The Stories We Live By: How Jesus Critiques and Completes What Our Culture Tells Us is a new book by my father (Tim Keller) and me. We are the stories we believe. But what if our culture’s stories are failing us? This book reveals the hidden cultural narratives that shape us and points the way to the life we’ve been looking for.
Intro by Kathy Keller:
Tim wrote this article in January of 2023 a few months before his death, but it was never published anywhere. As Christians struggle to make sense of today’s political landscape, I believe this article can be useful in helping readers think through the pitfalls and challenges of keeping one’s faith and politics in the right order.
Redeemer’s philosophy was that preaching on Sunday mornings and evenings had to major in the majors—that is, establish that Jesus Christ was God come to save us, not just one more teacher showing us how to save ourselves.
What then is the biblical view of sin? Sin is a distortion and dislocation of the heart from its true center in God (Romans 1:21-25). This is expressed in a basic motive for all human life—the heart desire of every person to be his or her own Savior and Lord.
This article was originally written for the Redeemer Report in 2003.
We need to see that we all build on something. In the parable, Jesus contrasts two builders, one who builds on the rock and one who builds on the sand. It may seem obvious, but those are the only two options given, because when it comes to our deeply held beliefs, everyone builds on something.
As Christians we are called to keep journeying toward a promised shoreline, enduring the elements and persevering toward a place we’ve never seen or been to, but that we were created for.
The resurrection of Christ assures us that God will redeem not just souls but bodies, and will bring about a new heavens and new earth. As the risen Christ, he stands not just with us in our present time, but he waits at the end of history to heal and renew everything.
If you don’t learn to love people across the barriers of ethnicity, language, and culture, and if you don’t recognize the image of God in those he has recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life, heaven might be an uncomfortable place for you.
U.S. culture moved from a Positive view of Christianity to a Neutral view and now to a Negative view of it. Newbigin stressed that churches were declining because they continued to speak and minister as if this was a Christendom culture — and it is not.
I recently performed Wynton Marsalis’ A Fiddler’s Tale, a contemporary musical reimagining of the classic Faust story, and was struck by its relevance to my own life and work, given Marsalis’ twist: The Faustian subject is an artist, a fiddler. In discussing the work with Mr. Marsalis and our colleagues, I found that (contrary to a popular opinion), deals with (and temptations by) the devil still resonate, perhaps even more so in our “disenchanted” age.
Over the years Tim talked with many professing Christians who had very strong political views from many perspectives. They would often be very emotional and sometimes consumed by what they perceived to be unacceptable political affiliation by their Christian sisters and brothers within our church.
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.”
This Month's Featured Book
Many Christians, and even some pastors, can struggle to share the beauty, hope and joy of the Christian faith in tangible, compelling ways. This book is a guide for anyone who wants to become more effective in sharing their faith, whether it’s in a conversation with a friend or from the pulpit.
