A surprising number of people have asked me recently how our students have changed over the thirty some odd years that we have been working at L’Abri in Southborough. I am not sure how to answer that question. This is because several times we have decided that we were seeing a discernable shift in our students. We would say, “Surely this is a new trend” or, “This really looks like the wave of the future”. Yet each time we were tripped up by the next student group which came along with different life stories, issues of concern, arguments and problems. We are now more cautious in our pronouncements. I will try to maintain that caution in this letter.
Going still further back in our history, certainly there has been a shift from the 1960’s intense political and philosophical discussions. The therapeutic revolution took place and questions morphed from “Is there a God?” to “Who am I?”, with all the variants of “‘me’ generation” concerns. Postmodernism has come and not gone, but faded. It never did displace the authority of science and we still live in the cross-fire between modernist and postmodernist ideas and influences. The ethics of the Bible is a greater problem for our students than the older questions about evidence for its truth.
In the 1970’s Francis Schaeffer lamented that after the collapse of the 1960’s dreams, the culture was left with “two awful values” – personal peace and affluence. Some years later, the sociologist Robert Bellah wrote Habits of the Heart in which he set out to understand the meanings that motivated Americans in the early 1980’s. He saw that neither Biblical Christianity nor Deism still had the motivating power that they had once had in early America. He found that they had been replaced by the “language” or meaning systems of the therapist and the manager. It has always intrigued me that this observation meshed so well with Schaeffer’s earlier analysis. One turns to the therapist for control of one’s inner life to achieve personal peace. One turns to the manager to gain and keep control of the parts of the outer world that seem most important – money and stuff -- affluence. The problem is not that there are therapists and managers. We need both. The problem comes when the meaning systems of the therapist and/or the manager trump all other values in peoples’ lives, when personal peace and affluence become the two main goals on our horizon and become idols. In fact they have become two massive idol-generators spinning out idols, much like Fourth of July firework pin-wheels spinning showers of sparks in all directions.
But idols’, as God-substitutes, will always betray their loyal followers in a great role-reversal. Idols promise power, change, new life, peace, safety. But idols will always turn to enslave us. It is not accidental that so many of our students now come with painful issues of identity and vocation. There are many complex reasons for this, but there is also the inevitable reality that the two idol systems of personal peace and affluence have failed to deliver. When they become God-substitutes, they bring not fulfillment but disillusionment and confusion. To make it worse, many in our society bind the two together by measuring identity and self-esteem only by one’s level of affluence. “What are you going to be when you grow up, Johnny?” too often means, “What kind of salary will you have when you are 40 and what will you do to earn it?” But it turns out that you are more than your job. If you lose your job you do not vaporize, leaving only a grease spot on the floor. You still exist.
Our students continue to be very diverse, refusing to be put in categories or boxes, but many struggle with just these changes in our culture. Identity and vocation issues are very often center stage in our tutorials and discussions. There is disillusionment with the promises of self-esteem, both in how possible it is to “achieve” it but also, in so far as you can “achieve” it, what is the cost of that achievement in self-centeredness. And then if the promises of the quest for affluence are our ultimate goal, it will come as a shock when its pursuit does not always bring wealth, stimulation, creativity and fun but sometimes poverty, disappointment, boredom and what the Bible calls “toil”. Even if we score high on the rankings of success, the cost of the sacrifices put on the altar to that idol may be our health, relationships and all other commitments in life. I was saddened to read Steve Jobs’ response to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, who asked him why he, who had been so secretive about his private life had now told his story so fully. He responded, “I wanted my kids to know me. I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”
So, times change, cultures change and our students change. But God is God and our most basic problems do not change, because they have to do with our relationship to Him. Our task must be to tell about the untruth and unwisdom of idolatries, whatever shapes they take, but also about the truth and wholeness of the way that Jesus made to bring us back to our Maker. May God help us to speak and live this out.

We had a very good autumn term with great students, helpers and a high level of community involvement. It was wonderful to be part of this and to see it bear fruit in students’ lives. We all felt that it was a great honor to see the really profound transformation in some of them. It is always a help to have some students who are not Christians but who feel free to raise their own honest questions. It is of course helpful to them to have that freedom, but also helpful to those who are Christians to be able to better relate to people with challenging viewpoints.
We had a number of very close calls financially this last term as each month-end became a drama. But thank God that we made it, with God’s provision through the generosity of many people. Many times we stood in amazement and gratitude that we could pay our bills. Please pray for us in this area as we brace for dealing with the oil bills for heating this winter.
Our heating is more than half from woodstoves. The sad occasion of a lot of storm damage this autumn has meant several neighbors offering us free wood – if we remove the wood for them. Thank God for this provision.
Thank God for our new group of students who are just now arriving as I write. We have not gone recruiting them but we have prayed that God would bring them and they are here. They seem to be a wonderful group – from the UK and Brazil as well as the USA. Please pray for them, that the time with us would be fruitful for each one.
A milestone was marked as Mardi and I went to the funeral of Gini Andrews. She was in her mid 90’s and had been a worker at the Swiss L’Abri years ago and had maintained an amazing, wide, ministry of prayer and counsel since then.
During this past break, Mary Frances has moved from the upstairs apartment in the big house, which she was sharing with Rebekah, to the apartment in the 43 Lovers Lane house where Ben and Nickaela are living. This will give both Mary Frances and Rebekah more space and independence.
Give thanks that Nate Morrell has made a good transition to the local high school and is doing well.  Luke is in his senior year there, so pray for him in the college application and decision process.
Please pray for the health of Ben and Nickaela’s children, Ellie, Abby and Noah who have begun the winter with infections.
May this be a wonderful new year for you all.
                    Dick Keyes