The Epistemology of Humanity

But among Christians there should be a more profound way to know each other. Let us say we want to have communication; we are sick of this horrible mechanical inhumanity that we find around us. We are sick of being simply IBM cards. The Christian boy and girl who want to be open with each other, the Christian husband and wife who want to be open with each other, the pastor and the people who want to be open with each other--how can they really do it, moving from the outside inward? The problem of knowing each other is the discrepency between what a man seems to be and what he is inside. That is always the problem with getting inside and getting to know each other. So how do you get through?
Can you see that to the extent to which people accept biblical teaching for the inward man as well as the outward man, there is an increasing integration of the inward and the outward man--because they see both the inward and the outward man under the unity of the same norms, in regard to both values and knowing? It is possible to move from the outward man to the inward man because there is an increasing alignment as both are bound by the same universal. We must allow the norms of God in values and knowing to bind the inward man as well as the outward man, so that there is less and less discrepancy between the inward man and the outward man.
Unhappily, we will not perfectly keep God's norm more in the internal world of thought than we do externally, and even (in a fallen world) perhaps not as much. But with God's norms of truth, morals, values and knowling, we have tracks (or, perhaps a better analogy, a North Star) which give unity to the internal and external world. God's norms not only give unity, but they also provide a bridge between these two worlds. This applies both for ourselves, and then to get down inside each other. When we step from the external to the internal world of thought, we are not on a sea without a shore either in regard to ourselves or in regard to the woman or the man who stand before us.

-Francis Schaeffer, He is There And He is Not Silent