Uncovering Freedom - Tim Keller - UNCOVER

good evening everyone and a very warm welcome to uncover my name is Josh I'm a member of the Christian Union and it's my pleasure to welcome you here this evening it's fantastic to see you all when cover is a week of events examining some of the big issues of life and faith and so every lunchtime we have been and will be looking together at some of life's big questions and in these evening events we're considering the life that Jesus offers and the claims that he makes about himself well this evenings title is uncovering freedom and in thinking about that topic we're really pleased to be joined once again by dr. Tim Keller who has been with us and will be with us for the whole of this evening series tim has led a church in the heart of New York City for a number of years now and has spoken in many countries and cities around the world including Oxford on a couple of different occasions well this evening Tim will speak for about 30 minutes and then after that he'll be glad to answer your questions so please be texting your questions in throughout this evening the number will be on the screen for the duration so do be texting those in even as he's speaking we'll also hear from Charlotte's he's a student at univ ii began to think about some of these issues for herself and then at the end we'll enjoy some more live music together but now Tim can I invite you up and while you're on your way it'd be good to ask you a few questions to get to know you a little bit better great so you're here with your family and could you tell us a little bit about who's here with you my wife Kathy who is uh I promise she's actually here but she's not where she she will be here soon and my son Michael who's helping with the tech and my daughter-in-law Sarah one of three sons and also Craig Ellis who is on the staff of the church and who's our and who works with me they're here today well you mentioned yesterday that you've been to Oxford more than once I'm interested what what particularly appeals to you is somebody from New York about being in Oxford well there's that there's the objective in this objective the objective is that is a a beautiful town B I really respect the tradition of learning here and I've read so many books over the years by Oxford scholars and so appreciated their scholarship the subjective is that my wife who is actually only now getting to her seat sorry to call attention to you honey the IDI when she was 12 years old she read a book the line of which in the wardrobe by CS Lewis and being my wife she wrote yes she wrote the author who was a CS Lewis who was a teacher here at Oxford and had been a student had been teaching here for years and she just wrote him and said loved your book and being a good British gentleman he wrote her back and he wrote this 12 year old girl in Pittsburgh back four times and never never talked down to her so one time she said she was describing a maddening experience she'd had because she had submitted a short story to her school newspaper she was a twelve-year-old in sixth grade at the time and that in order to make it fit the editor took the the last paragraph off which was the Dana mwah you know of the story so she wrote CS Lewis about it and he wrote back and said I I can sympathize with your maddening experience this is the Ock one of the occupational hazards of authorship the same thing has happened to me more than once there's nothing to be done about it and that's rather winsome and we've read my wife and I both read many of his works and some there's there's a subject of affection we have for Oxford partly because his works and how they have played a great role in our life and how in your life in particular has um CS Lewis who you have sort of quoted a couple of times has he been an influence on you subsequently yes because big I'm a Christian minister and so I'm supposed to be schooled in theology and CS Lewis though is a brilliant scholar was a layman a layperson and and he taught me how to be clear and I owe that to him when I am clear you can you can attribute it to an Oxford Don when I'm not clear you can attribute it to my theological education say thank you we're really grateful to have you with us again thanks for joining us Ava Dean so we're going to be talking about freedom and I'd really like the way Josh set up for about thirty minutes I appreciate that every night in these meetings in here this week we're looking at one of five very important themes meaning satisfaction freedom tonight identity and hope and these are five things that human beings need they can't live without and my case to you every night is that Christianity not only explains these needs very well why we have them but also supplies these needs with arguably at least I'm arguing unparalleled resources Christianity makes them tremendously powerful offers and tonight we're looking at freedom and whereas when I go through that list meaning and satisfaction and freedom and things like that I hope I'm not doing that when you get to freedom even though it looks similar to the others it's not quite because though in some ways all five of these things are perennial human needs freedom in particular is the baseline cultural narrative of our Western culture it's always been in poor but now it's ultimately important it's essentially some people who said the only moral imperative we have left freedom and that freedom is now seen almost as an absolute value here's a couple of expressions of it it's just people talk about it all the time they use this baseline cultural narrative without thinking in those terms but some years ago I just saw this recently of 1994 there was a Woody Allen movie called bullets over Broadway it became a Broadway musical - and in it one of the characters who's played by Rob Reiner a very well-known actor and writer his character says this guilt is petty bourgeois crap an artist creates his own moral universe an artist creates his own moral universe now a little more recently and I guess a little bit less you know a little bit more excessively recently there was a a Walt Disney movie called frozen and there's a character in there Elsa and if any of you know any five-year-old to ten-year-old girls little girls you know what I'm about to tell you there's a very famous song in which she says this at one point Elsa says it's time to see what I can do to test the limits and break through no right no wrong no rules for me I'm free you're very lucky I didn't break into song on that because I've heard it so often but it's the same thing as Rob Reiner saying this is this is that this is the baseline cultural narrative no right no wrong no rules for me I've got to break through to be free the arch enemy it seems of that kind of freedom is Christianity in our Western culture if that's the cultural narrative Christianity is seen is almost the archenemy of freedom mark Lula who teaches humanities at the Columbia University a couple years ago wrote in The New York Times Magazine an interesting essay about Billy Graham and he he talked to a man who was a Wharton Business School graduate I graduated the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton Business School very prestigious school and his shock discovered that he had gone forward at a Billy Graham crusade and been born again and he talked to him a little bit about this and he was shocked partly because when he was a teenager he had flirted with what he called born-again Christianity but he says when I when he actually sat down evidently years ago and looked at the place in the Bible John chapter 3 where Nicodemus a religious leader and Jesus have a conversation where Jesus tells Nicodemus you must be born again this is what Mark Lilla says about that chapter he says Jesus seems to be telling the Adiemus that he must recognize his own insufficiency that he will have to turn his back on autonomous seemingly happy life and be reborn as a human being who understands his dependency on something greater that seems like a radical challenge to our freedom and it is and then he went on to say that's the reason why he just couldn't be a born-again Christian because it was a radical challenge to her freedom so the question is is a relationship with Jesus Christ is that a radical challenge to her freedom does that mean that you really can't be free if you're a Christian and here's the answer I'm thinking about another movie this is the last of my movie references I promise Brendan Gleeson in the new great movie called Calvary there's a place where he's he's a Catholic priest gone into the ministry late in life he has a daughter who had recently failed in her suicide attempt and he's talking to her and she looks at him and says my life is my own he's another expression of the cultural narrative of freedom my life is my own I belong to myself it belongs to nobody else and he looks at her and he says true-false and he wasn't changing his mind what he was saying is true to a degree but ultimately false and see that he's right when he talks about that the the cultural narrative of freedom is actually true but largely false and the question does does the relationship with Jesus Christ impede your freedom and the answer again is true but ultimately false let me explain let me read you a short passage again as I usually do at night from John chapter 8 I'm going to read verses just a31 I think 31 - 31 I will only be referring to it not unpacking it but it's about freedom let me read it to you and and talk about three points that I think we can learn from the passage to the Jews who had believed to him jesus said if you hold the my teaching you are really my disciples then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free they tant they answered him we are Abraham's descendants and we have never been slaves of anyone how can you say that we shall be set free jesus replied very truly I tell you every one who sins is a slave to sin now a slave has no permanent place in the family but a son belongs to it forever so if the son sets you free you will be free indeed I know that you are Abraham's descendants yet you're looking for a way to kill me because you have no room from word now here's three things I just like to try out on you the complexity of freedom the anatomy of unfreedom or slavery and how the Jesus can set you free did I hit all three don't remember the complexity of freedom the anatomy of unfreedom or slavery and how Jesus can set you free number one the complexity of freedom when when Jesus interrogators say we are Abraham's descendants and we have never been slaves of anyone a lot of people wonder what in the world are talking about surely they knew they'd been slaves in Egypt that that the Hebrews had been slaves in Babylon essentially the fact in some ways they were slaves now they they certainly weren't politically free because they were under the boot of Rome but on the other hand they had asserted themselves they had never lost their cultural identity there's a sense in which that even in those situations they had asserted themselves and in that sense as far back in history as these folks are that is very much what I think the baseline cultural narrative of our culture is - and that is freedom is the absence of all constraint freedom is the absence of all restraint so here's a here's a helium balloon and it comes up to here but it's it it would go up if I could get rid of the barrier so I remove the barrier and it goes as far as it can and our modern understanding of freedom is freedom is self assertion freedom is having no restraints so I do what I can do and I do what I want to do and there's no limits on it that's freedom I'm here to start by saying right away that that is workable definition because freedom is actually not like that at all it's an impossibility it is something that is extraordinarily it's the slogan I mean you see I've got to test the limits and break through got to see what I can do no right no wrong no rules for me I'm free at Tolga Wanda who's I've quoted him before he's an Indian American doctor who's written a book recently called being mortal and he says there are different concepts of autonomy one is autonomy as free action living completely independently free of coercion and limitation this kind of freedom is a common battle cry in our culture but that is a fantasy our lives are inherently dependent on others and subject to forces and circumstances beyond our control justice safety is an empty and even self-defeating goal to have or live for so ultimately is autonomy now why why would I say that the basic idea that freedom means my will be done freedom means I am not constrained I can choose what I want to do and I want to live in the way I want to live I create my own moral universe what's wrong with that I say it's unworkable in fact that's not how freedom works at all a quick example right away here's a here's a man in his 60s let's say and he likes to eat what he wants to eat and it's not a it's not a to say he likes to eat what he wants to eat it's not a superficial desire eating with friends eating certain kinds of food very satisfying a very important part of his daily joy and delight but a doctor comes along and says unless you severely restrict what you're going to eat from now on you are going to have heart trouble you're gonna have a heart attack you're going to end up in bed or you're going to end up having a rather shorter life and now immediately we see the question is what is the free what is freedom for that man in that context you say freedom is being free to do what you want well here's the problem he wants to live he wants to be in good health and he wants to eat these foods which means desires contradict one of the main problems with defining freedom is doing what you want to do doing what you can do no limitations is your desires contradict and deep desires contradict and strong desires contradict and almost immediately you begin to see this you have to choose between desires another way to put it is which of the desires you have are the liberating desires and which ones are the enslaving desires which ones are the desires where maybe superficially and and initially seem to bring you joy but will end up putting you in bed do you want the freedom of health see there's freedoms it's not just freedom there's the freedom of Health there's the freedom of actually I might say you know the pleasure of eating food and what you're going to have to decide I think you should of course is real freedom comes from a strategic loss of some freedoms in order to strategically gain other freedoms that's how freedom really works how are you going to look at look at yourselves how are you gonna get the freedom of a great job or professional knowledge of a field every day at a place like Oxford you were saying no to all sorts of other kinds of desires you can't you're not running your own life anymore you're under constraint you and your choosing those constraints why because the reality is you'll never get to musical the freedom of musical skill the freedom of professional skill you'll never get to the freedom of health unless you say no it's all sorts of things and so actually freedom is not the absence of constraints it's finding the liberating constraints it's not the freedom it's not being able to do what you want it's it's basically sifting through your desires and saying which of these desires are the liberating desires and freedom isn't a thing there's lots of freedoms and you have to decide which of the strategic ones because you only gain strategic freedoms by strategically losing other ones that's just the way it works now you might say no no no I hear what you're saying but nevertheless these are restraints that I have chose and therefore I am really free no you haven't chosen them you come up against reality physical reality is that if you live any way you want you're going to die quickly if you look way if you live any way you want there's a physical reality and you actually have to conform to that reality and if you don't conform to your physical design you will lose freedom you won't be gaining freedom I mean initially you might be gaining freedom but it would be very very short-lived and so once we understand that and you begin to see freedom isn't an absolute it's not it's finding the liberating desires it's finding the right constraints that constraints the fit in with reality you say well of course that's true of physical reality okay no not only that it's also true of metaphysical reality what do I mean however you define freedom and I don't think it's I think it's way too simplistic and reductionistic to just define it as self assertion my will be done the absence of restraints get rid of the limits no right and wrong no rules for me I'm free the problem with that among other things is a person who actually enters into that definition and really embraces that will never know the freedom of being in a loving relationship here's what you've however you define freedom there's nothing like being in a love relationship a very source not just romantic love but in a strong love relationship there's nothing more freeing there's nothing more liberating there's nothing that makes you feel more like whatever we mean by the word freedom but the minute you get into a love relationship and the deeper you get into it the more intimate it gets the more wonderful it gets the more you have to give up your independence you didn't notice that let's just say you started into a relationship you know it's a kind of a relationship you already you can't just decide when to leave town for the weekend you have to check you've already lost your independence and if you don't check you know you could say I'm leaving town next weekend and the person you're into the relationship said well that wouldn't be very convenient for me I need it well sorry I I gotta be free no right no wrong no rules for me I got a breakthrough you know look hey I want to have a relationship but I want to be able to leave town I want to leave town and the other person saying I think we're breaking up because basically when you to get to know the freedom of love not one person see if one person that says this and not both people you'll never know the freedom of love but if both people say to each other this I will adjust for you I will change for you I will give up my freedom for you I will serve you even if it means a sacrifice for me if one person says that in a relationship so one person is doing all the sacrificing the other person is doing all the receiving and the ordering around then you have an exploitative and it's a of exploitation but on the other hand if both people are saying I will change for you I will adjust for you I will give up my freedom for you I will sacrifice for you if both people are doing that and you're losing freedom as it were in fact you're losing an enormous amount of freedom not just can't go to town that's how you find love one of the most striking things about the inability of the modern cultural narrative the idea of absolute freedom you create your own moral universe the limitations of it came through in a very old now many years old interview that I read some years ago it was actually translated for me because my French is non-existent but in Lamone magazine it was an interview with francois saigon who was a as you know a novelist and at one point the interviewer was asking her a question and said then you have had the freedom you wanted in life have you had the freedom you wanted in life and Segen says yes now I was obviously less free when I was in love with someone but fortunately one's not in love all the time apart from that I'm free and what she was saying was if you would have freedom from self-denial if you want to have freedom from self donation if you if you do not give up your independence and you can have an affair and which is wonderful you know it's a have an affair but you don't lose your independence and that's why she says even when she was having an affair even it was temporary she said you know I wasn't free of course so you have to dip into love every so often to kind of recharge your batteries but don't give up your freedom but wait a minute where is the environment in which you feel the most free isn't it in a love relationship where two people have not they're not exploiting each other but they're giving themselves away to each other instead of self-assertion no self giving and so you see the limitations it's a it is a it's a remarkable limitation and that's the reason why I now we're right now we're up to the doorstep of my second point and here's why and the second point is not going to easy one for modern people to hear I just showed you the complexity of freedom I just showed you I hope that if you have you heard these slogans that to be free means you decide what is right on for you you live as you want to live no one can tell you what is right or wrong for you you create your own moral universe if you believe that it's unworkable it doesn't work even on a daily basis it's not it's not the way your life is working it's a it's a completely overblown and absolute eyes understanding of freedom political freedom the freedom of people for self-government and self-rule all sorts of ways freedom is great but when you turn it into an absolute the only moral imperative it just doesn't work and if you see that and also if you see that essentially freedom doesn't absolute freedom doesn't work inside love relationships now you're actually on the verge on the doorstep of understanding what Jesus says what you're going to roll your eyes at and that is this the deepest sense slavery is being a slave to sin remember what he said they said we're Abraham's descendants we've never been slaves in England how can you say that we shall be need to be freed and Jesus says I'm not talking about political freedom I'm not talking about freedom up there you can be politically free in every way and still be a slave to sin which is the ultimate slavery now modern people roll their eyes but I think you're on the verge of understanding what he's saying let me show you what Jesus Christ means when he says that the ultimate slavery is sin what's that mean well for a moment think about this if there's a God if there's a God then there's a metaphysical reality a lot like your physical reality you can't just live any other way you can't just eat anything you can't just live any way if you want to have health you have to honor your physical design you have to honor your physical their nests that your physical Givens and I've shown you that even in love which is not physical it's a metaphysical it's a relational even there the modern understanding of freedom doesn't work let's push it a little bit what if there is a God so God has moral directives let me give you one example of this first of all an illustration here's a car beautiful car nothing wrong with a car but it's moving down the road and you look inside and you see there's a five-year-old driving it what will happen it won't be good disintegration of some sort the car is going to run into somebody kill somebody run into a tree destroy a fence something bad will happen why because though it's a good car it's not designed to be driven by five-year-old not at all the Bible essentially says when God says here's the commandments here's the moral directives don't lie don't be selfish don't bear false witness or I'll give you one just to show you basically God's moral directors come from your designer and if God's moral directives come from your designer then to break them is not those things aren't busywork to break them is to is to actually violate your own nature and to lose freedom just like a person who's eating the wrong foods and who ends up in a hospital so for example the Bible says don't don't bear a grudge you're made in the image of God who is a forgiver therefore you must forgive it's a directive you must forgive and if you don't forgive what's going to happen if you if you don't forgive I'll tell you what's gonna happen like somebody if you refuse to to forgive in the in the short run it's going to feel pretty good it feels good to hate somebody who's wronged you it feels very very good to even pay back the person who's wrong to you but in the long run what's going to happen disintegration it can hurt your body to be angry it can certainly hurt your all your relationships if you stay angry at an individual other people like that individual you won't trust it'll start to distort your relationships it certainly will destroy a relationship with a person it will destroy your relationships other people like that person it will actually in many ways make it harder for you to trust people if you stay angry it'll destroy your commitment apparatus it'll distort your whole life it could hurt your body why because when you are disobeying a moral directive from God you're actually going against the grain of your own your own nature going against the grain of the universe you're like a five-year-old trying to drive a car and it will not work and so when Jesus actually talks about you're a slave this and that's one of the things it means that when you actually say I'm no right no wrong no rules for me if there's a god if there are if there is some moral directives and you break those moral directives and what you're doing is you're you're enslaved the enslavement of someone who's eating the wrong things the enslavement of someone who's not forgiving all the sort of things all the breakdowns all the disintegration that's one aspect of what it means to say sin is slavery but here's the other one here's the one that will probably it will probably be a little more poignant for most of you Jesus actually says something pretty interesting here he says now a slave has no permanent place in the family but a son belongs to it forever so if the son sets you free you'll be free indeed fascinating image you know Downton Abbey right sure you know Downton Abbey everybody lives in hell in the home the inside the home under the the leadership of the head of the estate there all sorts of people their sons and daughters there's family and there's all these servants they all live downstairs they all live there and even if you have if you're a servant though that's what he's saying if your servant in that household you might have a great relationship with the head of the estate but yours he's still your boss he's not your father and that means you might be very familiar they may even talk about we're just a bit we're just a family here but you're only on good you're only on good terms with the boss as long as you're doing your duty and if you're not doing your duty you're out of there that's why he says you know the son has a slave as no permanent place in the family however a son does and here's what I can just tell you as a parent and I think a lot of you can Intuit this whether your parents or not if I'm a boss as nice as I be with my employees if they don't do their job they're going to have to leave somehow if they don't do their job they're going to have to leave somehow but what happens if you have children and some of them are not doing their jobs what's we're really weird about a parent's heart is sometimes if you have if you have five children one of them is starting to act up in very bad ways if anything your heart is more engaged to the one that's messing up and Jesus says you are a slave as long as God is a boss to you I can make God into a father now why would he say anyone who thinks of God as a boss is a slave here's the reason why two reasons number one let's just say you're a religious person and you say well I'm going to do do good I'm going to obey the Ten Commandments I'm going to read the Bible and I'm going to try to live like Jesus I'm going to do all these things then God has to answer my prayers then God has to give me a better life because I'm doing all these things you're like a servant you might be very religious but gods like a boss why are you doing these things to get into heaven or to to get him to answer your prayers or to feel like a righteous person and let me tell you you are a slave that's slavish you're not you're not obeying all the rules out of you're obeying all the rules to get something they'll be crushing you'll be stifling yourself all the time things that you'd really like to have and then feeling like well good you know I'm doing all these things why isn't God blessing me in more ways you'll be self-righteous you'll look down at people who don't aren't living the right way and you'll look down on them to it to bolster your sense of self-righteousness which as always it's never what it should be because you're never sure you're living a good enough life never living a good enough like you're a slave even though you're religious even though you might believe everything in the Bible you're a slave because God's a boss not a father however let's just say you are like Rob Reiner or like Elsa or whatever and you said I'm not religious at all not in the slightest and I'm not going to have I'm not going to it makes me my skin crawl to even here you're talking about moral directives and things like that and I believe I have to decide what is a right right Iran for me I choose what I'm going to live for fine you're actually assuming that God is a boss if he exists and therefore you're actually a slave to how so you got to live for something do you not you have to live for something here's what David Foster Wallace you know the great postmodern the late great postmodern novelist said in one of his uh a very famous college commencement speech he gave near the end of his life he says there is no such thing as not worshipping the only choice we get is what to worship and pretty much anything you worship will eat you alive if you worship money and things if they are where you tap real meaning in life then you will never have enough you'll never feel you have enough worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly and when time and age start showing you will die a million deaths before they finally take you away worship power and you will end up feeling weak and afraid and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear worship your intellect being seen as smart and you will end up feeling stupid a fraud always on the verge of being found out but the insidious things about these forms of worship is there unconscious there default settings I hope you heard that by the way he's not writing as a Christian at all here's what he's saying you got to live for something right you have to whatever that is is your master you wouldn't call it worship but if it's the main thing that gives you significance if it's the main thing that gives you security the main things it gives you hope then if anything goes wrong with it you're going to meltdown if anything gets in the way of it you're going to be furious if you fail in some way you're going to beat yourself up see he says if you're living for money and things if that's where you get meaning in life you'll never have enough body and beauty you'll never be you'll always feel ugly scholarship you always feel stupid like a fraud and imposter but here's the problem if you don't live for God then you're going to live for something else as a God and whatever that God is will be your master you don't belong to yourself and now we're at the very verge of what Jesus says and what he can do here's what Jesus Christ X essentially says I'm the only Lord and Master that if you get me will satisfy you and if you fail me I'll forgive you your career can't die for your sins see if you're living for your career and you fail it in some way it will destroy you forever it's it's a thing it's not a person your career can't forgive you if you're living for whatever you're living for David Foster Wallace is right if you don't believe in God you're going to make something else into a god and whatever that is you'll be a slave to it you do not belong to yourself you belong to that and Jesus says I'm the only Lord and then the only master who if you get me I'll satisfy you but if you don't know that's last night's talk but he also says but if you fail me I can forgive you and say at the very very end he says I know that you're Abraham's descendants yet you're looking for a way to kill me the cross is never far from Jesus mind because this is the way he liberate sus how so you remember what I said in the beginning that there is nothing greater than a love relationship and clearly in some ways if you were here last night you see the links to last night what we're being told here at San Agustin I'll just use this illustration in book chapter 2 of Santa gustin's confessions he remembers a time when he was sixteen years old were a group of his friends and he broke into a pear orchard and stole some pears and afterwards many years later he reflected and he said why did I steal the pears especially considering two things one is I didn't like pears and two is I wasn't hungry and he says I know why I stole the pears because I was told I mustn't go in there and as soon as it was forbidden I wanted it and here's what he says he says deep inside me and deep inside all of our hearts there is something that says no one tells me what to do and that what Martin Luther calls in curva to say that we're curved in on ourselves we don't want anyone to tell us what to do we want to assert our wills we want to say my will be done no one else's will be done that is one of the main reasons why there's misery in the world today and our baseline cultural narrative does not do anything except accentuate that and Agustin says what I needed was to have my heart captured by something else I realized that I because I was living for myself I had to say well I live for learning I'll live for rhetoric is what he was by the way highly-paid a professor of rhetoric I'll do this I'll do that and didn't didn't satisfy of course and he always was not liberated he was mastered by these things what would free him finally to love a God who more than anything else again there's the links to last night but here's how it happens remember I said that a love relationship has to be two ways if you go into it and you say I will adjust for you I will give up my freedom for you I will change for you I will sacrifice for you if one person does it the other does not that's exploitation how would you get into a love relationship with God wouldn't you say well that would have to be exploitation because God has got all the power God wouldn't change I have to do all the submitting I have to do all the repenting I have to do all the change that sounds like exploitation well another religions maybe but not in Christianity because you know when Jesus Christ says here I'll set you free because I'm going to die Jesus Christ is the son of God and by coming to Earth in the Incarnation being born as a human being and by going to the cross and dying for our sins which we talked about before and and now if we really belong to God and we are exerting our own will then there's a debt that we owe to him God comes and pays a debt Jesus Christ goes to the cross that objectively breaks down the barrier between me and God but subjectively to the cross reminds me of something that on the cross god is actually saying any this is the only God of any religion that says this I will adjust to you I will change for you incarnation atonement I will give up my freedom he's been nailed to the cross that's giving up your freedom how's that for giving up your freedom see he's the only God that says I will give up my freedom for you I will sacrifice for you and when you sacrifice for him you're entering into that love relationship which will finally finally free you the only way to be liberated is do strategic freedom transfer you give up some freedoms to get the more liberating freedom you have to recognize reality and you have to make sure that you restrain yourself along the lines of the grain of the universe but don't you see at least I mean a lot of a lot of this abstract but don't you see unless you actually are serving you are serving something what could be better than this one what could be better than this this is the liberation that you really need I got one more thought that I'm going to wait till afterwards to talk to you about what we're going to do right now is we're going to hear from an Oxford student who's going to tell you something about his spiritual journey when that is over we will come back up here and Josh and I will take questions that you're texting in I hope right now and after that we'll close up throughout my life I've had times when I've experienced something an emotion and which I always found surprisingly moving this was usually through music but the emotion passed and it was usually quite easy to ignore but when I came up to Oxford on a choral scholarship I was singing in Chapel and I experienced it again I was suddenly crying and I had no idea why at the start of my second year I started talking to a friend of a friend about his Christian faith and I realized that although I didn't believe in God I couldn't explain why I'd never taken the time to think about what I believed about the world and I decided to try and find some answers to the big questions I also thought the faith he was talking about could help make sense of my experiences of the world and my emotions over the term I began to accept Christianity on an intellectual level although I didn't believe it yet I couldn't immediately reject it either I went to a Christian Union event where the speaker told us to look at Christianity from the inside to explore it properly this was a turning point for me as it was when I first genuinely let myself think that Christianity to be true on a personal level there comes a point where you have to stop looking at it on a merely intellectual level and engage with your emotions and will as well it took me a long time to admit that I'd gradually become a Christian and to realize that I couldn't ignore that it was true becoming a Christian hasn't been an easy thing my family aren't religious and I think it times it's hard for them to understand though they have been really supportive it's also made some things harder every decision I now make has this new perspective and I've had to rethink a lot of the decisions I'd already made about my life but compared to the joy it's given me these things start to seem insignificant joy is something I realized that I'd never experienced before it's more than happiness it's incredible but also terrifying as well I wasn't unhappy before but my life is just so much fuller and more meaningful now knowing that God loves me for who I am has been amazingly liberating and I've learned to accept myself more I've also been able to let go of a lot of the worries I had about pleasing other people and trying be someone I'm not the Christian faith has explained a lot about my life about me as a person as well as my thoughts and emotions great well we've now got a few minutes for some Q&A before Tim rounds off the evening with some thoughts as he mentioned so let's have our first question up please can you expand on how accepting Jesus love sets us free the love of an incorporeal God seems like an abstraction when other loves or sins seem more tangible and satisfying how do you make an abstraction concrete that's a great question but I was trying to do that tonight so I night so thank you for the opportunity to say it directly tonight to simply talk about the love of God as an abstraction it will never really work over against the as you said the the other loves our sins are much more tangible if you ever tried to listen to something only on audio while at the same time watching something on audio and video so here's something on a screen audio and video and yet you're also as an audio if you try to actually listen to both the video will win because it's multi-sensory you can see it as well as hear it I would say until the reality of what Jesus Christ did on the cross for me as offensive as that is in many ways to modern sensibilities the very idea that I'm so bad that that nothing less than the death of the Son of God could save me incredibly insulting to modern sensibilities and yet it wasn't until I believed that that I began to I was able to be moved by what God had done in Jesus Christ and see that put before the idea of a loving God is your right God is love is on audio-only and all these other more tangible and satisfying things like success and sex and romance and and acclaim all these other things are there on there on video the death of Jesus Christ the reality of his doning were for me put God's love on video and finally I was able to say if I serve this more than I serve these other things don't get me wrong there's no reason why you can't really want to do well in the career if Jesus is more important to your identity that's tomorrow night and if Jesus is more important to me then my career the career becomes something that I can just enjoy it's not my it's not like life or death to me whether my career goes well or not it enables me just to enjoy it doesn't enslave me anymore I can enjoy it and if Jesus really would be the supreme love of my heart I wouldn't be enslaved by anything to be nothing that I'd have to have everything I'd be able to walk away from in a pinch even if I loved it quite a lot so it was it's I would say Jesus love if you understand actually the cross it's not an abstraction it's actually on video not just on audio if I'm free to choose Jesus then why does it matter if I go to church surely I can continue to choose Jesus yet all the same remain free from an institutional religion yeah that's that's what you're doing is I want to embrace Jesus but I actually don't want to let go of the baseline cultural narrative that says I shouldn't really be beholden to other people I need to be free it's it's good for you to be in love with somebody and not to be able to go out of town any old time to actually have to just simply not live a selfish a life frankly if you're part of a I have to say the word institutional religion that's a rather pejorative way to put it why don't you think about this Christianity is a communal religion because by being in a community you actually learn the the nuances of the complex freedom that is to say learning how to give to other people learning how to give up for other people learning how to serve people when you're in it just a plain friendship you know you really can't live your life any way your friend has a need you got to do something about it it's inconvenient but you do it that's and you know in the end boy that makes you really a much freer person in the long run because you have those connections I would say institutional religion it sounds like you're saying tradition the important thing is you do want to be part of a communal religion because it's part of what I've been talking about tonight that your freedom is actually going to strangle you if you're not willing to give it up in loving relationships and even though I used romantic relationships as the most and marriage and things like that as a the most poignant examples any kind of love relationship friendships are just as important to learn the habits of how to use your freedom in a way that actually doesn't undermine community doesn't undermine your relationships and doesn't undermine you in the long run and so it's a great way of learning not to be too self assertive and to be more self giving so I certainly by the way I'm a Protestant which means I do believe you can have a saving relationship with God through Jesus Christ without belonging to a church but I actually think that that's what Jesus actually says if you that's not me I don't think but anyway however if it is me I'm forgiven I don't think I'm doing it but anyway and I don't care what you think you know I'm Jesus I'm into Jesus was that funny so I I would I would say that being part of a community is a command Jesus actually talks about that that you're supposed to be part of a community it's how you actually learn to love him better and actually I have not been able to love Jesus Christ very well all by myself and if you're not part of the community you won't learn how to do that let's go to something else before I make another noise what if I'm content to be consumed by what I live for now this was the hardest question for me to answer last night you may not have been here last night whoever asked that question last night I tried to make the case that in the long run you won't be content with what you're consumed with right now that ultimately you'll find that it doesn't deliver what you think and the problem is even I live in Manhattan it's actually a very young place the average group of people that I speak to there would be in their you know 25 to 40 age group a lot of young professionals a lot of people from places like Oxford and that sort of thing so this isn't an alien milieu for me and yet you're a younger crowd that I ordinarily talked to and a lot of people came up and said I don't think I'm discontent I feel like you know you're acting as if I've got these deep needs and I actually don't feel that and I just all I can what can I do I can look at you and say time will tell I think I'm right in fact I think most people who are in your you know a few years older will say that you will not remain content to be consumed by what you live now for now in fact I you probably didn't mean to do this but the word consumed is a pretty negative word will you be burnt out by anything that you live for other than Jesus I think so in the end every master is a taskmaster except Jesus that's my thesis tonight time for another would you say life as a Christian is a state of freedom the journey of becoming free or both both I love this one yeah because the simple fact is the simple fact is that I'm becoming more free from the things that enslave me and I've been at Christianity now for quite a number of decades and I still see that things that I thought I was over things bother me too much your reputation can bother you too much your ministry you're in my case a career success can bother me too much but the important thing to see is that you're becoming more liberated so three years if you're Christian and you're growing journey three years ago you could look back and say these are things that bothered me things that just really hurt me things that depressed me things that angered me things that frightened me that still bother me but nothing like they used to because more and more I'm finding I'm my real master is Jesus and not these other things so it's clearly both though I do think you cross a line and there is a spot you know Charles Wesley great him my chains fell off my heart was free I rose went forth and followed thee there's an initial freedom as you begin your Christian journey which is really pretty intoxicating till you realize it wasn't as complete as you thought and then the journey begins great time for another question compared to the massive glorious universe I'm a small insignificant person why on earth would God care about individual persons like me when I know I'm insignificant it seems weird that God would love me I love this question I don't know what I don't I don't want to I actually don't want to do much to change your mind except to say the wonder you are on the verge of getting it if you if you say God loves me and it doesn't change your life then you probably need to think more I gave you one example that is if you believe in the if you believe the Christian teaching about what Jesus Christ did on the cross that's one way for the wonder of God's love to start to actually affect you here's another way to do it some years ago I went to I went to a conference where the teacher looked at me like this she said she said if the if the 93 million miles between Earth and and the Sun were reduced to a the thickness of a piece of paper so that's 93 million miles just the thickness of piece of paper she says the distance to the nearest star would be a stack of paper 70 feet high which is the the diameter of the galaxy just our little galaxy it would be a stack of paper 360 miles high and the galaxy is essentially a like a speck of dust compared to all the other galaxies that are out there and that's how I've acid is if there is a God and he holds all that together with a word of his power it says in Hebrews chapter 1 he holds it together with a word of his power he's like his pinky he says then she this is the way she put it she says you don't ask a person like that into your life to be your assistant if if a person like that comes into your life and you believe the Bible when it says I love you and you look to the cross as proof of that and the resurrection of proof that there was a cross if you talk about later then then that question can just stagger you and if you were here the first night I said a Christian if you're ever ever in a bad mood or you're having a bad day or even having a bad week or even having a bad year just think just think until the glory of what you believe about the universe ours to break in on you and you're very close to that so I don't want to I don't want to your wonder but just don't let the incredulity keep you from the reality because if the incredulity goes together with a conviction of the reality my goodness what what you're going to experience and what you're going to know great I think we'll we'll leave it there for questions this evening thank you very much for those questions just say if you do have further questions Tim will be around at the front for a little while after the end of this evening so do go and grab him there's also a book stall again and on your on your way out and with titles relating to some of the things that Tim's been talking about so do check that out that might be useful to you and there's also a gospel or was a gospel on your seat when you arrived that's a copy of John's account of the life of Jesus that'll be the most useful resource for you in thinking through and some of the things that Tim's raised and exploring your questions well Tim over to you too just just a brief wrap-up and then Josh will come up to really close I know this I know this this is a little bit like the end of a Peter Jackson movie every time you think it's over then there's another ending another in it so but this is the third from the last ending okay if I have been pushing the analogy of relationship with God being a lot like a love relationship that we have between human beings where two individuals say to each other I will adjust for you I will sacrifice for you yes of course to enter into a relationship with with with Jesus Christ does this is going back to the brendan gleeson illustration it does mean the curtailment of freedom of course it does Jesus says if you want to follow me you have to take up your clock your cross scuse me you have then you have to deny yourself in that sense of course you give up your freedom that means you give up the right to self-determination you give up your right to call the shots in your life you assume your God and I'm not you knows things that I don't know yes of course it's giving up your freedom but not ultimately not ultimately it's very much like the freedom you give up in order to get into a love relationship which is the which is the richness of your life and one of the ways to understand a love relationship goes like this if you if if if you're loved but not known however as the person loves you but they don't really know who you are that's superficial if you're known but not loved if somebody sees you who you are and then rejects you that's that's our greatest nightmare but to be known to the bottom and yet loved the sky that's life itself and you know when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane the people he was dying for were represented by his wonderful disciples who kept falling asleep on him and he kept saying won't you won't you keep awake this is that this is the hour of my greatest need I'm about to die I'm in the garden to get cemani would you please stay awake with me and every time they kept falling asleep you know at one point he says the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak how tender you might say the human race is leave letting him down at the moment of his greatest need and you know what he says to us I know you meant well the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak so tender and then he goes to the cross and he looks down at people denying him betraying him abandoning him mocking him and in the greatest act of love in the history of the world he stayed he looked all the way into the bottom of our hearts he knew exactly what we were capable of he saw the weakness he looked he looked he saw us at the bottom but he loved us to the skies and the knowledge of that can liberate you from the things that enslave you and I hope you see that something is something's enslaving you you do not belong to yourself Jesus Christ is on the only master that will not that I will not disappoint you if you get me and I will forgive you when you fail me and you will fail me I certainly hope that you can keep coming to the evening messages I hope you can come here to the various place and heroes guinnesses lunchtime messages the more you do it the more you hear some overlap every day some things that you'll be hearing more than once and with different perspective different things it begins to the penny begins to drop more and if you if you care to understand Christianity and I hope that there's been some reason for you to say maybe I should be exploring it please keep coming because this in a sense is a one-week temporary learning community of people at all stayed is in spiritual journeys and I hope you stay with this lending community to the very end now josh is going to come up and this is the second last ending

Channel: OICCU

Views: 97,007

Rating: 4.745223 out of 5

Keywords: OICCU, UNCOVER, Oxford, Tim Keller

Id: yusWbIc8DhY

Length: 60min 25sec (3625 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 23 2015