Tim Keller has been a significant part of my life lately.
First, I read his book, The Prodigal God (see blog post from June 14). Then I met him a few months ago when he came to speak in Rome. The theme of a recent church retreat was his article "The Missional Church." Now I've just finished reading The Reason for God.
I enjoy reading. And I appreciate writings like this that are thought provoking and convicting and compelling...that speak to me on a mental, spiritual and emotional level...that appeal to my rationality as well as my sentimentality.
Because this life is a journey and a learning process, and I don't think I'll ever get sick of learning more about God and how I relate to Him. In fact, the more I learn about Him through reading His Word and commentaries on it, the hungrier I am for it. For Him. The more I spend time with Him in prayer, the more I want to.
It brings to mind a line from Romeo and Juliet:
"And yet I wish but for the thing I have:
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,The more I have, for both are infinite."
My God is both infinite and intimate. And His Story is strong and complex and intricate enough to be both deserving of scholarly scrutiny and able to hold up beneath historical and philosophical and theological dissection. Yet it is simple enough for a child to accept.
"But Jesus called for them, saying, 'Permit the children to come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.'" (Luke 18:16-17)
Now, according to the Myers-Briggs personality test, I am a little more of a "thinker" than a "feeler." So maybe the first half of The Reason for God (with all its arguments and counterarguments and rationalizing though questions and debunking doubts about God) should have appealed to me more. And it was really interesting to reason through the belief in the existence of a creator and redeemer. It was intriguing to investigate tough, legitimate questions like...
"How can there be only one true religion?"
"How could a good God allow suffering?"
"How can a loving God send people to Hell?"
"How can you believe in God when science seems to disprove His existence?"
(If any of these questions peak your interest, read the book and we can talk about it. Or ask me and I'll get you a copy in English or Italian).
But I have to admit, I didn't really enjoy the first half as much as the second. I got a bit bogged down and overloaded with 118 pages of attempts to reason away disbelief. Because at a certain point, you just have to throw in the towel and realize it's not all about proof! You can't prove, with tangible, incontrovertible evidence that a supernatural, unseen God is real. You also can't prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that He isn't.
Even doubt requires a leap of faith.
Because you may be so set on the fact that there could not be an ultimate creator who came to earth in human form to take the fall for us and that the only way to this "heaven" place is to surrender your life to him.
But what if you're wrong?
What if your disbelief determined your eternity?
Okay, there's just too much in this book for me to possibly babble about everything I got out of it. So without entering any of the great theological debates (I'll leave that for Tim Keller to do in his own published words), here's how the second half of the book spoke to me:
1. One legitimate argument for the existence of God is that we have the ability to reason at all. Let's face it. Our brains are pretty miraculous. We are "above" every other living creature (we "run the world") because we have the capacity for mental analysis and creativity and extreme emotion and deep love.
How could that have just happened, ya know?
In Chapter 8, "The Clues of God," Keller says, "If we believe God exists, then our view of the universe gives us a basis for believing that cognitive faculties work, since God could make us able to form true beliefs and knowledge...All the things that we see make perfect sense. Also, if God exist our intuitions about the meaningfulness of beauty and love are to be expected."
Without such a belief, what is the meaning of life? If there's nothing beyond ourselves or this finite life, then who cares? That kind of a view just makes it all seem so pointless. So hopeless.
2. Maybe I should have written a blog post solely about this (and stay tuned, I just might!), but I have been so smacked in the face by my sin of trying to find my identity in anything other than Him. I'll let some quotes from Chapter 10 explain for me:
"Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from Him."
"The primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God."
Does that hit anybody else right between the eyes?
3. My God is beautiful and, by His very nature as three in one (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) He is a relational being. He doesn't need me or anyone else to love or glorify Him. He is complete in and of Himself.
I don't deserve His love and never will. I can never repay Him. I could never be worthy of Him. Yet he wants to have a covenant relationship with me. (I'm so tempted to ramble on about the book of Ruth as well as biblical parallels I see in Pride and Prejudice, but I shall resist. Another time).
So If you're still reading this, bless you. I know this one is getting long. And as much as I'd love to go on, I'll wrap this up.
But do tell me...what do YOU think about all this? Life...eternity...the meaning of existence? Really, I want to know.
Personally, "for me the meaning of life is centered in our redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in its relationship to that." -Flannery O'Conner
Okay ONE more.
"I believe in God the way I believe in the sun. Not because I see it. But because by it I see everything else." -C.S. Lewis
