Tim Keller's The Reason For God - a review

Tim Keller has been a favorite speaker of mine for some time now. As pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, he reaches thousands each week. He has also become a fixture at pastor’s conferences including John Piper’s conference in Minneapolis (where I saw Keller in person a couple years ago) and Mark Driscoll’s Acts 29 conferences. His dry wit and humor coupled with great insight on ministering to the city make him a must-listen for me.

(As a brief aside, I made this analogy at Piper’s conference a couple years ago: if Piper’s conference were Star Wars, Mark Driscoll would be Han Solo, Piper would be Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Tim Keller is quite easily Yoda. Quite easily.)

When I heard that he had written a new book, I eagerly ordered it (thank you, wtsbooks.com) and put it at the top of my reading stack.

God and Reason have been hot topics lately in the book world; it seems to be the topic du jure for atheists who want to trash Christianity. Keller’s book seems to be something of a response to those books, proposing, as the title suggests, The Reason for God. There has been significant buzz in the Christian blogosphere surrounding the book, and a not-insignificant marketing blitz as well - it’s not often that a new Christian apologetic comes complete with its own website.

Quite frankly, I found The Reason for God to be underwhelming. Keller spends the first half of the book responding to common objections to Christianity (“why is Christianity so exclusive?” “How can God send people to hell?”, etc) and then takes the second half on the positive side of the bargain, explaining why he thinks Christianity is true, and then laying out a bit about Christian beliefs. While the reasoning was solid, it wasn’t anything groundbreaking - it’s the same stuff you’ll find by reading C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity and N. T. Wright’s Simply Christian. In fact, Keller quotes extensively from Lewis and philosopher Alvin Plantinga. Too often it seemed to me Keller should just be suggesting that we buy and read Lewis and Plantinga rather than reading his repackaged version.

The first half of the book kept my interest pretty well, but I will admit to a waning interest and a lot of skimming toward the end. This isn’t to say that The Reason for God is a bad book, or not worth reading. Put into the right hands, it could be a good introduction to the rational, logical reasons for Christianity. I don’t think it’d answer all of the serious intellectual doubter’s questions, but it’d be a start; good for your college seeker, too. But for someone who’s already familiar with the arguments, has already read Lewis and the like? Don’t bother. Or buy it for the quick read and then give it away. Here’s hoping for something more fresh and insightful next time from the capable Dr. Keller.

Should this really be our fight?

“Clergy fight same sex marriage”. This headline stared out at me from this morning’s copy of the Cedar Rapids Gazette. The sub-heading (which was used as the title of the online version of the story) gives more detail: “Iowa church leaders planning rally ‘defending marriage’”.

A coalition of church leaders today announced plans for an Oct. 28 prayer rally and other actions to defend traditional marriage in the face of a district judge’s ruling striking down a same-sex marriage ban – a development they warned could convert Iowa into the nation’s “Rainbow Vegas.”

“This is a call to arms,” said Dan Berry of Cornerstone Family Church. “The sleeping giant is being awakened.”

Later in the story, the Rev. Keith Ratliff of Maple Street Missionary Baptist Church in Des Moines said the “…campaign is not geared toward hate or fear of homosexuals, but rather seeks to preserve the longstanding, family-based and Bible-backed tradition of marriage as being a union between a man and a woman.”

The final, colorful quote in the story comes from Chuck Hurley of the Iowa Family Policy Center, who warns that if the same-sex marriage ban is permanently reversed, Iowa will be come “the Rainbow Vegas”.

We have gotten all too familiar with hearing pastors and Christian leaders like these over the past two decades. On a national level, radio hosts like Dr. Dobson, televangelists/presidential candidates such as Pat Robertson, and leaders of movements like the Moral Majority (the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, an OK guy in my book), and later on the Christian Coalition (Ralph Reed, who turned out to be a bit more crooked), urged their listeners or viewers to call their congressman, write their legislator, to stop this piece of legislation, encourage that one, or to decry a recent judicial ruling.

There is a place in the life of a Christian for speaking the truth to our community. In many cases that should and will include involvement in the political arena. At our church this past week we had a petition on the table in the foyer urging Iowa lawmakers to pass a state constitutional amendment in “defense of marriage”, and to urge them to support an amendment to the federal constitution as well. One of our elders, during announcement time in the service, asked folks to consider signing it. Many did. (I didn’t. I’m not so sure that we should change the constitution for something like this.) But I fear for the sake of the Gospel and our churches when what our pastors are known for are leading the “sleeping giant” into the political arena when those rascally judges finally go too far. (Why is the church “sleeping”, anyway? Maybe that’s problem numero uno.)

Particularly disgusting to me was the quote from Mr. Hurley of the Iowa Family Policy Center, pulling out the scare tactics to warn good little church people that their beloved, safe hometowns will become a “Rainbow Vegas”. “Ooh! Run away!!! Gay people!!! Be afraid!” I don’t know whether Hurley is a pastor or not, but the IFPC website is pretty plainly espousing Christianity, including on their site a Prayer Request page with a quote from John Bunyan. Mr. Hurley, I see plenty of prayer requests on that page for new donors, success in the courts and the legislature, and politically active people. But where’s the prayer request that these people who you fear so strongly would hear the good news of Jesus Christ and be freed from their bondage to sin? If we’re going to rouse the “sleeping giant” of the church, why are you only rousing them to join the political fight against your adversaries rather than rousing them to minister to and serve those same people?

Our primary command as believers in Jesus Christ is the Great Commission: to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel. We are not to huddle in a spirit of fear, desperately attempting to protect our little enclave against the evil world around us. Christ has already won the victory. It’s over. Instead, we need to go to “those people”, and love them. Serve them. Find out who they are. What makes them tick. Show them the love of Christ in action, so that when we find avenues to share it verbally, they will already understand. We are not to fear “them”, but rather to fear for them, knowing that we, too, were once hopelessly ensnared in sin. Our new righteousness is not our own; we dare not boast in it. Only in Christ.

Change comes from the inside. Pass all the laws you want, legislate your own specific understanding of perfect morality, but if you don’t change the hearts, laws aren’t gonna do any good. (See: The Prohibition.) However, if lives are changed by the power of God, pass or repeal all the laws you want; people living for Christ will make whatever country they live in the kind of country that you probably want it to be. I fear that the siren song of political power has been too attractive to the Church. Let’s stop being distracted by it, and focus instead on loving our neighbor.

Thoughts on Consumerism

Found this wonderful little article from Will Willimon entitled “Resisting the Clutches of Consumerism”. A good read, especially this time of year.

…the “user friendly” approach to church won’t work. There is no way to entice people off the streets with hymns that are based on advertising jingles and end up with the cross-bearing, self-sacrificial, burden-bearing Jesus. Evangelism cannot be based upon our basic selfishness (“Come to Jesus and get everything you want fixed.”) and end up with anything resembling historic Christianity.

Good stuff, for sure. Go read the whole thing.

Dr. John Stackhouse on Christians' Political Concerns

Dr. John Stackhouse of Regent College in Vancouver, BC, is in Cedar Rapids this weekend speaking. He’ll be at Coe College tonight, First Lutheran Church tomorrow night, and then at Noelridge and First Lutheran on Sunday morning. (Visit recminusa.org for more details.)

I got to meet him at lunch today. I was invited to a regular lunch meeting that my pastor has with some musician-types each Thursday, and Dr. Stackhouse was invited to join us all for lunch. He is a fascinating man; seeming to be equally conversant in music, politics, religion, and philosophy, he bantered with the group all the while engaging us in some serious thought.

At one point the discussion turned to politics, and one of the regulars was lamenting that so many people have started to view politics as single-issues; they’ll make their voting decision based strictly on a candidate’s view on, say, abortion, or gay rights. It’s frustrating to those of us who think there are multiple issues that are important. Dr. Stackhouse agreed that it is very difficult; in reality there may be 30 or 40 issues that a thinking person could be versed on, and vote around. What he suggested, though, was that pastors and other leaders should encourage their people to think around a rather short list, perhaps five or six issues that as Christians we should care about.

He only listed two for us:

  • How will this issue affect the poor?
  • How will this issue affect our ability to freely share the gospel?

He suggested that there might be just a few more. What do you think? Is this a reasonable framework around which to decide how votes will be cast? What items would you add to the list?

Don't know much about... anything!

Last night I took the opportunity to visit Conversation Cafe, a discussion group at a local coffeehouse that is led by my pastor. The guest speaker for the night was Rick, the minister from the local Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. It was, to say the least, an interesting night.

Rick is an older single man who has a fascinating life story. He has at various times in his life been a New York City taxicab driver, a journalist, a lawyer, and a teacher, in addition to being a minister for the past 15 years. He shared some of his beliefs and perspectives on spirituality, and it was quite a grab bag. He is an agnostic, but chooses to believe that God exists. He is happy with belief in things that he can see, feel, touch, and quantify, but is really unwilling to make truth judgements outside of that experience.

Rick told us that UUs are “sin shy”; they would acknowledge that there is some human behavior that just seems “evil” and that we can’t explain any other way, but that for most human actions that seem to be “sin” there is some other more useful explanation for their behavior, be it conditioning, circumstance, or something similar. He told us that the UU church has no creed, which is “actually harder than having a creed”, because you have to figure things out for yourself. Each person at that church can define God to be whatever they want God to be.

There was a decent bit of discussion throughout the night, but I felt like on the key questions he either didn’t understand quite what we were asking, or was quite skilled at dodging them. I tried to ask about one major conflict I saw in his thinking; maybe I didn’t phrase the question well. But I was trying to ask this: in one breath you say that God is whatever you make him to be, that your observations and reason are the definers of truth and reality for you. But in the next breath you admit that you are human, with a finite understanding, uncertainty, and weakness. Isn’t there a conflict there? Doesn’t that make your “truth” weak and uncertain? Doesn’t that make God weak and uncertain? I’m not sure he really understood the question; basically he just agreed that yes, he is human, and uncertainty is part of the human condition.

My heart breaks for this man who is so close to understanding some things, but still so far away. He spoke very candidly about having, in years past, a drinking problem. And it frustrated him greatly, because he saw it as a “moral failure”, and couldn’t figure out how to get past it. Thinking of it as a moral failure “wasn’t useful” and “didn’t take you anywhere”. So he associated with some folks who encouraged him to see the drinking problem as a sickness rather than a moral failure, and he decided to accept that “truth” since it was useful, and allowed him a path to move on. Rick is so close; if only his eyes were opened to see that he is right, that sin (aka “moral failure”) is a dead end, and that we as humans are stuck. If only he could understand that the reason Jesus came, died, and rose again was to solve that sin problem. My prayer for Rick will be that he can come to faith in a God larger than his understanding, and know the grace that is greater than all our sins.

How far do we go to be "relevant"?

That’s the question that the InternetMonk asks in a column over the weekend. His summary:

The Gospel is relevant. Our methods can’t be irrelevant, but they have to allow the relevance of Christ to come to the forefront.

Amen, brother.

reasonable theological concern, or overly picky?

I was thinking through some songs that we haven’t sung for a while in church, and this issue came to mind, so I thought I’d share it here. One of my main criterion when selecting songs for the church to sing (and I plan the music for almost every week) is that they be theologically sound. This manages to disqualify a substantive number of modern praise songs, and a surprising number of older hymns from our hymnal. I might go so far as to say that this is my primary criterion. Certainly there are others; singability is right up there. But theological correctness has got to be at the top of the list.

So we come to today’s topic: the old chorus “Create In Me A Clean Heart”. The text is pretty much straight from Psalm 51:

Create in me a clean heart oh God,
And renew a right spirit within me.
Create in me a clean heart oh God,
And renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from Thy presence oh Lord,
And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation,
And renew a right spirit within me.

My theological nit is with the fifth and sixth lines. When David penned these words some 1500 years before Christ, the threat of having the Holy Spirit taken from him was quite a real one; he had seen a similar thing happen to Saul when Saul rebelled against God. At that time the Holy Spirit didn’t indwell all those who believed in God, but God specifically directed the Spirit to rest on certain people at certain times. But now we’re after Pentecost, and so those that believe are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit remains as a seal of our salvation. We’re not in danger of having God take it away.

So on to my theological question. While I love the submissive attitude of the first part of this chorus, I have real questions about singing those two lines, because I think they represent a fear or concern that we shouldn’t have. Is this an appropriate distinction to make? Or am I being overly picky? Your thoughts are appreciated.

Things aren't right

I’ve been reading several different books recently, and a discussion with Becky last night brought a bunch of them together in a way that helped clarify my thoughts a bit. Hopefully I can bring some of that clarity into this post.

As a person who grew up within the church and has been a believer for as long as I can remember, one of the things that’s been most difficult for me to understand is this: why would a non-believer be motivated to become a Christian? What’s the appeal? Now, you Calvinists out there will tell me that God has ordained it and its irresistible. I don’t want to get into that argument. I don’t disagree with you… much. But I’ve just never understood the appeal of the message to non-believers who are living basic, normal lives.

Last night Becky and I were talking over the passage from Acts that had been part of our reading for the day. (I don’t want that to sound too much like we’ve got it all together - we’re trying once again to get daily devotions started, and it’s tough, as always.) Becky’s comment on Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 was that it sounded wild, far-out, hard-to-believe… why would anybody be attracted to that story? It is a good question. Why would anybody be attracted to the story of a man who claimed to come from God, be God himself, who died, purportedly rose from the dead, etc? Qui bono? Who benefits?

That got me started thinking through some of the C. S. Lewis I’ve been reading lately. Actually, I’m reading The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Armand M. Nicholi Jr. This Harvard professor compares and contrasts the lives and teachings of C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud. It’s a good book, especially for those seekers who want to reason through the issues. Mostly it whets my appetite to go back and read Lewis again, Mere Christianity, The Abolition of Man, God in the Dock… good stuff. Anyway, back to my thought process.

Readers of Mere Christianity will remember that Lewis’ starting point for reasoning that there is a God is an argument from conscience; he argues that each of us has an inborn moral compass that understands that there is a moral standard. Right along with that is the fact that each of us transgresses that moral standard on a regular basis, which causes us problems with our fellow man and internal guilt.

So what’s the appeal of the gospel message? I’m starting to think that I’d start it off like this: “Things aren’t right.” I think that’s a place we can all agree on to start. Things aren’t right in the world, and things aren’t right with me personally. This causes pain, grief, guilt, death. Now let’s look at the grand sweep of the redemptive story that runs from Genesis to Revelation. God creates everything. Man corrupts it. Things aren’t right. Now here’s the beauty of the message: the whole rest of the story is about God’s work to make things right again. That is the message of the gospel.

Once we understand that, then we can get into details. Sin requires a sacrifice. Jesus once for all became that sacrifice in our place, and then conquered death by rising from the dead. One day He will establish a perfect kingdom, one where sin is done away with and things are right.

Now that’s a story I can get excited about. And I can understand why that story would resonate with the unbelieving world. We all understand things aren’t right. May God allow those unbelievers around us to to understand that He holds the solution to the problem.

The process of the Christian life...

Was reading today and found this wonderful quote from Martin Luther describing the process of the Christian life. It challenges and encourages me…

This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness, not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.

sticking to our guns

Ned Rice has a great column today on NRO where he makes a strong argument that the folks whining about the lack of liberalism in the new pope should suck it up, think about what they’re saying, take their beliefs (and the church’s beliefs) seriously, and then pack it up and leave if they’re really that unhappy. The column deals specifically with the Roman Catholic church, but I think the ideas are applicable to any person complaining about their church’s beliefs.

The whole column is worth reading, but I’ll copy a few of the choice lines here.

…a truly liberal Holy Father might have moved the Church towards the proverbial, doctrinal hat trick: allowing actively gay men to be Catholics, then ordaining them as priests, and then allowing them to marry their male partners. There’s a name for churches that condone that sort of thing, and that name is “Episcopalian.”

…if you believe that your church was literally founded by the Son of God, based on principles he personally handed down to His followers (as Catholics do), why would you make your church’s doctrine conveniently open to revision by its flock? It’s like deliberately designing a bucket with holes in it, then wondering why it won’t hold any water.

So if you think this or any other pope is just plain wrong on celibacy or homosexuality or anything else big, and this upsets you so much it interferes with your spiritual life, you’d be well advised to find yourself another church. Otherwise you’re like the orthodox Jew who, in light of recent developments, has taken it upon himself to decide that it’s all right for him to eat pork. You can be an orthodox Jew, and you can eat pork. You’re free to do either one. But folks, you just can’t do both. There are names for Catholics who don’t accept that they can’t do certain things and still receive the sacraments, and one of those names is Senator John Kerry.

And last but not least…

Warning of the “tyranny of relativism” that’s become so pervasive, Cardinal Ratzinger argued that it’s better to be guided by time-honored principles of morality than to be endlessly buffeted about by the myriad whims of conventional wisdom in the name of “freedom.” With the clear implication being, if you don’t like these principles the rest of us here have agreed to live by, maybe this isn’t the Church for you. Or as my Dad used to say during dinner, if you don’t like what we’re serving here, try next door.

Good stuff.