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I challenge this central charge of Frank's with everything in me. I and many of my closest friends, who knew the Schaeffers well, are certain beyond a shadow of doubt that they would challenge it too. Defenders of truth to others, Francis and Edith Schaeffer were people of truth themselves.

For six years I was as close to Frank as anyone outside his own family, and probably closer than many in his family. I was his best man at his wedding. Life has taken us in different directions over the past thirty years, but I counted him my dear friend and went through many of the escapades he recounts and many more that would not bear rehearsing in print. It pains me to say, then, that his portrait is cruel, distorted, and self-serving, but I cannot let it pass unchallenged without a strong insistence on a different way of seeing the story. There is all the difference in the world between flaws and hypocrisy. Francis and Edith Schaeffer were lions for truth. No one could be further from con artists, even unwitting con artists, than the Francis and Edith Schaeffer I knew, lived with, and loved.

Crazy for God unquestionably has its humorous passages. It also has some pages of lyrical beauty and poignancy in which Frank describes his wife Genie and his daughter Jessica. I have no problem with a picture of Francis Schaeffer "warts and all." I knew him well, and could have added one or two stories myself. He was always open about his flaws, just as he was compassionate toward those of others. I had my own disagreements with him. My wife and I actually left L'Abri in 1973 for principled reasons, grieved but certain that we, along with several others, needed to break with a community that we believed was missing its way—mainly because of the direction Frank was intent on taking it.

Yet despite all that, for those of us who were part of the story of L'Abri in the late '60s and early '70s, the better qualities and the legitimate revelations in the memoir are overwhelmed by a blindness and bitterness that cannot be excused. No one who witnessed the stature and diversity of the thousands who came to L'Abri's 50th-anniversary celebration in 2005 could doubt the depth of quiet, enduring gratitude that thousands owe to Francis and Edith Schaeffer. For many of us, they changed our lives forever and set us off on the strenuous and costly path we are still pursuing decades later with no reservations and no regret.

Are there other problems with the book? First, Frank's portrayal of his mother is cruel and deeply dishonoring, monstrously ungrateful since she poured herself out for him far more than his workaholic father. Edith Schaeffer was one of the most remarkable women of her generation, the like of whom we will not see again in our time. I have never met such a great heart of love, and such indomitable faith, tireless prayer, boundless energy, passionate love for life and beauty, lavish hospitality, irrepressible laughter, and seemingly limitless time for people—all in a single person. There is no question that she was a force of nature, and that her turbo-personality left many people, and particularly young women who tried to copy her, gasping in her slipstream. To many of us she was a second mother, and in many ways she was the secret of L'Abri.

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