Francis Schaeffer:
Every man has built a roof over his head to shield himself at the point of tension. At this point of tension the person is not in a place of consistency in his system, and the roof is built as a protection against the blows of the real world, both internal and external. It is like the great shelters built upon some mountain passes to protect vehicles from the avalanches of rock and stone which periodically tumble down the mountain. The avalanche, in the case of the non-Christian, is the real and the abnormal, fallen world which surrounds him.
The Christian, lovingly, must remove the shelter and allow the truth of the external world and of what man is, to beat upon him. When the roof is off, each man must stand naked and wounded before the truth of what is. . . .
It is unpleasant to be submerged by an avalanche, but we must allow the person to undergo this experience so that he may realize his system has no answer to the crucial questions of life. He must come to know that his roof is a false protection from the storm of what is; and then we can talk to him of the storm of the judgment of God.
—Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, in The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1982), 1:138.