Timothy Keller (1950-2023)

Hello everyone, Michael Keller here (the son that's helped run Dad's social media since we started in 2013). Thank you so much for all the beautiful memories, stories, and tributes written over the past two weeks about Dad. The original vision for creating these social media 1/3

“Anti-Racism” often assumes that virtually ALL social inequalities are due to structural, social injustice. If you are a criminal or poor it is not your fault. Anti-Anti-Racism often teaches that virtually NO social inequalities are due to structural, social injustice. If you are a criminal or poor it is always your fault. Because Christianity teaches both individual yet corporate responsibility, both humanity in the image of God yet deep sinfulness, the Bible doesn’t promote either simplistic view. It fully critiques both yet fulfills the best them. It calls strongly for biblical justice but acknowledges the deep complexity of the causes and the solutions without being reductionistic. For a more in-depth dealing see this article. buff.ly/GmEApj1

Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially “deify.” We will look to it with all the passion and and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we are highly irreligious.

To discover the real you, look at what you spend time thinking about when no one is looking, when nothing is forcing you to think about anything in particular.

The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. -- C.S. Lewis

Our pleasure and our duty Tho opposite before Since we have seen his beauty Are joined to part no more. To see the law by Christ fulfilled And hear his pard'ning voice-- transforms a slave into a child and duty into choice. -- Olney Hymns

We inherited the idea that freedom means freedom from constraint, from expectation, and from obligation. Maximum options. Minimum commitment. But what if that kind of freedom doesn't actually bring real freedom? What if the people who are most committed to a person, a vocation, or a community are the ones who are most fully free? Dad argued that real freedom isn't the absence of constraints. It's the presence of the right ones. That fits what you were made to be. The freedom chapter in The Stories We Live By reframes the entire conversation. Order here: buff.ly/5DOXtyY

“In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere... God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.” - C.S. Lewis

Some who argue that "over-desiring good things"-- i.e., idolatry, desiring and loving anything more than God--is not a serious sin and evil are mistaken. It's the first of the Ten Commandments and (as Luther taught) usually the sin beneath every other sin.

The modern world tells you that identity is something you find or construct. Look inward. Discover what you feel. Express what you find. Demand the world recognize it. But what if that leaves you more anxious, not less? What if the self you're working so hard to build is a self that can never be finished? Dad's chapter on identity in The Stories We Live By helps. The problem with self-constructed identity isn't that it's too ambitious. It's that it's not ambitious enough. Order here: buff.ly/KxsWIk0 -Michael Keller

Don't obey God to get things. Obey God to get more of God.

The phrase: "The main problem our heart has is not so much desires for bad things, but our over-desires for good things"-- is just a summary of St Augustine, that the primary sin is vs the 1st commandment, to love anything (usually good things) more than God.

The main problem our heart has is not so much desires for bad things, but our over-desires for good things.

Want to do surgery on your heart to find the idols that you use so you can experience God's grace and love more powerfully? I wrote this book with that goal in mind. buff.ly/A36nuCH

The Stories We Live By: How Jesus Critiques and Completes What Our Culture Tells Us — by Tim Keller and Michael Keller. Dad spent his last years thinking through the seven narratives that quietly shape how we live — about who we are, what freedom means, what makes us happy, who holds power, where history is heading, what science can tell us, and how justice works without a moral foundation. This book is the result of that work. His last cultural analysis for us. -Michael Keller Order here: buff.ly/x3TFhY3

Every day on the Left, there is far more emphasis on structure/systems than agency or culture—in every section of the NYTimes. And every day on the Right, there is far more emphasis on agency and culture than on structure/systems—in every section of the Wall Street Journal. Every day.

Read these two helpful books on understanding Kierkegaard. buff.ly/RhB8V02 and buff.ly/eAfdwRw. Kierkegaard sought to introduce Christianity to Christendom because the so-called Christian Western society had lost the gospel. Still highly relevant today!

If you truly care about the truth you will want people to believe it. Say it in the most hearable way possible without compromising in the slightest. Don't say it in an unnecessarily abrasive way and then, when rejected, pat yourself on the back for being valiant for truth.

Jonah stands as a warning that human hearts never change quickly or easily even when someone is a prophet of God.

God says there’s nothing more amazing, there’s nothing more beautiful, there’s nothing more astounding, there’s nothing more precious than a person. Look at the city. Every subway car is chock-full of the most beautiful thing on the earth. Every block is crammed with the most beautiful thing on the earth. The city is filled with beauty. – @timkellernyc Sermon, "Should I Not Love That Great City?" gospelinlife.com/podcast

Christianity is neither: monism nor materialism (ontology), objectivist nor subjectivist (epistemology), individualist nor collectivist (anthropology), legalist nor relativist (ethics). buff.ly/7NaEdpb