Archives For Tim Keller

Around the Web (2/20)

February 20, 2012 — Leave a comment

  • How much is a homemaker worth? A new study from Investopedia estimated the value at $96,261 per year. “She looks well to the ways of her household… Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her” (Prov 31:27-28).
  • Edwin Crozier powerfully encourages us not to take this trip alone.
  • Ken Weliever helps us learn to say, “I’m sorry.”
  • Ferrell Jenkins has made a number of recent posts on the kings of ancient Babylon – Nabopolassar, Babylonian kings in Biblical history, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-merodach, and Nabonidus.
  • Tim Challies offers some thoughts on that pesky rooster near the conclusion of the gospels.

    A gospel is an announcement of something that has happened in history, something that’s been done for you that changes your status forever. Right there you can see the difference between Christianity and all other religions, including no religion. The essence of other religions is advice; Christianity is essentially news. Other religions say, “This is what you have to do in order to connect to God forever; this is how you have to live in order to earn your way to God.” But the gospel says, “This is what has been done in history. This is how Jesus lived and died to earn the way to God for you.” Christianity is completely different. It’s joyful news.

    - Tim Keller

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The Issue on Which Everything Hangs

February 5, 2012 — Leave a comment

“If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.”

- Tim Keller, The Reason for God

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The Reality of the Resurrection

October 11, 2011 — Leave a comment

Tim Keller, on the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

It is not enough for the skeptic, then, to simply dismiss the Christian teaching about the resurrection of Jesus by saying, “It just couldn’t have happened.” He or she must face and answer all these historical questions:

  • Why did Christianity emerge so rapidly, with such power?
  • No other band of messianic followers in that era concluded their leader was raised from the dead—why did this group do so?
  • No group of Jews ever worshipped a human being as God. What led them to do it?
  • Jews did not believe in divine men or individual resurrections. What changed their worldview virtually overnight?
  • How do you account for the hundreds of eyewitnesses to the resurrection who lived on for decades and publicly maintained their testimony, eventually giving their lives for their belief?

- The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, 218-219

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A Trustworthy Bible or a Stepford God?

August 22, 2011 — 1 Comment

In The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Tim Keller provides a Biblical answer to these common objections:

  • There can’t be just one true religion
  • How could a good God allow suffering?
  • Christianity is a straightjacket
  • The church is responsible for so much injustice
  • How can a loving God send people to hell?
  • Science has disproved Christianity
  • You can’t take the Bible literally

After devoting a chapter to each objection, Keller concludes with these powerful words:

If we let our unexamined beliefs undermine our confidence in the Bible, the cost may be greater than we think.

If you don’t trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you. For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won’t have an intimate relationship. Remember the (two!) movies The Stepford Wives? The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.

Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won’t! You’ll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.

- The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, 117-118

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A Stepford God

April 1, 2008 — 1 Comment

Consider this from Tim Keller in The Reason For God.

If you don’t trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you. For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won’t have an intimate relationship. Remember the (two!) movies The Stepford Wives? The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.

Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won’t! You’ll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.

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