And in that Last Supper of Jesus, in their sorrow and singing, we find the good news Cory referred to that day. Because it was the Last Supper for a world of nevermores, entropy, despair and death. Jesus was about to reverse that cosmic entropy through the most powerful energy in the world—divine love.
In the teaching of Jesus the ultimate condemnation from the mouth of God is “depart from me.” That is remarkable—to simply be away from God is the worst thing that can happen to us! Why? We were originally created to walk in God’s immediate presence (Genesis 2). All the life, joy, love, strength, and meaning we have looked for and longed for is found in his face (Psalm 16:11)—that is, in his favor, presence, fellowship, and pleasure. That is why, for Paul, the everlasting fire and destruction of hell is “exclusion from the presence of the Lord.”
There used to be social pressures to go to church and then there was a live and let live period. Now we’re moving into a period where there’s a social cost. And the more there’s a social cost, the fact is that more Christians are actually shutting up and being quiet about their faith with people around them.
These “small faults” mean that large swaths of the Christian population have little influence on others for Christ. This is true because, while our faults always seem small to us due to the natural self-justification of the heart, you can be sure they don’t look so small to others.
There are people who find the tenets of Christianity embarrassing or untenable—miracles, the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Jesus. In most cases they are religious people but who cannot affirm the Apostle’s Creed. They do, then, cherry pick their way through the New Testament to create a false gospel made up of their own unbiblical values.
The book of Job is the last episode filmed by Tim Keller for the “Discovering the Gospel in Every Book of the Bible” video series.
In light of scripture, and with the night of painful isolation all around, I want to argue that we need to reimagine three things: First, how we operate at church; second, how we conceive of family; and third, how we relate to singleness. The loneliness pandemic is severe. We Christians know the cure. And we are disobeying Jesus if we fail to administer it.
While this series was still being filmed, Dr. Keller completed a few additional episodes that will be released in the coming months. In this series Dr. Keller shows how each book of the Bible has threads of the gospel.
When I asked Tim to speak about the importance of porches in American culture, he said, “there are those who see that the forecourt provided by the culture has gone away and now the culture mainly creates hostility to Christianity.”
In this new video series Tim Keller looks at each book of the Bible and finds threads of the story of the gospel.
For almost twenty years after the end of WWII church attendance surged to its highest levels in history, and Christianity seemed to be thriving in the U.S. But it was in the last 15 years that what Kuyper foresaw and what Europe experienced seems to have begun here. Church attendance began to decline across the board, especially among younger people. And the cultural institutions began to take an overtly hostile and adversarial stance toward traditional Christian faith.
If you think of a jar of pebbles being shaken, the shaking unsettles the status quo. It creates space, at least for a time, until things settle again. Similarly, when we are shaken there’s a kind of metaphysical space, a shaking up of ideas and deeply-held desires. I think we are seeing this all around us in this cultural moment, post-pandemic, but also in the midst of the shaking of the other major cultural events we have experienced, people are reevaluating where they live, how they work, and their relationships.
It is clear that for some people ‘faith deconstruction’ is just that. They have come to see the historic teachings and doctrines of the church as crafted to make us pawns and suppress our personhood. They are walking away from both the church and the traditional Christian faith altogether. For them, deconstruction—a dismantling—is the end-point of the process.
A short talk from Tim Keller on How the DNA of the Gospel Applies to Cultures All Over the World and how global leaders are using the DNA to share the gospel globally.
The vision cannot be simply for a restoration of churches and Christian institutions to their former states of strength. That is to mistake means for ends. Our vision should be that the astonishing biblical possibilities for the church as the community of the Spirit would be realized in U.S. society in ways it never has before.
In the past two years during COVID, I’ve read a number of helpful books ranging in categories from understanding culture, to Biblical and theological studies. I’d like to preview and recommend a few of them to you.
Christians must recognize that they do have things to do to prepare for renewal, but that ultimately it is God’s wise sovereignty that will determine whether and how the church is renewed. Many see a metaphor for this concept of renewal in Elijah’s confrontation with the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18. The prophet builds an altar, but it is only God whose fire can ignite it. Christians looking for revival, then, are “building the altar,” praying that God will use their efforts to bring a fire of revival with a movement of his Spirit.
Since 2007, evangelicalism has begun its own decline. All indications are that in the coming years an unprecedented number of younger Americans will be leaving churches and institutional religion of all kinds behind. But why?
Virtually everyone agrees that something is radically wrong with the church. Inside there is more polarization and conflict than ever, with all factions agreeing (for different reasons) that the church is in deep trouble.
Tim Keller reviews Chris Bail’s book, Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing (Princeton, 2021)
This Month's Featured Book
In Shaped by the Gospel, Dr. Keller shows how gospel-centered ministry is more theologically driven than program-driven. As you read, you’ll discover how reflecting on the essence, the truths, and the patterns of the gospel leads to renewal in your lives, churches and ministries.
