[MUSIC PLAYING] [APPLAUSE] TIM KELLER: Hi, thanks
for having me here. It's always hard
to convey a book, especially one as dense
as this one, quickly. I'll try to think
about half the time conveying the book, what the
book's about, and about half the time questions and answers. So the book is about
how belief in God or religious faith
or Christian faith can make sense to
somebody today. It's about how it's possible
for that to make sense. Now, I would like to make
the case right now that should be of some interest to
you, no matter who you are. Chapter one tries
to make that case that no matter who you are, you
should at least care about how people come to their
faith positions, how their beliefs come
to make sense to them. In chapter one, I make the
case that there's actually two trends that are marked
in the world with regard to religion. Here's the one. The one is-- and I
know what I'm going to say is going to sound
counter-intuitive to you, but the book explains
it and there's really not much doubt about this--
that in general, the world is becoming more religious
and will for the next 30 to 50 years at least. It's getting more religious. The reasons for that, which
are laid out there-- everything here is brief. You can always ask more later--
is that both Christianity and Islam are both
converting people at a rate faster than the
population is growing. And that's the reason
why they're growing. Secondly, it's also true
that religious people have a lot more children than
secular people and unbelieving people. So you put all
that together, all of the demographic
projections are that actually the number of
people today in the world that say they're secular,
no religious preference, is close to 17%. Over the next 35 years,
that's going down to about 12% because of these trends
I've just mentioned. So on the one hand, the
world's becoming religious. On the other hand,
parts of the world are becoming more secular
than they've ever been before. Parts of the world
are going to be marked by more and more
people who say religion doesn't make sense to me. Belief in God doesn't
make sense to me. Now, what this means is that
there's two kinds of slogans that you should never believe. One is that religion
is going away. It's just not. I mean, I do hear it a lot
that religion is dying out. Younger people are
less religious. What younger people? The people I know. OK, we have to
look at the world. And it's not true that
religion is dying out. And it won't. So the idea that religion is
going away is just not true. But the idea that in
some triumphalistic sense that religion will
triumph or Christianity will triumph in
the world, that's not going to happen either. And since both these
trends are true, religion is not going away,
and yet part of the world are going to become less
religious than they've ever been, what that does mean is it
should matter to us how people come to their various positions. Increasing numbers
of people are finding that belief in a
universe without God makes sense to them. They believe in a
universe without God. And that makes sense to them. And other people are
finding that belief in God and a universe filled with
God makes sense to them. How do they get to
those positions? We actually often do not
really talk enough about that because people don't want
to say, how do you get there? By the way, people who lose
their religious faith usually say, I just saw the truth. And people who get
converted usually say, I just saw the light. But that's not
very illuminating. Instead, I'm going
to make the case that the process by which
we come to our beliefs, to believe in a
universe without God or believe in a
universe with God, are actually more
complicated than that. So in chapter two
what I do-- and I want to spend a little
time here with you just for a moment
to lay out what I do there-- is I tackle
this simplistic idea. So for example, one of the
things that people say a lot-- I see it on the
internet all the time, and I talk to people in New
York all the time who say this. And that is this. It's a popular
belief to say belief that there is no God is arrived
at mainly through using reason. So if you come to the
conclusion that there is no God, that happened through reason. But if you come to
believe there is a God, that's a leap of faith. So belief that there is
no God, through reason. Belief that there is
a God, through faith. I'm here to tell you
actually that is wrong. It's naive. It's simplistic. The fact of the
matter is both sides use a combination
of reason and faith. So to press a little
bit, here's a thesis I put out in chapter two. And I'll try to defend it in
about four or five minutes here. And here's the thesis. The move from religion
to secularism, the move from religious faith
to a secular belief that there is no God or maybe
there is no God-- so to move from religious
faith to secularism is not so much a loss
of faith as a shift to a new set of beliefs,
to a new community of faith where the lines between
orthodoxy and heresy are just drawn in
different places. So if you're
religious, you grew up in a church, say,
or a synagogue, and then you move to being
non-religious-- I'm a secular person, I actually
don't believe in God-- that's not so much
a loss of faith as actually a
movement from one set of beliefs to a
new set of beliefs, from one community of faith
to another community of faith, from one standard of
orthodoxy and heresy to another standard of
orthodoxy and heresy. I know that's kind of
a provocative thesis and not most people think that. Let me show you, I think,
how I can demonstrate that. Secular people that I know--
I'm not saying all of you-- if you say, well,
I consider myself a person who doesn't
really believe in God, so I consider myself
something of a secular person-- I'm not saying
this is true of everybody. I'm saying plenty of people I've
talked to who say I'm secular or I'm a non-religious
person actually have two sets of beliefs. And they are beliefs. What are they? I will call them
proofism and humanism. Now, what's proofism? It's a coined word. It's not the most
felicitous phrase. But I'm trying to get at this. What many people
will say to me is, I'd be happy to believe in God
if you could prove it to me. I'd be happy to
believe in Christianity if you could prove it to me. But since there
isn't any evidence, you can't prove it
to me, therefore I shouldn't believe it. Now, that statement is
wrong on a number of levels and actually is a
statement of faith. Well, number one, when you say
you shouldn't believe something unless it can be
empirically proven, the problem is
that that statement can't be empirically proven. For about 100
years, philosophers have pointed that out. To make a claim like
that, to make a claim that you shouldn't believe
something unless it's proven, is itself a statement
that can't be proven. It's an assertion. It's not an argument. It's just a sweeping statement. And it can't be
its own criteria. Secondly, when people
say to me, well, I could be happy to believe in
God if you could prove it to me, But if you can't prove it to
me, I can't believe in a god. The problem is that everybody
bases their lives on beliefs that they can't prove. If you believe in human
rights, if you believe we ought to take care of the
poor and not trample the poor, can you prove that? Of course you can't. Actually, everybody bases their
lives on deep convictions. They just can't be proven. So it's quite wrong to say,
for example to Christians, you've got to
prove your beliefs. But then I don't have
to prove my beliefs. The fact is nobody,
frankly, could prove the most important beliefs
on which their life is based. And thirdly-- by the way,
you probably would guess, actually those of you with
a philosophy background, is there's not a lot of
agreement on what the word proof means. It is true that I
think most people agree it's possible to prove
that substance x boils at temperature y at
barometric pressure z. And therefore, if I
can demonstrate that, then we could say
that's been proven. But beyond that, how do you
prove historical claims? When is a historical
claim, that something happened 300 years ago,
when has that been proven? Or how do you prove
any moral values? Again, how do you prove that
human rights are important or that they're there? The answer is nobody
actually agrees on what proof is, because some
people say, that was proven. Other people say, well,
how do you define proof? So in the end, if you're
a person who says, because of my rationality,
I cannot believe in God or Christianity, what
you're actually doing is you're assuming a set of beliefs
about how rationality operates that are really
a set of beliefs. And they're not
self-evident to everybody. They're contested. So they're really
a set of beliefs. To say I can't believe
in Christianity because you haven't proven
it is a set of beliefs. Then the other
thing besides what I call proofism, which is a set
of beliefs about rationality, which can't be proven. Most secular people
I know also are what you might call a humanist. Humanism means they
believe it's important that every human
being be treated with dignity, that people's
rights not to be trampled upon, that we not oppress
people, that we share our goods and
our power with others and not exploit them. Right? When you say most, I mean,
let's put it this way-- most of the atheists
and most of the secular or non-religious people
I know believe that. But here's a question. How do you prove that? What is that? Not only is that
a set of beliefs, but frankly, those beliefs
take more faith to believe in. See, if you're a
Hindu, you believe the world is such
that you will get off the cycle of reincarnation
if you live a good life. If you don't live a good life,
you keep getting reincarnated. If you live a good life,
you can be taken off the cycle of reincarnation
and go into eternal bliss. If you believe the bible, so
if you are an Orthodox Jew or you're a Christian
believer, you believe that God made the world,
a loving God made the world, and you should
love your neighbor so that you're like God,
and you can know him, and you can be saved. In other words, to live a
good life of humanistic values fits in with the Hindu view
of what the universe is like. And it fits in with
the Christian view or the Jewish view of
what the universe is like. But what is the secular
view of the world? It's what's called a
materialist view, which is to say there's no supernatural. There's only natural. There's no soul. There's no heaven. It's just everything
has a natural cause. So just to show the
problem with that, or I'll just say
the amount of faith it takes that humanistic values
with that view of the world, last year I found this. This was written in
the "New York Times." It was actually a letter. It says there are
30,000 galaxies of over 13 billion years old. So there's 30,000 galaxies
13 billion years old with many trillions of stars
and many, many more trillions of inferred planets. So how significant are you? He's talking to
individual people. How significant are you? You are not special. You're just another
piece of decaying matter on the compost
pile of this world. Nothing of who you are and
what you do in the short time you were here will ever matter. Everything short of that
realization is vanity. Therefore, or he says
"so," celebrate life. In every moment,
admire its wonders and love people
without reservation. Now, the word "so," most of
us think the word "so" means this logically leads to that. When you say "so," we
think that somehow what comes before the "so"
should lead you to do what comes after the "so," right? Here's a question. The first part of
that statement is a bracing, wonderfully
honest look at what it means to believe
in a materialist universe. You're not here for any purpose. No one put you here. You came up through evolution,
red and tooth and claw. You know, the strong
eating the weak. You're only here
because your ancestors killed weaker organisms. And in the end, eventually,
you're going to die. Then the sun is going to die. Then civilization will die. And in the end, whether
you're a genocidal maniac or whether you're an
altruist and philanthropist will make no
difference in the end. There won't be anybody
around to remember anything that anyone's ever done. So in the end, nothing
you do will matter, right? Therefore, he says,
love one another. See, here's the question. If that's the case of the
nature of the universe, why should I love other people? If my ancestors got here
by destroying and eating the weaker organisms,
why should I now suddenly become unselfish? And the answer is if you want to
believe in humanistic values-- I'm glad, by the way. I am really glad. The more people that believe
in humanistic values, I think the better
the world will be. But it doesn't follow from your
view of the universe at all. It's a huge leap of faith,
unbelievable leap of faith. It doesn't take huge
faith to go from the Hindu view of the universe
to humanistic values, or from the Christian
view of the universe to humanistic values. But it does from the
materialistic, the secular view to humanistic value. You can believe them. But don't tell me that
that's not a leap of faith. It's an enormous leap of faith. And you know who's
going to tell you? Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche
is going to say-- and this is what he did say,
and he argued incredibly-- I would say in an incredibly
convincing way-- he would say, if you say I'm an
atheist, and then you say but we should
not starve the poor and we should honor
their equal rights, he says you're still a
Christian, whether you admit it or not. Because, he says, those
ideas came historically into the Western society
when people believed in the Christian understanding
of the universe-- that you're here for a purpose
and you're made by a loving God and you're made the image of
God and all human beings are children of God. He says those values
made sense when we believed the Christian
view of the universe. But we don't believe
that anymore. And therefore, if you
hold on to those values, you're actually being a
Christian, and a very, very inconsistent person even
though you won't admit it. I don't think you
can answer Nietzsche. So now here is what we are. Fundamentally, there are
no irreligious people. At one level, absolutely
everybody has a set of beliefs, including secular people
and irreligious people, have a set of beliefs
about the universe that A, you can't
prove empirically, B, are not self-evident to most
of the rest of the world. See, even if you
can't prove something, sometimes you can say,
but everybody knows that. Well, you can't say that
about any particular set of beliefs about the universe. So in other words,
you can't prove it. If you're a secular person,
your beliefs you can't prove. B, your beliefs are not
self-evident to most people in the world. And C, as I'm going to
show you here in a second, is your beliefs have as many
contradictions and problems that attend to them as
any religious faith does. So what does that mean? Does that mean, oh, there
is no way to know the truth? No, no, no, no. See, I'm trying to
say everybody gets their position-- religious
people and irreligious people-- get to their beliefs--
because in the end, what you hold is a belief-- by
a combination of reason and intuition. So for example, how do you use a
reason to come to a conclusion? One is you look at the logical
consistency of your beliefs. That's using reason. Another thing you
ask-- do the things I believe fit in with what's
out there in the world? Does it fit in with what I
see happening in the world? That's using reason. But then there's also
a part, frankly-- everybody to some
degree or other also uses their
emotions when it comes to believing what they believe. And they also look socially. They say, I see other people
who have these beliefs. And how is that
affecting their life? So basically, the way any
particular set of beliefs comes to make sense to
you is for emotional, cultural, and rational reasons. It has to make sense
to you emotionally. It has to make sense to
you socially, culturally. You see how the
belief fleshes out in the lives of other people. And then thirdly, it does have
to be logically consistent. And there doesn't need to
be rational reasons too. And so everybody uses
those three things to get to their beliefs. Now, what I do in the
rest of this book-- and the other book's
already been mentioned-- The Reason for God-- is I
lay out mainly in this book the emotional and
cultural reasons why Christianity tends to make
sense to a lot of people. And then at the
very end, I start going into the rational reasons,
the more traditional kind of arguments for God
and Christianity. But I start it-- but on the
other hand, I finish it, you might say, in
The Reason for God." So somebody asked me, what's
the relationship of Making Sense of God to Reason for God? They say, is Making Sense of
God a sequel to Reason for God? I said, no, it's a prequel. Because basically, the
way we get there is we use our emotions. We use our relationships. And we use our
reason to decide what we think about the universe. Now, what I'm going
to do in only six, seven minutes, I guess, is
I'm going to actually tell you what I say in these other books
as the emotional and social and rational reasons why
Christianity does come to make sense to a lot of people. But I'm actually going to do
it as a series of assertions. So this can be infuriating
to many people. So I'm really hoping that here
at Google, we're all civilized, that you don't rush the
podium snarling at me. Because I'm not going to
make the case for any one of these assertions. I'm going to say people who
find Christianity making sense come to believe this. And in the books, I actually
lay out all kinds of reasons for why. So there's nothing I'm about to
tell you is really groundless. In the end, if you read the
books, you might disagree. But what I'm saying is not
arbitrary or groundless, OK? They were all kind of
worked out in the books. But if I was going to make a
case in five minutes, which I am, for why Christianity can
make sense for a lot of people and how it makes sense
for other people, I would say Christianity comes
to make sense for us when we see three things-- when we see
the faith that takes to doubt it, that is Christianity, the
faith it takes to doubt it, the problems we have
without it, and the beauty we see within it. Now what do I mean by that? First of all, fast here, the
faith it takes to doubt it. One of the ways in which people
who are doubting Christianity come to embrace it
is when they realize that all their doubts,
every one of their doubts, is always based on
a leap of faith, which is harder to justify
than the thing you're doubting. Follow that? Wasn't that easy? No. In other words, every time
you say, I doubt Christianity, your doubt is based on actually
an assumption of faith which itself needs to be justified,
and very often can't be. So let me give you
three examples. Number one, one
of the objections I hear to Christianity
all the time is there can't just be
one true way to believe. There can't be one true faith. There can be one
true way to God. There just can't be one
true way to believe. And here's the
problem with that. How do you know that? I mean, that's an
assertion, not an argument. How do you know that
there's not one true way? The only way to know that there
is not one sure way to God would be actually if you
have the ultimate perspective on truth that you just said
nobody is allowed to have. And actually, what that
means is that your doubt is based on an assessment
of your perspective, which actually is a major
leap of faith, and I think is hard to justify. Here's the second one. People say, I can't
believe in a God who allows such evil and suffering. And by the way, I'm a pastor. I'm not a scholar. I'm not an academic. I'm not a person who
mainly does thinking. I'm a pastor, so I've
walked with plenty of people through horrible suffering. So what I'm saying here I do
not mean to be so cursory. I told you this is the problem
with what I'm about to do. But here's the point. When someone says I can't
believe in God because he allows such evil and suffering,
what you actually are saying is this. Because I can't think
of any good reason why God would allow
evil and suffering, therefore, there can't
be any good reason. Because I can't think
of it, he can't possibly have one that I can't think of. See, the only way to
walk away from God is to assume there
can't be a good reason. And why can't there
be a good reason? Because you can't think of it. But why in the world,
if there is a God, couldn't he might
maybe-- maybe he's got an idea that you don't have. And you see, ancient
people, philosophers will point out the
ancient people, though they struggled
with evil and suffering, never thought evil and
suffering was a reason not to believe in God. You know why? Because they were humbler
about the human reason. We are not so humble. We have an assumption
that we have the powers of
exhaustive surveillance, that we should be able
to look at the universe. And if we can't think
of anything, I mean, our ancestors would never
have been this arrogant. Because we can't think of
any good reason for evil and suffering, therefore
there can't be any. So you see, you're actually
assuming something. You have a doubt, but it's
based on a faith in yourself, which how justifiable is it? Here I'll give you one more. There are lots and lots
and lots of objections to various parts of the bible. And you need to realize that
virtually all the objections you might have to
things the bible teaches are based on high
faith in your culture and the superiority
of your culture. So for example, years
ago, not too long ago, I once talked about Christianity
to a Chinese graduate student-- brilliant young man. I was in Britain when
I was at the time. And you know what? He had no problem with the
idea that God would send people to hell, no problem at all. Because, he says,
I'm not a Westerner. And so the idea that God
might have the authority to send people to hell
doesn't bother me. I have no problem with
that exercise of authority. But he says, what I
can't accept is this-- the individualistic nature
of Christian salvation means that if I believe
in Jesus Christ, I would not be
with my ancestors. And I don't want to believe
anything that would separate me from my ancestors. And my guess is the average
Manhattan young professional, that's not the main problem
they have with the bible. c OK, I talked to a Middle
Eastern intellectual over there. And what she believed,
interestingly enough, what she says, I have
no problem with the idea that God would send people
to hell, no problem at all. If there is a God, why
couldn't he do that? He created us. Doesn't he own us? But then, she said, but she
cannot accept what the bible says about forgiveness, this
idea that we are obligated to forgive no matter what
the other person has done, that we have to forgive. And even though most
young Manhattanites don't think about the difficulty
of that, generally speaking, that's another reason
why it's probably not the average New Yorker's
problem with the bible that it talks about
forgiveness too much. However, the average New
Yorker is going to say, I just can't accept a God who
would send people to hell. You know why? Because at that moment,
what you're saying is my cultural location
is superior to theirs. My culture is absolutely right. And it's never going to change. For all you know,
100 years from now, your great-grandchildren
will think that your approach
to things is stupid. In fact, inevitably
they will, by the way. If the record of your political
views is somehow preserved, your great-grandchildren
will think you are horrible. And yet on the basis of your
cultural location, which you're kind of absolutizing on the
basis of your historical moment which your kind of
absolutizing, you're going to throw the
whole bible over. See, every doubt of the bible
is based on incredible faith in something else which is
really hard to justify-- the faith it takes to doubt it. Do you see that? Virtually always,
Christianity starts to make sense when you begin
to see what incredible faith it takes to doubt it. Secondly, the problems
you have without it. Now, I'm really
going to be fast. But here's the point. There are emotional, cultural,
and rational problems with not believing in God. Now here, I'm kind of
going at secularism. And of course, you
do have to weigh Christianity and other
religions to secularism. But I don't have time
for that unless you want to ask me about it. But here's the problems. Number one, if you
don't believe in God, there is a problem with meaning. Because the meaning
that you create for yourself will be too thin
for you to handle suffering. The secular culture,
unlike religious cultures, make you find your
meaning and life in something here, which means
suffering can take it away. And every other
culture, whether it's Hindu or Islam or Christian,
every other kind of religion helps you locate your meaning
and life outside of this life so that suffering can
actually help you accomplish your meaning in life. But if you're a secular
person, suffering will destroy your
meaning in life. And secular culture
gives its members less resources to
deal with suffering than any culture in the
history of the world. And we are much more
traumatized by it. Number two, just these. Secularism, the idea
there is no God, gives you a view of identity
which is incredibly fragile. Every other religion
says you find who you are by connecting
to something more important than you. The secular culture says
you find your identity by looking inside
and doing whatever you think you want to do most. And you assert it over and
against everybody else. And lots and lots
of studies have shown that kind of identity,
which is really unique-- it's not the way it works in the rest
of the world or in history-- makes you incredibly fragile
because you desperately need a kind of recognition that
it actually can enslave you. Thirdly, it's not just
the problem of meaning and a problem of identity, it's
also the problem of freedom. Modern culture defines freedom
as the absence of restrictions. Isaiah Berlin, the
philosopher Isaiah Berlin, said there's two
kinds of freedom. There is negative freedom
and there's positive freedom. Negative freedom
is freedom from. Positive freedom is freedom for. Negative freedom
simply says, I'm only free if I have
no restrictions. And I hope you all
know if that's really what freedom is, then that
is antithetical to love. Because the more committed
your love relationship is, the less free you are. And yet, by the
way, the more you are in a wonderful
committed love relationship, generally the happier you are. The fact is we've got a culture
and a belief set that doesn't support positive freedom. It only supports
negative freedom. As a result, freedom
actually tends to eat up love relationships. It's one of the reasons why we
have fewer and fewer lifetime committed love relationships
because the view of freedom that comes from highly
individualistic view that goes along with the secular
view undermines that. There's a whole lot
of emotional problems. But then there's the
rational problems. And I'll just
simply mention them. There's the problem, by the
way, of existence itself. There are really
good arguments that say it's difficult to understand
if there is no God why there's something rather than nothing. If you want ask me about
that, we can go into it. But it's one of the
problems you have if you don't believe in God. Another problem you have
if you don't believe in God is the problem of
moral obligation. If you don't believe
in God, no trouble accounting for moral feelings. You have moral feelings, right? Everybody in this room
has some things you feel. I feel this is right. I feel this is wrong. And if you don't believe in
God, no problem explaining it. It could be evolution. That's why we have
those feelings. Or it could be your culture
has taught you those things. Or it could be an
existential choice of yours. Whatever. But if there is no God,
it's hard to see how there could be moral obligation. See, a moral feeling says,
I feel this is wrong. A moral obligation is to say
you must stop doing that, whether you feel
it's wrong or not. See? How can you say to another
person even though you feel it's OK, it's wrong. And you ought to--
obligation-- stop doing it. See, why should your feeling
trump that person's feeling? Well, the only way to say that
is to say there's a higher law. There's something outside. There's a moral source
outside of both of us. We all have to honor that. But what can that be
if there is no God? You know, Martin
Luther King, Jr., in his famous letter
at Birmingham jail, put it like this. He said, if there is
no higher divine law, if there is no God,
no higher divine law, there will be no way to tell
if a particular human law was unjust or not
because it would just be my feelings
versus your feelings. Big problem. Lastly, the beauty. The beauty that
we find within it. Christianity has a beauty to it. I mean, first of all,
there's the idea-- the Christian idea of God is
that God is not an individual. But God is a trinity
of three persons who have known and loved
each other from all eternity. And you all know, if you're
into a real love relationship, that's when you're
really the happiest. So if you have Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit according to Christian
teaching having perfect love relationships for
all eternity, we're utterly happy-- totally
happy, you might say. Why would you create
a world filled with other personal beings if
you're already perfectly happy? And the answer is to share
your happiness with them. There's no other good reason. You already have everything. So the Christian idea
is that God actually created us to share
his happiness and love. Then secondly, the
Christian story is that we turned away from him. And that's the reason
why things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world. Christianity has a
story of what happened to the universe that
explains both the ruin and the glory of the human race. Any story that just looks
at human beings as trash or any story that looks at
human beings as basically good and does not recognize the
good and the evil in them doesn't really
account for how things are, doesn't lead
you to expect what's going to happen tomorrow. And so Christianity,
the beauty of the story is, God, who wants to share his
love and unhappiness with us, an account of what's wrong with
us, then thirdly, a love story. He comes into the
world as Jesus Christ. Dorothy Sayers-- one
of the first women who ever went to Oxford, and
she wrote detective novels. And one of her detectives
was Lord Peter Wimsey, and she wrote a series of
stories and novels about him. He solves mysteries. And halfway through the
stories, suddenly a woman shows up to him, Harriet Vane. She's one of the very first
women who went to Oxford, and she also wrote
mystery stories. So Harriet Vane character shows
up in the Peter Wimsey stories. She's one of the first
women graduates of Oxford. She writes mystery stories. And she's not
particularly good-looking. Wait a minute. Who is this? Dorothy Sayers,
many people believe, looked at this character
that she had created, saw how lonely he
was, and wrote herself into the story out of love. And Harriet Vane saves him. And of course, the
Christian story-- you might say, oh, that's sweet. What a sweet idea. The Christian story, that's
exactly what God did. He looks into the
world he created. He sees us harming each
other, ruining each other. And he writes
himself in the story. And in Jesus Christ,
he goes to the cross and dies to pay for our
sins so that God can forgive us and still be a just God. If you're a judge, you
can't just forgive people. You know, the law
needs to be paid. You can't just
say, oh, it doesn't matter what you've done. Go off. Well then, justice falls apart. But how could God be
both just and forgive us? And the answer was Jesus Christ. God, in a sense, writes
himself into the story because he loves us and
does all that for us. And that's the reason why,
in the end, by the way, if you read the gospels, one
of the main reasons that people come to believe in Jesus Christ
is they read the gospels, and they see Jesus. They see his claims. They see his humility. They see his grace. They see his courage. And you read through the
gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And you're amazed at this. And some years ago,
there was a pastor I knew who was confronted
by a non-believer who said, I would believe in
God if you can give me a watertight argument. And the minister said,
read the New Testament. And he said, you mean, there's
a watertight argument there? He says, well, not exactly. There's Jesus Christ. And he says, you
know, what if God didn't give us a watertight
argument to lead us to himself? What if he gave us
a watertight person against whom, in the end,
there is no argument? Read him, and you'll see
there's almost no way to account for the beauty of this
person unless maybe he is who he said he is. OK, slightly longer
than I wanted to go and also slightly
faster than I wanted to go. So I'm just an unhappy guy. So let's see what we can do. So those are some
ways why we need to worry about and be
concerned about how people come to their beliefs, and how
it's possible for Christians to make sense even today. Questions? The best way to do it
would be to go to your mic because otherwise, you will not
be picked up for the recording. Yes, go ahead. AUDIENCE: Well, first of all,
thank you so much for coming. This has been really interesting
and a great opportunity. And I wanted to ask. I know you talked a lot about
the arguments for religion and the arguments
against secularism, but I wanted to ask
you about spirituality, in that I and some of my
peers very much do believe that there is a higher power. And we don't believe
in secularism. There is something
that connects us all that created us on this Earth. But that doesn't necessarily
translate into religion. And there's a lot of the dogma. And Christianity
and other religions don't necessarily appeal. They make us uncomfortable,
especially the way it can be used sometimes
for hate today. TIM KELLER: Yes. AUDIENCE: And also, necessarily
kind of figuring out the differences between them. Why would one choose
Christianity over Judaism, over Hinduism,
when they all have these different beautiful ways
of bringing people together? TIM KELLER: They do. AUDIENCE: But you're
obviously a pastor and of the Christian faith. So you made a choice. TIM KELLER: Well, yeah. AUDIENCE: So if you have
any thoughts on that. TIM KELLER: You only
have-- generally speaking, it's hard to have
more than one career. It's hard to be both
Muslim and a Buddhist and a Christian cleric,
five years of each. It doesn't work. I'll tell you what. I would suggest two things. I'm going to read you
something out of the book, believe it or not. Thank you, actually. You asked a question
that gets me to the book. Oh, were you finished
with the question? AUDIENCE: Yeah. TIM KELLER: OK, I would
suggest on the multiple faiths, there is a book by John
Dixon-- he's Australian-- who wrote a book called The
Spectator's Guide to World Religions. Now, like me, he's a
Christian minister. But I read the book recently. And he said, I'm trying to
create five small vignettes. He did Islam, Hinduism,
Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism. And he lays it out very, very as
objectively as he possibly can. He does everything
he possibly can. He says, I'm sure
critics will say it's obvious to see even
the way you handle Buddhism that you're a Christian. But he said, I tried real hard. Besides that, everybody who
would write a book like that would have to come from
some position generally. And it's a really,
really helpful book. Because what it does is it
just lays out the differences and tries very hard to say,
now, you make the decision rather than him doing it. That's one side. Here's the other side though. The last part of this
book is actually the story of a guy named Langdon Gilkey. Langdon Gilkey was
a young man who graduated from Harvard
with a philosophy degree with honors in the
1930s and went to China to teach at a university there. And when the Japanese
overran that part of China, he was put into
a detention camp. It was a really, really,
really difficult place. 2,000 people in less
than a city block. Everybody had something
like-- there was 20 toilets for 2,000 people. It was a very, very
difficult situation. And when he went
there, growing up, he had lost his church faith. He had actually believed in
the goodness of human beings, and rationality is the way
to overcome our problems, and that religion actually
wouldn't help much. When he was there,
he basically came to see that there is
absolutely no way. Human beings are
basically selfish. He actually says at one point--
I marked this in case somebody asked this question. He says he came to believe
what the bible said about sin. He said self-interest
seemed almost omnipotent next to the weak
claims of logic and fair play. As the months went
by, he constantly faced intractable
self-centeredness. And he actually said, he
says, the fundamental bent of the whole human
self in all of us was inward toward
our own welfare. And we're so immersed in
it that we hardly are ever able to see this in ourselves,
much less extricate ourselves from our dilemma. He says everybody he saw
who were really being cruel, they always gave rational
and moral reasons for what they were
already determined to do. He says even the most moral
and religious people-- because there were a lot
of priests and missionaries there who had been working
in China who were thrown in with everybody else-- he says
the most religious people found it incredibly difficult,
not to say impossible, to will the good
and to be objective and to be generous and fair. And what they
actually did, though, was they always gave
religious reasons for what they were doing. So he got incredibly
disillusioned. Because here was
the secular people. They were being
incredibly selfish. And here were the
religious people. And they were being
every bit as selfish. The secular people were
using rational reasons for why they were
being selfish and cruel to the other neighbors. They were just
trying to survive. And he says, the
religious people were using religious reasons. So he started being pushed
back toward belief in sin. But then, there's one guy--
now the guy in the book, the guy's name is Eric Ridley. But it's actually Eric
Liddell that you might know was in "Chariots Of Fire." He was a Presbyterian Scottish
guy who wouldn't run on Sunday, but then did win
the 400-meter gold medal in the 1921 Olympics. He went to China
as a missionary. And he was put in the camp. And he died of a brain tumor
in there at the age of 43. But he had an amazing impact. And this is actually,
believe it or not, is answering your question. [LAUGHTER] He had an amazing
impact on Gilkey. Gilkey said, it's
rare indeed when a person has the good
fortune to meet a saint. But he came as close as
anyone I had ever known. Eric Liddell was
concerned to minister to the teenagers of the camp. He cooked for them. He supervised
recreation for them. He poured himself out for them. He was about the only
person that Gilkey saw in the whole camp who was
always overflowing with humor, love of life, sacrificial
kindness for others, and inward peace. And when he died of a
brain tumor suddenly, the entire camp was stunned. So he was trying to say,
what made this guy different? I mean, there were a
lot of missionaries. There were a lot of religions. What made him different? And this is what he said. Liddell-- this is
what Gilkey says-- was a committed Presbyterian
missionary who believed in Christ, but that his
salvation was accomplished by God's sheer and free grace. He did not believe-- and this
is a Christian teaching-- you do not believe
that that God loves you because you are living
a good life, because you are surrendering your
will, because you're charitable to people. Believes it's
totally sheer grace because of what Jesus did. And Gilkey then points
out that religion all by itself does not necessarily
produce the changed heart capable of moral selflessness. Often, religion can just make
our self-centeredness worse, especially if it
leads us to pride in our moral accomplishments. So he came to see
religious people were kind of self-centered
in their religiosity because they thought,
my religiosity makes me a good person. That's why God loves me. And he says, it actually
didn't make them less selfish. It made them part of
the problem, people just scrambling and trampling
other people so they can survive. Gilkey says, in Liddell,
we have a picture of what a human being could be
if he was both humbled and yet profoundly affirmed and filled
with the knowledge of God's unconditional love
through undeserved grace. And this is the last
thing Gilkey says. He's quoting Reinhold
Niebuhr here. He says, religion
is not the place where the problem
of man's egotism is automatically solved. Rather, it is there
that the ultimate battle between human pride and
God's grace takes place. If human pride wins the
battle-- that is to say, if you adopt a
religion that makes you more proud of your
goodness-- he says, if human pride wins the
battle, religion can and does become one of the
instruments of human sin. And this is what
you're talking about. But if there is a self that
does meet God and surrenders to something beyond its own
self-interest, the grace of God, religion may
provide the one possibility for a much needed
and very rare release from our common self-concern. So I would say check out
all the different religions. But the genius of Christianity,
even though many people who are professing
Christians don't see it, is that religion by
itself actually makes you as bad as everybody else. In fact, it can make
you worse because it makes you a Pharisee. But the doctrine
of the grace of God that you're saved by sheer grace
humbles you, and yet affirms you at the same time. You're so bad Jesus
had to die for you. But you're so loved that Jesus
was willing to die for you. And so Gilkey saw, here's
a guy who actually got it. And he was different. So that would be my answer. The reason it was
long was because it was a great question,
my answer, and also because I wanted to say it. Anyway, yes, sir. Thank you. AUDIENCE: Hey, thank
you for speaking. It seemed to me like
a lot of your argument against secularism or humanism
was predicated on this idea that human evolution
and evolution in general is sort of Hobbesian
and ruthless. And I'm wondering
how you would respond to an alternative
hypothesis, which is that humans, like
some other species, actually evolved having a lot
of benefit of social cooperation and in group goal-setting. And nested within that, there's
actually a huge benefit for us to tell stories and
have beliefs in order to get us to work
together as a group. And if that's plausible,
why it wouldn't actually make more sense for us to
by some democratic process come up with a new form of
philosophy, rules, governance, social norms that
lead us to collaborate and have a lot of
the humanist ideals that I think many religious
people and many secular people would find advantageous
to us as a species. TIM KELLER: Right. Three things by which
I will defend myself. That's a great idea. Great thoughts there. Number one, I would say
that wouldn't be most of it. Yes, you're right in
saying that's part of my argument
against secularism. But it's not the whole thing. So number one. That's a minor one. Number two, as you
know, not everybody believes that groups
survive because they learned to be altruistic and
to take care of each other. There is a huge amount
of debate about that. You say, if it could be shown,
well, it hasn't been yet. It might be. But even there, by the
way, you do know, do you not, you might be
able to make the case, for example, that people
in your clan or tribe survive because they were
unselfish with each other. It is hard to know how
we came to the place where, through
evolution, we actually believe that it is good to
take care of anybody at all. In other words, my feeling
that it would be not only good to take care
of my own kind, but to be kind to somebody
who's not my own kind, how could that have ever allowed somebody
to survive in the past? That's part of the debate that
white people are saying maybe what you're saying
isn't provable. But here's the third thing. Even if it was true, even
if it comes to be proven, all that proves is that it's
selfish to be unselfish. All that proves is not that
it's wrong to be unselfish, but that it benefits
you to be unselfish. So in the end, it's a
selfish, pragmatic argument that doesn't say that it's wrong
to be unselfish, just that it would be in your benefit. See, I think most
of us believe not that killing an innocent
person is practical. It's impractical. In other words, the best
that you could argue for is that killing somebody else
or being unkind is impractical. We don't believe that. We believe it's wrong whether
it's practical or not. So in other words, evolution
can never give you an ought. It can only give you
a what would work. In the end, it can only
support pragmatism, and not the moral intuitions
that all the religions have, that something's wrong whether
it's impractical or not. All you could do
is to say it would be impractical to be unselfish. But in the end,
weirdly enough, you're appealing to selfishness,
selfish motives, to be unselfish. And this, by the way, Nietzsche
also took that idea apart. He takes apart the
idea that you can appeal to someone's
self-interest to make them unselfish. You can appeal to their
desire to survive to teach them to care for other people. In the end, it
doesn't really work. So I've got three objections. And yet, I want people
to have humanistic values for any reason at all, frankly,
because it does make the world a better place. So in the end, would religious
people like this approach? Yeah, I would. But I just try to show
you where I thought there's still some holes in it. AUDIENCE: Well, we can
agree on that last part. Thank you. TIM KELLER: OK. Yeah? AUDIENCE: So again,
thank you for being here. In addition to
filling out this room, we actually have
crowds in California and a number of our other global
offices that are tuning in. And so I just wanted
to take a minute. There's actually
several questions that came in in [INAUDIBLE]. TIM KELLER: Good. AUDIENCE: I wanted to
write one that came from Ambrose in California. And he asks about
technology and faith, which I believe your church
has a initiative going on in this area. He said, technology
has an immense power to improve people's lives and
make a positive difference in the world, which is why
many of us are here at Google. Does the Christian
world view have an opinion about how
technology should be used? Are there categories or problems
that technology can't solve, or at least improve? TIM KELLER: Well, I
think Langdon Gilkey-- I'd say Langdon
Gilkey would say-- that the basic selfishness
of the human heart, which most of us don't see. It hides. He says, when you get into
a place like the Shantung Compund-- when he
was in that compound, and everybody was in close, he
says when it's about survival, he says, very, very few
people are kind and open. And he says, human beings
are so selfish and so out for themselves, they
hide it from themselves till push comes to shove. I don't know how this
technology changes that. In fact, what Gilkey actually
says-- what he actually says is if you love yourself, if your
highest good is your own self, then it's going to
make you selfish. If your highest
good is your people, it'll make you a racist. If your highest
good is your family, it'll create patriarchy
and paternalism. He says really the only way
that you can make decisions about right or wrong is
what is your highest good? And if your highest
good isn't God, it's got to be one of
these other things. And you're going to turn
that into an absolute. And that's going to
actually be another vehicle for self-interest. But not only belief in
God, but an experience of the grace of God
can actually change that inner self-absorption,
self-centered, which is the reason for all
of the problems in the world. And my friend,
just a minute ago, I was trying to make the cases
that if the best thing you can do is sort of harness it by
appealing to selfishness, then you're really still
not going after the root. What you're doing is
you're trimming it. In fact, that's what
we do with our kids. Generally out of
selfishness, we teach them to be unselfish
because frankly, it'll get them where they want to go. I mean, I'm afraid a
lot of that happens. To really get at the
root, according I think as a Christian
minister, you're going to need spiritual reasons. Spiritual resources,
not just technology. Technology,
ultimately, is a tool. But it's an instrument. It's a means. But it's not an end. You're going have to
decide what your end is. Yes, sir? Were you going to
do some others? Or was that? OK, go ahead. AUDIENCE: We have two minutes. TIM KELLER: OK. AUDIENCE: OK, I'll be fast. Dr. Keller, I like
the way that you talked about those who are
religious and those who are secular and the
things that are actually very similar between them,
even though they might not recognize it. TIM KELLER: Oh yeah. AUDIENCE: One of the things
that the tech community in particular and the
broader community in general has been focused on is gender
equality and gender balance. And it's been a big struggle
in the tech community. And I don't have a
perspective on this from the Christian perspective. From an outside
point of view, a text that talks about God
the father and Jesus the son and the twelve apostles
has a very male perspective on it. And I was kind of
curious if you could talk about how you see
the Christian community and your fellowship struggling
with some of these things that are interesting both to seculars
and people who are religious. TIM KELLER: Did
you hear the lady? Two minutes. AUDIENCE: In the
remaining 60 seconds. TIM KELLER: You're not helping. [LAUGHING] Gee. Look, at the very
beginning of the bible, it says God made humanity
in his own image. And then it says, male and
female, he created them. And there is
indications not only that obviously male and
female are both equally made in the image of God. But there's even maybe a hint--
though this is debatable-- there's even a hint that
male and female together reflect all the
glories of God better than either male or female. What that would argue
for-- and this is basically what I think
Christianity-- not all, I mean, there's
great differences. I'm making this a
short answer so I can take one more question. But basically, I think the
Christian approach would be to say male and female
are equal, and not absolutely interchangeable. In fact, a lot of feminism
would say, no, they're not. There is a female way to lead
that is going to be different. That they are equal, but
they're not interchangeable. And yet, at the same
time, frankly, they should be, they're
irreplaceable for each other. In other words, each one
brings certain of God's glories and strengths into a
process, into an event, into a community the
other one can't bring. And because of that, we
desperately need each other. So they're equal,
not interchangeable, but equally important. And actually, we're
interdependent. We really can't live
without each other. And that's whether
we're married or not. We need to be into
communities where both male and female
are using their gifts and their abilities. That's about it. Do you want to do that
one more question? Or Barbara, do we
feel like we don't? Yeah, do we have one more
from outside of the-- yeah, and that'll be it. AUDIENCE: This is also
coming from Mountain View. It says, I'm a twentysomething
Christian and an American. I'm often told by older
Christian friends and family that America is becoming
increasingly secular. Christian morality
is disappearing. Society is degradating. And we're at a perilous
point in history. Do you think that's
a valid assessment? Or should Christians
be concerned? How do you think
Christians should respond to cultural
shifts toward secularism? TIM KELLER: Well, we're in luck,
because that's an easy question to answer, believe it or not. The point is that it's
both good and bad news. The answer is I don't like
the full decline narrative. If God is in charge, and America
is getting more secular, then God's got some good
purpose for that, OK? And one of which I think
is to humble Christians and say to some degree,
when we were more in power, we didn't use our
power very well. So it's time to really
rethink who we are and what it means to
relate in the world. So it's just not all bad news. But on the other hand, it is
getting more secular, yes. And the future will be, I
think, difficult for Christians to adjust-- American
Christians-- I'm so glad he said, I'm an
American and a Christian. Because frankly, there's almost
nowhere else in the world where Christians
have this memory of a sort of past influence. Because most everywhere else,
Christians are a minority. And they learn how
to be good neighbors and still to lift up what they
believe and still serve others. American Christians
are going to have to humble themselves
and become, frankly, better neighbors than they
have been in the past. And that's not bad news. But there will be some
sad things happen too. There will be some things
lost in our culture too. OK. BARBARA: All right,
thank you, Dr. Keller. [APPLAUSE] Thank you all. Awesome. [APPLAUSE]
It's weird. Piper also gave a talk at Google. They organize what are effectively Tedtalks for their employees on a pretty regular basis.
I wonder who the believer with control of scheduling is that both got in there.
I appreciate Tim's message and the approach he is taking at evangelizing, but it leaves out that sinners are slaves to their sin. They hate the thought of losing their sin so much that they are beyond logic. If you disprove one argument of their reasoning, they will latch onto another, or simply ignore you and continue with their original reasoning.
So many times I have seen people beyond logic for the sake of the sin they worship. Tim's arguments may pull out the stakes holding down a person's tent, but the pole holding the tent up is their devotion to their sin.
And I get that directly attacking their sin, what they cherish so much, would likely cause them to shut down and hear nothing...but is there a point where we should tell a person that they are a slave to their sin? Unable to leave it behind?