in-law rivalry victory. The Schaeffer clan’s grandchildren would be raised “in The Work.” They would be spending every Christmas with us. When they went to a family reunion, it was to the Schaeffer reunion. And at those times when my brothers-in-law would visit their families, we would pray for them that the “difficult time” would soon pass and that they would come home unscathed.
    Everyone working at L’Abri was a disciple of my parents, including my brothers-in-law. Theoretically they could have been led to another Christian work—my parents grudgingly
allowed that some “other Christians” did good work—but in practice we all knew that anyone really hearing the Lord’s voice would never settle for a lesser calling than L’Abri.
    Mom got to have her cake and eat it, too. Her daughters had married “truly cultured and refined men,” and then they joined L’Abri and denied their worldly standing that had made Mom so pleased to fold them into our family. The more successful in the world you were before you got saved, the greater the triumph when you “turned from these worldly things to serve the Lord.”
    There was some awkwardness at my sisters’ weddings that I remember noticing even as a child. Mom and Dad were in charge, so no alcohol was served. I could see our new in-laws visibly withering under the strain of being in close proximity to the Schaeffer family without any benefit of the fortification provided by what must have been a dire need for several stiff drinks.
    Dad presided at the weddings, except for Priscilla and John Sandri’s. Another famous evangelical, Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones, preached at their wedding. This meant that Dad, and/or Dr. Jones, had the opportunity to “clearly preach the gospel.” In other words, the parents of my brothers-in-law were treated to hour-long sermons about how, without a faith in Christ, a personal faith, a real faith, a faith like ours, no marriage could last. Of course there was no dancing.
    The families my sisters married into were headed by bonvivants. There was Ranald’s dad, the South African judge, a whiskey-and-soda man. (Some years later, when this lovely man stopped by and visited us while we were on vacation in Italy, he surreptitiously poured me a glass of Chianti, my first taste of wine.) There was John’s dad, the Swiss industrialist with his fondness for chamber music and first-class alcoholically
well-lubricated ocean travel. And there was Udo’s cigar-smoking, schnapps-drinking German diplomat father, more at home in the halls of UN power politics and embassy parties than any church.
    At the weddings, our new in-laws looked somewhat distracted as the full weight of just what their sons had married into sunk home while my mother prayed at them and Dad preached at them, literally. And they were surrounded by earnest pale