Questioning Christianity - Hope in Times of Fear

I want to talk to you about hope tonight the pandemic poses a very practical question how do you get hope in the face of a uncertain future our future looks very uncertain our immediate future looks very uncertain of course there's not only the the prospect of a lot of sickness and death there's also economic devastation and a growing social inequality the thing that we were bothered about before now seems absolutely to be getting worse and beyond that there's always the possibility of other pandemics and we'll get to that in a minute but the the practical issue is how does a society live without hope for the future if you lose any hope for the future how do you even have a social order what I want to talk to you about is first of all how Western culture over the last couple hundred years developed a hope that it gave its members Western culture has had a lot of hope for the future and I want to talk about the rise of that hope and how that developed and the fall of it why it's going away and what Christianity has to offer so first of all the rise of Hope in Western culture ancient Chinese people and the Babylonians the Hindus the Greeks the Romans virtually everybody in ancient times saw history is cyclical either it was repeated itself or sometimes they saw it as declining so the Confucianism actually saw a past Golden Age and some of the Greeks also saw it passed the Golden Age and they saw history is declining some of the Greeks however came up with the idea that as knowledge increased maybe human life would get better Robert Nesbit who wrote a really very classic book it's the called the history of the idea of progress in 1980 shows how Western culture developed a linear view of history the first culture to develop winning view not a cyclical view going around around or a declining view but a view that said history is actually getting better and better human the human society is getting better and better stage by stage by stage now how did that develop he said he says it started somewhat with the Greeks the Greeks didn't have much of a sense of history getting better but they actually some of them came up with this idea that well if human knowledge grows then human life will get better here but as Nibin Nisbet points out it was during the Middle Ages when Europe became almost completely Christian that took up until the mid about 1500 and when Christianity began to really pervade the European mind the Christian idea the biblical idea that history was going somewhere that there was a God who was overseeing everything and someday was going to bring history to an end in which there'd be judgment and evil would be put down and everything would be may right everything would be made right that idea got into the European mind and then witness but said is starting around 1750 from 1750 to 1900 the Enlightenment and European intelligentsia moved away from belief in God and it moved away from Christianity but as the the Europe got more secular they did not let go of this idea they had gotten from the Bible which was the idea of progress in and in two ways Nisbet points out the the Western idea the the secular Western cultures idea of progress actually got even more powerful in two ways one is Hegel was maybe the key thinker that said that there was a world spirit that was coming to more more consciousness and as human beings accrued more knowledge that sounds like the Greeks as human beings accrued more knowledge the the human race was becoming more conscious and the world spirit was going from one stage of progress to the next because the more knowledge we had the more wonderful our society would be the more we'd solve our problems and so Hegel came in with this idea of progress and you put on top of that Darwin the Starling comes up with his idea that says wait a minute basically the weaker being left behind history is always moving towards stronger and stronger more and more sophisticated stronger organisms and therefore in a way that's something that makes sense that society is moving in that direction and this but says from 1750 to about 1900 Lee said it was about the heyday of the whole idea that you know the future is gonna be better than the past and history is making progress and the human race is making progress and that worked up until the early part of the 20th century and as some of you know we had a very bad 50 years and if in fact a very bad really 25 or 30 years you had World War 1 then you had now we most people have forgotten about it but we had a pandemic in 1918 flu we had a depression and we had on World War two and during that period of time the the whole idea that maybe history is getting better that we should have hope for the future it it fell on hard times and I'll get back to one of the reasons why in a minute I fell on hard times now most of us unless you're in your 90s you don't remember as a conscious adil you don't remember the first half of the 20th century and almost all the rest of us only remember the time from say 1950s on and during that time we walk by and large of knots had depressions or pandemics or world wars and during that time there was a revival some people have pointed out that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama not only in their speeches but in the speeches of their staff and other officials of their administration dozens of times talked about being on the right side of history there are a couple places where they said we believe that what we're doing here is on the right side of history or they often said this that that approach is on the wrong side of history and that that term came up which was a kind of revival of the Western idea of progress which had really begun to which really fell on hard times in the first half the 20th century and so I started to revive Silicon Valley and Technology even into the in the 21st century there was this idea that technology is going to be able to solve everything and the whole idea came back that his knowledge increases and technology increases and science increases things are going to get better than better we're going to solve our problems and then of course things have been falling apart I'll give you a grille quick rundown and and the signs of it number one you have not just this pandemic but the fact is that pandemics now happen because of globalization because we can travel because we're so technologically advanced we can't stop the spread of a new virus or a new a new disease and it takes it takes months or even a couple years to get a vaccine so globalization has brought the pandemic and globalization will continue to bring pandemics and what if the next time the fatality rate isn't 1% but is 10% or 15% then beyond that there's climate change I haven't talked about that half way and the prospects there beyond that something that we don't think about right now but we certainly did after 9/11 and that is there are rogue states and there are terrorist organization which is out there that would very much love to detonate nuclear bombs or dirty bombs or they love to bring down the entire banking system through some kind of hacking and then on top of that you have the fact that technology in the last five to ten years we're starting to see that maybe we've created a monster because technology can also lead to the surveillance state and it can also lead to fake news and people undermining democracy because people don't know what to believe anymore and so what's happening is you can see it in the in the you can see it in the art nobody's making the old Star Trek was based on the idea that things are going to get better and better most science fiction now is much more dystopian but let's get on to the ground suicide and depression their rates are up if people in the West are not having children there the birth rate is less than replacement rate and Robert Putnam of of Harvard University and many others have looked at these sort of numbers and said this is hopeful it's hopelessness it's vanished now question why and there are two problems before I talked about what tell you what Christianity can offer there are two pretty pretty major problems that have actually scuttled or maybe you might say completely almost destroyed are our Western secular hope the hope for historical progress and the two problems are the problem of human nature and the problem of ultimate oblivion now the problem of human nature let's go back to World War two the problem of human nature is this that Ash whit's though the secular idea of human of human progress was based on the idea that as knowledge increases of course life will get better but it assumed that people would use the knowledge properly it assumed the goodness of human nature and so when you go back and say the social inequality pandemics the the ability to destroy each other with nuclear weapons these aren't the problems that came up in spite of our increased knowledge these are things that came up because of our increased knowledge see if increased knowledge was marked I was was wedded to human beings that never misused it that people shared their power and they shared their wealth and they would never lift up they would never go into conflict and they didn't think of their nation over other nations or their race over other races or their class over the classes if we had human beings that were good then increased knowledge of course would lead to historical progress but the fact is it's not leading historical progress which means the very idea of secular hope which was based on any of knowledge and assumed goodness of human nature is wrong now ash wits is probably the ultimate argument that proves that the secular hope for history is dying so let's just look at house words for a second I mean I have been there not too long ago and it's a it's a remarkable and very difficult visit to take but in Auschwitz you had high technology the Nazis were using the most the highest technology the the latest scientific methods the greatest efficiency possible to destroy hundreds of thousands of people every few weeks and when you look at that you have to say how did that happen I think there's only three answers the first answer is the liberal answer in this country a progressive person if you say look at this criminal why is that person the criminal and the progressive answer is unjust social structures put them in that position these are people who are really there's there's they are the victim of unjust social structures or maybe other things maybe biology or maybe maybe family systems or something like that but they would say if people do something bad it's because of the way in which they've been treated but you see if you say the Nazis were the victims of unjust social systems you have trivialized what happened you've trivialized it and what and you've lost your ability to talk about evil now because it always reduces well if they'd been treated different you know if their parents loved them so the first possibility is that the Nazis themselves were victims of an unjust social system that's why they did the evil things they did that trivializes evil the second high the second answer why did that happen is not the liberal ideological answer it's the conservative ideological answer and the conservative answer is that those Nazis were terrible people they were they're they're they're awful people they were they're not like the rest of us they were they were evil they were terrible they are subhuman uh-oh uh-oh what just happened there as soon you say that Nazis were able to do that evil because they're worse than the rest of us they're different than the rest of us they're a different kind of person you're doing exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews as soon as you deny the common humanity that can turn you into an oppressor so you see the first answer is well the Nazis couldn't help it which is the liberal answer which trivializes evil the second is well they're awful terrible people they're the kind of people we don't want anything to do with which is the conservative answer which of course turns you into an oppressor and there's only one other answer it's the Christian answer and that is every human being is capable of this equal anybody can do this we are all capable of it because human nature is corrupted and in spite of all the goodness in us because we were made by God and we're created the Bible says in the image of God nevertheless there's something so wrong with the human heart that we're capable of that and you see the whole idea the whole secular idea of progress is based on the idea that human beings are going to use their knowledge well and they're not they're not the secular idea of progress says inside you you have everything necessary to do what you should do and all your problems come from outside you the Bible says no the problems of this world are coming from inside us and we need help from outside which is God but anyway let's talk about the second before we move on to what Christianity offers the second problem big problem with the secular idea of hope is the problem of ultimate oblivion now what do I mean by that well the fact is that the secular worldview says oh history is getting better but the second worldview also says there's no god there's no transcendent dimension there's no supernatural there's no afterlife we are not here because somebody put us here we're here sort of in a sense by accident or impersonal forces brought us about impersonal forces brought about life and some day the Sun is going to die and maybe more than that will happen and then it'll all go away now what does that mean what does that mean for recently Brian green just wrote a really interesting book Brian Green Green is a secular person and fine writer and he wrote a book it's a long title but you can look it up it's called until the end of time subtitle mind matter and our search for meaning in an evolving universe and in the he's talking about how do you live when you know that the universe here is a basically human life is a temporary blip in the history of the universe and at one point he he recalls in the movie Annie Hall great movie a little a young boy a nine year old character named Alvy Singer who's the main character in the in the movie but when Alvy Singer is nine years old once he realizes that the universe will break down and all human civilization will be destroyed in the death of the Sun he decides that there's no reason for him to do his homework why should I do my homework if everything is gonna go is everything it's going to burn up now of course in the movie you're supposed to laugh and but this is what Brian Green says listen he says but if the immediate demise of humanity would render life meaningless then the same would be true even if the end is far off no what he means by that is to say what if for example somebody say you're gonna die tomorrow then you say well there's no reason to do my homework tonight but he says well even if that's far off he says and this is what this is a what Brian Green says he says human beings try to take comfort in symbolic transcendent symbolic transcendence that is the idea that what we do will live on in our works or maybe in the lives of our children but the reality is that in the end whether you live a life of goodness or if cruelty will make no final difference at all now another person that talks about this is CS Lewis CS Lewis of course was a Christian but he makes exactly the same point and he made a number of years ago in a little essay called on living in an atomic age wrote in 1948 and at that time there was nuclear war as a prospect for the first time in history and some people said to him now aren't you upset that a nuclear war might end human civilization and maybe everything we're doing would come to nothing and this is what Lewis said quote if nature capital n if nature is all that exists that is if there is no God and no life of some quite different sorts somewhere outside of nature then all of human civilization will eventually die in the death of the Sun and so humanity will turn out to have been an accidental flicker and there will be no one even to remember it no doubt atomic bombs may cut short its duration shorter than it might have been but if the whole thing even if it lasted for billions of years you talk about civilization human civilization even if human civilization last for billions of years we'll have to be so infinitesimally short in relation to the oceans of dead time which precede and follow it then does it really matter if it ends a little bit now what Louis and green ones a believer one's not but they're trying to say the very same thing if the if ultimate oblivion is where we're going then ultimately it does render us hopeless it does mean that the best you can do is is do something that'll total be forgotten in the long in the long run nothing you do whether you're cruel or good it's gonna make any difference at all nobody be around to remember anything that actually happens by the way sooner than the end of human civilization do any of you know the names of your great-great grandparents not really I don't I think I could probably look it up and see us Louis is pushing us and so is Greene pushing us to say hey if ultimate oblivion and the evil of human nature if they was a real then there's really no good reason to have hope unless unless there's a God who has spoken and who has said I'm going to bring history to a good end now that's what Christianity offers and let me just fairly briefly though you have playing time to ask questions fairly briefly let me give you four ways in which Christianity offers or the the four aspects of the hope Christianity offers Christianity offers a great hope for history ok I'm not talking about the afterlife for the moment and I'll talk about individual hope I'm talking about corporate hope social hope hope for the future and here's what the fourth thing here's the four things that offers it offers a reasonable hope it offers a full hope it offers a realistic hope and it offers an effective hope ok reasonable now this is this could be the whole talk and Justin's already made a reference to the fact that this is a series now because of the virus we've changed the series and and it's we go from like everybody else we're going from week to week figuring out when's the next time what are we going to talk about and at some future time I would love to share with all of you in this in this venue how do you know whether Jesus Christ was raised from the dead but that's what I'm talking about when I say it's a reasonable hope of all whether you're talk about Marx Hegel when you're talking about the law had hope for the future if you talk about any other religion they all talk about a certain amount of hope for the future and yet only Christianity says here's the guarantee that this is not just an emotional hope so it's not just wishful thinking Jesus Christ rose from the dead that's proof that God is there and that there is going to be an end to history a good end of history the resurrection of Jesus Christ now what's the evidence for the resurrection let me just say two or three things here I'm telling you not what the evidence is but that there is a lot that it's the only historic hope that is rooted in something that's quite reasonable and even though I would never want you to think that that all the evidence resurrection of resurrection was based on or hinges on one particular book I would suggest there is one book in the last number of decades that was written that's probably the most formidable compendium of all the best evidence for the resurrection plus adding a lot of things that a lot of people hadn't thought of in the past it's NT Wright's book the resurrection of the Son of God in NT Wright's book which is a 900-page book written by a man who understands history understands ancient history and as a scholar of ancient history NT Wright pulls together the strong evidence that there were multiple eyewitnesses to Jesus raised from the dead he shows how difficult it is to explain the birth of the Christian Church any other way another way to put it would be if you don't believe in the resurrection you have to come up with a historically plausible alternate explanation for how the Christian Church exploded in size amongst Jewish people who were the last people in the face of the earth they had been trained against any belief that a human being could be the Son of God yet they were worshipping Jesus Christ as the Son of God resurrected what would ever have overcome all of their training other than what they said that is we saw him now that's 900 pages I'm trying to just say it's a reasonable hope I'm not giving you all the reasons I'd love to open that up hey its formidable it doesn't prove you can't prove anything from the past it doesn't it doesn't prove doesn't mean there's no faith involved but there's an enormous amount of evidence and therefore the Christian hope is a rational hope it's reasonable it's not just hope so number two it's a full hope by a fool I mean this every religion offers an alternative to ultimate oblivion only our secular Western culture it's the only culture in history that has said to everybody ultimate oblivion ultimately history human beings we go to nothing it's really the first the first culture that talked about that all other religions all of the cultures and other religions have always said there is something but Hinduism and Buddhism many of the Eastern religions say we live on but we didn't don't live on as persons we become part of the all soul the way of do a dewdrop would become part of the ocean and therefore even though we live on we don't live on as persons which means there's no love at the end of history the end of history does not end in love now then you go to Islam and Islam does believe and there's a that you exist personally in paradise but it's an ethereal spiritual paradise Christianity and only Christianity believes in the resurrection which is to say that at the end of time God is not just simply taking us to heaven but he's going to create a new heaven and a new earth a new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth justice and every tear will be wiped away and the lion will lay down with a lamb these are poetic images getting across this idea that the world is going to be made new it's going to be mended and so the future the Christian hope is not a consolation for the life you lost the Christian hope his resurrection the restoration not only the life you lost but the life you never really had it's it's gonna be the world we always have longed for it's the world that we always were hoping for and it's the world it's material when Jesus Christ arose from the dead he shows up to his disciples and he says I am NOT a ghost a spirit hath not flesh and bones and they ate a fish in their presence and in other words the it's a full hope it's not just simply a kind of spiritual oblivion where an impersonal future it's also not just simply going to heaven it's a new heavens and new earth so it's a full hope thirdly it's a realistic hope and here's what I mean by that Hegel and Darwin and Karl Marx I haven't talked about him but Marx of course changed Hegel's view of history and also believed we were moving toward a worker's paradise but he also believed that history was going up and up and up that's unrealistic if you look at Jesus Christ he came to earth and things got terrible for a long time for him before they got better and he was resurrected and you're gonna see that and you're gonna see that in everywhere through the Bible in King David you're gonna see it in in Joseph you're gonna see it in in figure after figure because when the Bible says that in the end God is going to make everything right he often takes us through death in the resurrection he doesn't just take us to higher and higher higher levels it's very unrealistic to believe that every 10 years or every generation is going to have it better than the last generation that's ridiculous it also doesn't eat it doesn't fit what the Bible says the Bible says eventually all things work together for good to those who love the God eventually God is going to land the plane and bring in righteousness and bring in justice and bring in beauty and bring in wholeness he's gonna bring it all in but it doesn't mean necessarily that every single generation things are gonna get better there's no promise like that it's unrealistic so the Christian hope is reasonable it's it's a fool it's realistic and I said it's effective it actually works I'll just give you a couple examples very quick because we need to wrap up Howard because it was an african-american writer and author in 1947 he gave a lecture at Harvard on the meaning of what was then called the Negro spirituals I think today we'd call him african-american spirituals he was talking about the music and the songs that came that were that were composed by the slaves before the civil war when the African Americans were here were enslaved and in that in that lecture he actually took on two objections the one objection was that the african-american spirituals were too otherworldly because they kept talking about heaven and about Judgment Day and about Jesus coming back and about crowns and and streets paved with gold and all that stuff that's just too otherworldly and here's what he said he says that's ridiculous basically he says out of these doctrines this Christian hope he said all these doctrines the conviction grew amongst the slaves that this is the kind of universe that cannot deny ultimately the demands of love and longing uniting with loved ones in the future in the afterlife turn finally on the hope of immortality and the issue of immortality turned on God therefore God would make it right and then of course the other thing that he responded to and it's a great essay you can probably find it online I believe was people said well you know what but why do you have to take that literally why do you have to say that Jesus is really coming back or there's a real heaven why don't you just say things are gonna get better and he said can you imagine sitting down with slaves in 9th 1840 and saying I want to give you something that will help you go out there and face life with your head high and here's what I'm gonna tell you there is no Judgment Day there is no God but we think that maybe if we work hard we might be able to repeal slavery well of course of course by the way the slaves tried do everything they could for justice and yet but Howard Thurman says can you imagine telling the slaves well you know what this life is all there is and when you die you simply cease to exist our only real hope is for a better world lies and improved social policy and you think that would really get slaves in the 1840s to get up and really face the life the way they did absolutely not the Christian hope is effective it works I guess one last thing I'll tell you is this when I was uh going into a surgery for my thyroid cancer this is quite a number of years ago quite a number of years ago nevertheless surgery cancer scary and just before I went in I remembered a little place in the Lord of the Rings which is a the third book in which Sam and Frodo of course are on their way to Mount Doom and everything looks so bleak everything looks so bleak and as Frodo is going to sleep Sam looks up and he sees a star and this is what the text says and this is the book Sam saw star a white star twinkle for a while and the beauty of its smote is hard for like a shaft clear and cold that thought pierced him that in the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach and I suddenly real you know what I might die I might live but I suddenly realized if what the Bible says is true then we're all on this little little dark blip called Earth and temporarily there's darkness here but this this even if this is in an ocean of light there's light and high beauty forever beyond the reach of anything wrong in this world and all I suddenly realize is I'm in a little speck of darkness in a universe of light and beauty and whether I die now or whether Jesus comes back before I die it doesn't matter everything's gonna be all right and I was able to I'm still glad they gave me anesthesia but I was really pretty relaxed so that's all for now and I'm what I'm gonna do is I'm going to turn it back to Justin on that note and we're gonna find out what you all want to talk about great thank you so much Tim yes so now we're gonna hear from some of our friends who are exploring Christianity of course during this time of question and answer again just encourage you if you have any questions to please feel free to text those questions into the number that was sent in your registration and again we will get to as many of them as we can in the time that we have Tim what we'll start here you touched on this a little bit toward the end there particularly as you're discussing the the spirituals but question is simply this so if you're saying if what you're saying is true then for Christians then do Christians experience hopelessness or fear or anxiety of course and the reason for that is that if you were able to live with not just your intellectual faith but with with a sense on your heart of the reality of what you believe and that sense of reality was a hundred percent then you would never have any problem but actually the relationship between what you what you are your convictions and how you actually how real those convictions are to your heart is something we live with all the time so Luis actually this might not be Louis actually tells a story where he says if you what if you were about to meet a guy okay so he was talking about he says if you're a man and you're about to meet another man and your friend says look I want you to know that this guy's this new man you're about to meet is so charming he is so wonderful he is he's he's a brilliant conversationalist everybody's just eating out of his hand he's gonna make you feel like you're his best friend but you cannot tell him anything private because it'll be all over town he is he you cannot trust him he's a gossip he loves to tell so please don't and he says what happens is you get to know the guy and he's just so wonderful and you really want to be his friend he seems brilliant he seems wealthy he seems like he could open a lot of doors for you and you really you know you know what your friend told you and yet it doesn't seem real to you at the time and so he asked you a question you tell him something and later on of course it does get all over town and Louis is trying to say it's not like you didn't at that moment believe what I told you about you can't trust this man but on the other hand at the moment it wasn't real to you it just didn't feel real to you or maybe you didn't even want it to be real to you and so he says it doesn't really mean that you changed your mind it just it was a there was a disconnect now when it comes to belief in God and this sort of belief there's times in which that connected it connection is extremely strong and I was describing one right before I went under for my cancer surgery I was I was amazed at how real I said I believe this but boy it's just it's just such a comfort there are other times in which even though I know it it's it my heart doesn't it doesn't feel all that cogent to my heart so we are head and heart and and therefore yeah there's nobody is gonna overcome doubts here's one of the things I most liked is that at the end of the book of Matthew it tells us that when Jesus Christ the Risen Jesus Christ showed up to his disciples this is the very end of Matthew it says they listened to him and said some doubted it's a fascinating little phrase if you read what the commentators say I said if you were making this up they would never have said that some of the Twelve Apostles when they when Jesus was meeting with him some doubted their eyes they just couldn't even believe it really was him you wouldn't put that in there and it's probably it probably is really what happened which is goes to show you might say well Jesus actually appeared to me I would have no more doubt so I don't think that's true I think as long as we're in this life I think our heart will find spiritual realities difficult sometimes to grasp so I mean just let's make this really present and practical you know we are in the midst of a season where the word that just keeps coming to me as incredibly disorienting it's just it's constantly disordered I think it's hard to find your bearings and someone had just had said well it's fur you know the this idea that we live in a small universe but I'm dealing with the death of a friend right now in the present how does what Christianity says how does what Christianity says about hope in the future tense make any sense of how I'm relating to it in the present tense and I think in particular in this like season where it just seems like so many people are wrestling with that yes this seems like great theoretically into the future but like what does this mean for me right now yes actually I if I had more time I'll try to do this right now but but what to answer your question I need to unlock that third the third point of what I said there's there's our hope is a Christian hope is rate reasonable it's full its realistic and I'm not sure that's the best word what I was trying to say is that the Bible does not say that you go from strength to strength to strength in life that if God is with you things get better and better and better in your life its success of a success after success the reality is if you read through the Bible is that God never ever just gives people strength and then they go on this is success generally they bring God always as brings strength out of weakness it's actually one of the main themes of the Bible he you know David it's little David is is goes up against Goliath none of the other warriors were going up against Goliath because they were afraid of him David Camm was up there he's actually too young to be conscripted into the army and when Goliath sees he's just a kid he laughs he gets out of his garden of course that's why he dies God uses basically uses David's weakness as a form of strength Joseph is sold into slavery and he is put into a dungeon that's back in Genesis and only because of his weakness and because of his darkness and because of all these horrible experiences he's having does he actually become a person who can save Egypt from the famine and his family from themselves and if you go go through it's Jacob Joseph Moses who's an abandoned orphan by the way and I mean it's one after the other after the other God always does not just move you to resurrection without a death or he doesn't move you into the light without going through darkness and in fact Jesus himself did that Jesus Christ saves us through his weakness and his death not his coming in success he didn't do that and therefore when you're going through stuff like that he said well how could I get any hope well the answer is you were you are walking the very same paths if you're trusting in God then God is walking with you in the furnace like he walked with said you know Shadrach Meshach and Abednego in the furnace when they thrown under the furnace and Daniel chapter 3 he's always there with you he's always working when the Jews were sent into exile in Babylon they they said we can't sing God's song in a foreign William that's Psalm 137 they said we we're just going to lose our faith there and it's not true they actually did learn how to sing a song in God's in the foreign land and it made them stronger they became they new they learned how to exist as a coherent minority over the centuries where all the other great nations that you know we're oppressing Israel I've gone the way of the dodo bird because in other words God actually through the Exile and through all that suffering made them into something great so that pattern you've I have to say modern people don't get the pattern they feel like we should be going from strength to strength because I do think that the the secular hope narrative brainwashed us so the idea if things aren't getting better and better why is what surrounded with God what's he doing or what's the matter with life or let's sue somebody because basically life isn't supposed to it's not supposed to hurt like this so I think so it's got the logical next question to that and so if all of that is true then and their their question had several parts but I don't to hone in on the last part of their question they say well I guess what I'm they mentioned some of the things that you're talking about no let me just recall question so track with this whole question for a second so in the Bible the hope that it refers to usually is about the eternal hope in the future right but what does that mean God but does that mean that God would be ignorant about our current situation that isn't filled with much hope I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is still life on earth but isn't hope for the future meaning eternal life so what's the point of living in the present - so I at least the way I'm understanding this question what's the point of living then if all the hope that we have exists in the in eternity why bother why bother living now well the the glory Paul says I don't completely understand this I believe it and I I do sense it even like it's a little hard to break it all down he says these slight momentary afflictions are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison that's in 2nd Corinthians for the afflictions were going through now is preparing for us an eternal way to glory beyond all comparison and what he's saying is the glory that our current troubles is preparing is going to out weigh them III do think Teresa of ávila who is a you know a a you know Catholic sister who wrote spiritual theology there she says the first kiss and hug from Jesus Christ when we get to see him is going to more than compensate for a thousand really really really bad lives and what Paul means is not here's the thing I don't quite understand I my last answer which went along pretty well a pretty long time because I'm really trying to make the point is that God's God gets you to glory it's never linear it's v-shaped it's never steps it's V because look at Jesus it was because he emptied himself of his glory and became a servant and was obedient even to the death of the cross therefore God has highly exalted him so you can see it in Jesus that the glory Jesus has is due to his sacrifice is suffering the darkness he went through the glory that David got was because he risked his life and made himself vulnerable the glory that Joseph got was only through the darkness of a dungeon and so there's some way in which the Paul is saying our sufferings sometimes it changes us and makes us better people wiser people deeper people happier people because it drives us like a nail into God's love so we have to rely on his love and present circumstance you know favorable circumstances it also might mean in some other way God is keeping a record I don't know but that verse means God is very concerned about the present and actually the future glory is linked very very very tightly to what's happening in your life now so again this is just to maybe build on that a little bit as a hearing you describe that I mean what strikes me is the fact that it's seems like someone's like God is orchestrating suffering or God's orchestrating these difficult times and that seems completely again but I would assume God to be a loving God who desires to care for his creation and so why I think maybe this maybe comes down to this whole idea like a problem of evil like why does why does God allow these things great there's - I think there's two responses there and I think both together they they're stronger than they are apart the one response is that you've if you're a parent and like you are Justin you do know how impossible it is sometimes to tell your children something that's going to make them very unhappy I just remember when my kids were you know we were leaving Philadelphia to come up here and they were they were you're pretty young they were all in the single digits okay the oldest one wasn't but basically they were you know five and six years old and eight nine years old so when you're trying to speak to them and and you're saying we're leaving we're leaving completely and so all their best friends are there so they're gonna lose all their friends okay and you think here you are this 38 year old self saying to your seven-year-old don't worry honey you know you you won't even remember these kids and we're going to a way better place and you're gonna get new friends and that makes no sense to a seven-year-old at all and at a certain point you have to say that in other words they just cannot their minds can't get into it and they think you're being cruel and there's certain point have to say you're gonna have to trust me now the difference between a 38 year old and a 7 year old is minor it's tiny compared to the difference in God and us and if you are on the one hand going to say God just seems to be kind of manipulating and he's not really loving well that's what my seven-year-old said and that's what if you have a seven-year-old you're 7 it will often say things like that so you don't love me you're just you must hate me or something that the second answer though which I think is important is that he is not a puppet master that is to say the the Bible has an believably sophisticated understanding of the relationship between how God arranges things and how we act you and I think that if God is in charge then we're puppets or we think that if we really are responsible and and if what we do really matters and affects how we let you know affects our destiny that our choices matter then God is sort of waiting back here to see how we do but the Bible over and over and over again says it's not 5050 God in humans it's not 80% God in 20% human it's a hundred percent hundred percent it's a it's called you know the theologians call it concurrence it says that when when Jacob lied to his father and made his brother ready to murder him and he had a runaway and really in many ways just really wounded himself and wounded his whole family and ripped everybody apart that was his fault it was his fault he shouldn't have done it and yet at the same time he actually ends up marrying you know go out of his way out of his marriage of the woman he finds in this new place comes the Messiah so on the one hand it's clearly not Plan B that he did all that I mean that's part of God's plan but the same time he was absolutely responsible this is very difficult for modern Western people to get their hands on to say that we're really not responsible God's just up there arranging I need to know on the one hand that what I do matters or I'm gonna be passive but I also need to know that I can't totally screw up my life that gods behind it and he's got a plan otherwise I wouldn't want to get out of bed in the morning so as strange as that paradox is it's the only workable one because any other approach that says God is just being a puppet master or I'm in charge would lead I think either either to fear or passivity so you put all that together no he's not just arranging things in a cruel way he's a loving Heavenly Father who often does things for his own glory and our good that we seven-year-old spiritual seven-year-old people cannot understand maybe just a maybe you actually maybe not briefly if you're feeling doing this way but so it's so far you know there's been a couple things as I've heard so I've heard in your talk you you used the Nazis as an example and essentially said we're all capable of back kind of evil I just heard you call me a seven-year-old and there there might be some who were just offended by this idea that you know I would never be of such great do such great evil things as the Nazis and I am an educated well-read person I I'm certainly no seven-year-old and just be not even be able to get past that idea of being thought of or treated in that way how would my you respond for that offense yeah that is a perfectly natural visceral response now if if I'm was if I'm standing if I'm sitting here with you I mean Justin you're standing in for folks here but if I was the people who are asking that question if they were if I was with them I would say of course that's that's how I feel - I mean if you just if I just go on my own self-knowledge and self-awareness I would also say I can't imagine myself ever doing anything like that how could you say that but number one go back to the argument so if you are not capable of it okay you tell me why the Nazis did it and you'll see that your answer gets you into trouble which I try to show you so even though you're it doesn't feel good I think logically that's where we go but I think the better way to go about it would be to say think of an acorn okay I don't know what percentage of the acorns that fall I mean I love oak trees but they do make a mess at certain times of the year when all those acorns fall down what what percentage of the acorns actually become another um tree probably a fairly small number the fact is that I remember somebody once told me that inside an acorn is not only everything you need if you plant the Acorn and is fertilized right and it's I don't guess the right water and all that the whole trees in the Acorn and then amazing to hold it's not like something else happened it's all in there and since the the whole trees in the acorn so are all the other acorns which means you actually have an entire forest in your hands how many of those acorns actually become a forest and the answer is a fairly small number and yet it's all in there it has to have exactly the right conditions though I'm trying to say there is an inner Nazi in me and in you and in everybody that is capable of if under the right circumstances fear anger maybe maybe you know history there's a whole lot of things fortunately it's fairly rare that that part of the human heart actually gets fertilized and and and turns into a tree or forest but when the Bible says that we're all sinners it's trying to say even though by God's grace and and I'm very glad they that very very few people actually have that actually sprout like that it is still in me and is still in you so I think if you think of it like that I think it still makes the case that we are all acorns in which we have a lot of inner evil but fortunately it very it the full capacity doesn't come out that much yeah that's good thank you um let me shift a little bit but actually it's kinda it's on it's related to what we're talking about but it also hits on a bit about but the original topic for the night was supposed to be Oh person just asks I'm not a religious person and to be frank organized religion scares me mmm-hmm why can't I have hope in community beauty and human will why do I need to be a Christian well first yeah tonight well first of all I sure hope somehow we're going to be able to get to these other topics so yeah I'd love to get back to that and give it a fuller approach the the the I think the right an answer and of course I'm speaking as a Protestant here is that you do not go I don't I do not believe that you have to be united to the church in order to find Christ I believe that if you're united to Christ by faith that will lead you toward the church and I do understand from the outside that when you take a look at the church and you see I can see why it scares you I can see all I would do would be to call people toward Christ yes okay no you do I mean enjoy it's not required that you belong to a church in order to be saved that's I'm speaking as a Protestant now but I don't believe that and therefore go after Jesus Christ and we'll talk about the church later and but but the question about what was the three things human will what were the three things Justin yes I said community beauty and human will well see that does listen with all due respect that sounds like the secular hope that it's it's basically saying I don't need the supernatural I don't need a belief in God controlling history I I guess I can believe in ultimate oblivion and I can and I it sounds like the person is saying I want to ignore the ultimate oblivion of the secular view and I also don't really buy the fact that human beings aren't basically good so if you buy the fact that human beings are basically good and and you just try not to think about ultimate oblivion yes then you know that's how most people been getting along I'm I'm saying that even if you say why don't why why isn't that enough I'm saying well right now culturally it's not enough increasing numbers of people are saying it's not enough and I would even say practically you're going to probably come up against something in this world in which you realize I don't have the ability community and my inner resources is not enough the Christian idea Christian concept is I mentioned this once but I didn't it may spend enough time on it Christian is not that the problems are from out here and inside you've got everything you need we would say your most fundamental problem is something's wrong with your own heart there you cannot generate your own meaning in life you need to live for something whatever that something is that you live for ends up controlling you David Foster Wallace has is fast famous speech in which he said you better worship a real God because if you don't worship a real God you worship something else and it'll eat you alive he said you'll worship beauty or you worship power or you worship success or your worship intellect and those things will eat you alive so I would just say to my the questioner not only is that idea that I don't need God and I can just rely on so the human spirit failing I think historically and socially but I really think it'll fail that person him or her personally and he ought to listen what David Foster was a personal it wasn't what David Foster Wallace says you got it you're gonna have to worship something you will live for something and with that thing if it's not a real God whatever it is will eat you alive well so just there's a follow-up comment to this and it's it's less of a question more of a statement and so maybe you could respond because it very much touches on what you just said the following comment was just simply the secular hope is enough for me I don't know what value believing in ultimate oblivion even provides in life especially in exchange for how limiting Christian values are how might you respond to that idea that one I think that the secular hope is enough it doesn't seem to be a need for anything more but then some I related to that Christian values are limited okay and maybe again that comes back to some of things you already said yeah now you know what I'm not going to be able to respond to the to the second one because I'm not sure what he means or she means they might mean I can't have sex outside of marriage or something like that in which case that's a whole month that just that deserves a lot of talk I mean I don't I don't think I can respond to it cuz I'm not sure quite what they have in mind but the idea of a secular hope let me push you on the ultimate oblivion a little bit what Brian Greene CS Lewis were saying was if if this world is all there is and when you die you rot and when the Sun dies no nobody will be around you say well that doesn't bother me that much well let me push you a little bit if there is nothing outside of nature that's what CS Lewis says if in other words if you're here by it all of your feelings are there for products of evolution they helped your answers to survive and so your your intuitions that love is real and morality is real are actually illusions and this is what Lewis says by the way I never read this but Lewis says this in that essay or he says if you really believe that there is nothing there's no God and there's nothing outside of nature and everything is just a matter of your jeans and your biology then here's the crisis your values have uses this quote you can't accept in the lowest animal sense be in love with a girl if you know and you keep on remembering that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behavior of your genetics you can't go on getting very serious pleasure from music if you know and remember that it's err significance is a pure illusion that you like it only because your nervous system is your rationally conditioned to like it because of evolution you may still in the lowest sense have a good time quote unquote a good time but just in so far as you ever have a very good time just insofar as your good times threatens to push you on from cold sensuality into real warmth and enthusiasm and joy so far will you be forced to feel the hopeless disharmony between your own emotions and the universe in which you think you really live and what he's saying there at the very end I may just read that he says he says so far will you be forced to feel the hopeless disharmony between your own emotions and the universe in which you really live the the your emotions say love is real your motions say that there's something significant about me the great music or art your emotions say that there really is such a thing as some things are really morally evil but I'm not it's not just I'm just I'm not just conditioned by my genetics or by my culture to believe it there's some things that are really wrong and he says if you believe that you will be forced to feel the hopeless disharmony between your own emotions and the universe in which you really live and that means I really do think it's not just a matter of oh I don't have to think about oblivion at the end of time it also means I can't think about the reality that the what I really know in my heart about love and beauty and morality isn't really possible because of my understanding there's no God in this this world is all there is and I'm nothing but matter so I at this point I'm saying I don't know that that in any way that's incredibly limiting that is unbelievably limiting the secular approach is really limiting I I mean whatever you think about Christian values there at least they're consistent because they're grounded in the idea that there's a Creator God who made us to live in certain ways and he loves us and he wants us to live that way because he wants us to to thrive so I that's enough for that but I wanted to I wanted to read that section because I didn't have time to read it anyway so thank you for the opportunity yeah that's good and I did there's one follow-up there's one comment that was made about that and I think you I want to acknowledge this comment for the person that noted it and I think it does tale with what you just said but so regarding the secular hope what I believe what if I believed that I totally find security and peace that I'm one speck of the large fabric of life that all that is here is just here for here there are things that are beyond us and there's so much beauty in just that I mean I think you just touched on that but yeah I'm just for those that are I'm totally satisfied with being a speck of dust in the middle of the universe yeah okay now if you just say it he or she just stopped there fine as soon as I there's beauty wait a minute that's a see you can't smuggle in moral narratives I've had people say to me I don't think there's a god and I think it's more mature and courageous to face life without needing God I'll say wait am i that Sam oral narrative that's that's a where do you get that tell me don't please give me a basis of morality that in your worldview is not just essentially the what what Louis called the irrational response which is part of just the behavior of your genetics and as soon as you start to smuggle in things like beauty and morality and justice and things like that you don't really have a good basis for them and it doesn't mean you could say look I don't know why I just know they exist fine okay if you say I know Beauty exists I know love exists I know justice exists I don't know why I just know it good I'm glad by the way first of all I do too and I'm really glad we can work together basically I mean if you're a secular person and you want to work for loving your neighbor and justice isn't that great like we can all do it together but I don't want you to say that Christianity is less reasonable than your view because your view is a complete leap in the dark you say I have no real basis for it I just believe it Christianity actually in some ways I I need less faith to believe in human rights and love and beauty than you do because it fits in with what I believe about the universe so at this point I could just say fine you can have that belief but please don't think it's more reasonable or it's not more faith-filled it's very faithful thank you all right we have just any time for this one last question and I want to make sure this question gets in because it's very applicable to all of us in this current season of social distancing what does Christianity have to say about the experience of loneliness I know that's for many of course there's all kinds of different ways that were impacted right now by what's going on but one of those things is is loneliness and that loneliness can produce a lack of hope and that could even cloud our vision of like what hope ought to be so what would you say what does not what does a Christian faith have to offer us yeah well on the one hand God actually the Christian faith first of all can explain loneliness because in the in the very very beginning of the Bible it actually says when God created Adam first human being God says it is not good that man should be alone and he creates Eve now it's pretty interesting because Adam at that point would have had a perfect relationship with God and yet even with a perfect relationship with God there evidently was something lacking and that's only because God must have created it there's the only way that Adam would need some relationship besides his relationship with God in other words you might say a horizontal relationship as well as the vertical relationship the only right way that would be true is if God created him with that capacity and therefore on the one hand I would say that if you are all by yourself especially those you know a lot of New Yorkers are single people and this other Quarantine really all by themselves and that would be that's tough and if you feel lonely the Bible can explain it it's not just a herd instinct it's not just your biology it's that you were created to need other human beings because God Himself is a relational God and so you're made in His image and therefore you're gonna be lonely having said that I can tell you this it's my modern life and probably yours as well I mean I'm older so I probably not experiencing as much as say you Justin or others it seems like the younger you are the less solitude you seem to have you just it's just you're now with the phone that you never alone with your thoughts and I've found that by being sequestered unfortunately with the person I love most in the world my wife however it's I'm still lonely for my children my grandchildren my friends and yet the the time with God if you have a relation with God in which you really do sense him talking to you and speaking to you and loving you and showing you things in his word the advantage of being alone is that you can actually fill that loneliness if you're a Christian and have a a genuine commune of fellowship with God with with him so I tried I start off by trying to say look I am NOT saying oh if you have a great relation with God you won't be lonely I did not say that in fact the Bible explains why you'd be lonely anyway but if you have that relation with God it's a massive massive help in times like this massive because there really is somebody who you can have a conversation with who's always there and with that frankly sometimes unless you have times of enforced solitude like this a lot of us actually forget what we have with him and that it's beautiful and I think that even emphasizes all the more some of the things you already were discussing about what it means to to experience and to know God all the more even in these like really difficult disorienting hard times it's there's beauty that can be found there so thank you Tim that is all the time that we have for questions thank you so much for those of you who are sending them in and sending up the follow-up thoughts we're so very grateful for your willingness to do that we want to thank you for being here with us this evening a couple of quick things before we go we want to just remind you that our next question Christianity session will be on May 7th again at 7 p.m. as of right now full disclosure the topic is right now to plan to be how and why can we believe in Jesus stay tuned we'll see if that topic sticks but you can register for that topic at Redeemer dot-com /qc 2020 and if you are interested in what you heard tonight and want to continue the conversation you can reach out to us at QC at Redeemer comm you can also access a variety of free sermons one of which in particular called living by faith in troubled times now the link will appear on the screen there soon again thank you so much for joining us we're so very grateful and we we hope that you are ba you're safe as you are staying home and we are grateful for your willingness to participate blessings friends you

Channel: Gospel in Life

Views: 150,032

Rating: 4.8462195 out of 5

Keywords: Tim Keller, Timothy Keller, Dr. Tim Keller, Questioning Christianity, Gospel in Life, Redeemer, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Church, Live, Hope, Fear, Hope in Times of Fear, Pandemic, Gospel, Pastor, New York, New York City

Id: iB2rS71FcUM

Length: 68min 32sec (4112 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 17 2020