Schweitzer as enigma and challenge

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I have as of last night finished the biography of Albert Schweitzer I have been reading. It is a good, thoughtful overview of his life, philosophy, and Christian thought.

I have always thought of Schweitzer as an enigma. My knowledge of him has been rather limited. I knew of him through my NT training as the liberal German NT scholar who put a stop to the first quest for the historical Jesus. However, the way he put a stop to it was not necessarily the best. He showed that much of 19th century liberal scholarship had made Jesus in its own image. His correction involved seeing Jesus clearly as a Jew with eschatological beliefs about the coming kingdom of God, but it also involved seeing Jesus as a mistaken man who tried to force God's hand by going to the cross when the kingdom did not come immediately. The enigma existed for me in the fact that this man had a low view of Jesus yet gave and sacrificed so much in his name to start and run his missionary hospital in Gabon, Africa.

And thus enters the challenge. If someone who had such a flawed view of Jesus went to such great lengths to minister in his name to those in need, how much more should I be giving and serving? Ought not those of us who hold to an orthodox, biblical view of Jesus readily give more of ourselves than Schweitzer did in service to our Lord? May we rise to this challenge and live in every way for our Lord and not for ourselves.


I agree, we should always look forward to the challenges awaits our lives.

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