This book means the world to me. Apart from the Bible, I don't think any other book has nearly the impact of this book. Understanding it's personal worth to me requires some back story. I dropped out of college in November of my freshman year of community college. I had no direction in life, but I also lacked the motivation and study skills to do well in college. That spring while I was working as a prep cook and a snowboard instructor my pastor and mentor Gary Van DeWalker, who had noticed my directionless, invited me to read Francis Scheaffer's The God Who is There. He bought me the paperback 30th Anniversary edition of the book and we begin meeting once a week to discuss the book chapter by chapter. Put simply, the book and the experience of reading the book with him changed my life. Schaeffer took a philosophical approach to apologetics. An approach he called presuppositional apologetics. He traced philosophical ideas through history, similar to Neitzchean genealogies, in order to exam the foundational ideas that bigger and more important ideas are based on. I found the whole thing endlessly fascinating and urgently important to ministry. Our conversations about each chapter lead us down additional theological and philosophical rabbit holes. By the end of the book, I wanted to learn more about both theology and philosophy. More importantly, having struggled through a book that seemed way over my head and full language that I would thought was too technical for me to unlock, I had the confidence to attempt other philosophy books. I re-enrolled at the community college the Fall and took Intro to Philosophy and loved it. Seventeen years later, I have an undergraduate degree in Philosophy, advanced degrees in Philosophy and Theology, and currently working on my dissertation in Religion and Culture. I have also been working in ministry in some shape for over 15 years. While my mentor has since gone to be with the Lord, I still have the copy of the book of the God Who is There sitting on my shelf next to the five-volume copy of Scheaffer's collected works, and over the years of working in ministry, I have invited others to read it with me over the years the same way Gary did with me.
by Jeffery Porter
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