How do we reach people for Christ in an increasingly secular age? That is the question Tim Keller considers in his short eBook, How to Reach the West Again. He stops by to chat about what we can learn from the early Church, how Christian writers and institutions can address our current cultural moment, and why we have ultimate hope in an unchanging God when society is constantly changing. He also gives his thoughts on the recent high-profile failures of evangelical leaders and how the Church should respond to them. Also in this episode: We finally determine what is up with Tom Bombadil.
Links for this episode:
Free eBook and Podcast
Author Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
Redeemer City to City
Dominion by Tom Holland
Atheist Overreach by Christian Smith
How do we reach people for Christ in an increasingly secular age? That is the question Tim Keller considers in his short eBook, How to Reach the West Again. He stops by to chat about what we can learn from the early Church, how Christian writers and institutions can address our current cultural moment, and why we have ultimate hope in an unchanging God when society is constantly changing. He also gives his thoughts on the recent high-profile failures of evangelical leaders and how the Church should respond to them. Also in this episode: We finally determine what is up with Tom Bombadil.
Links for this episode:
Free eBook and Podcast
Author Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
Redeemer City to City
Dominion by Tom Holland
Atheist Overreach by Christian Smith
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Amy Mantravadi:Hello and welcome to another episode of the(A)Millennial podcast. My name is Amy Mantravadi and I'll be your host until such time as somebody else volunteers. Today, I'm going to be speaking with Tim Keller about his short work, How to Reach the West Again. When I decided to start this podcast, one of my chief concerns was how the church in North America should respond to the increasing secularization of our culture, which has resulted in a large drop in church attendance, particularly among my own Millennial generation. Many people share my concern, and a host of possible responses have been suggested. Some believe we should do little or nothing, while others want us to seek political dominance or give up and head for the hills. I think it's safe to say that some of these responses are motivated as much by fear as hope. We can fall into the trap of viewing those who reject Christianity as mere enemies or persecutors rather than precious human beings who need to hear the gospel. Even so, I too have felt the frustration of living in an age where my beliefs are increasingly ridiculed. I have concerns about what will happen just like the next person. While I have great faith in the ultimate triumph of Christ and his Church, I do wonder how hard things may get before that occurs. Our brothers and sisters in the Middle East can testify to what happens when a civilization that once embraced Christianity comes to reject it, leaving only a small remnant of faithful believers, or think of the case of Christians in Japan, who after being initially converted through the ministry of Jesuit missionaries were subjected to hundreds of years of severe persecution, commanded to reject Christ publicly by stomping on his image or face torture and even death. The Church there was driven underground, and Christians still make up a tiny minority in Japan. As I consider these things, I've recently been drawn to an episode in the life of the prophet Elijah. Many of us will remember how he publicly challenged the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and the Lord sent down fire as a demonstration that he alone was the true God. Immediately after that literal mountain top experience, Elijah was forced to flee into the wilderness to escape the wrath of Queen Jezebel. 1 Kings 19 tells us how Elijah ended up under a juniper tree, utterly exhausted and in despair. He prayed,"Oh God, take my life, for I am not better than my fathers." The Lord ministered to him there and provided for his physical needs. This gave Elijah enough strength to make the journey to Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai. Why did Elijah go to Horeb? Because that is where God appeared to Moses and gave him the words of the Law. That was where the people of Israel witnessed the Lord descending on the mountain with smoke and fire, thunder and lightning. Elijah was going back to the place where God's presence had been felt before- to the place they had seen God work. He lived in an era where God seemed almost absent, and I suspect he longed for that sense of God's immediacy and the victories that Israel knew back at a time when they were more faithful to God's covenant. I'll pick up reading with verse nine."Then he came there to a cave and lodged there, and behold the Word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him,'What are you doing here, Elijah?' He said,'I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the sons of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your profits with the sword, and I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it away.' So he said,'Go forth and stand on the mountain before the Lord,' and behold, the Lord was passing by. And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, a sound of a gentle blowing. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold, a voice came to him and said,'What are you doing here, Elijah?' Then he said,'I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the sons of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it away.' The Lord said to him,'Go return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, and when you have arrived, you shall anoint Hazael king over Aram, and Jehu who the son of Nimshi you shall anoint king over Israel, and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-mehola you shall anoint as prophet in your place. It shall come about the one who escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall put to death. And the one who escapes the sort of Jehu, Elijah shall put to death. Yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel: all the knees that have not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him.'" And that was 1 Kings 19:9-18. Thank you for your patience as I read that long passage. Here's what I think is the application for us today. Like Elijah, many of us are laboring under the impression that God is relatively absent. We too see people falling away to our right and left and feel like,"I alone am left." Perhaps we are looking for God to repeat the things he has done before: to move heaven and earth in great supernatural acts. But if we were patient for a moment and sat in stillness, we might just hear the whisper of the wind and know the presence of God that is always there in his Word and in the testimony of the Spirit. Notice how God responds to Elijah's lament. First, he commands him to anoint the new kings of Aram and Israel. Aram was a rival kingdom and an enemy of God's people, while the kingdom of Israel was home to Elijah and many others of God's chosen people. By declaring his right to appoint the kings of these Gentile and Jewish nations, God demonstrates his sovereignty over all creation and ultimate power over events. As the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 13:1,"There is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God." They are in power now, until that day when all power and authority is turned over to Jesus Christ and the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. Second, God commands Elijah to anoint Elisha as prophet in his place. This is a clear signal to Elijah that the prophetic office will continue. He is not alone, nor is he the last of his kind. God will always have someone to proclaim his Word. It is also important for a Elijah on a personal note, as Elisha will be a comfort to him in his old age."Train this man to continue your work," the Lord seems to say. Finally, the Lord assures Elijah that while the coming years will be a time of tumult and judgment, he will reserve for himself 7,000 people in Israel who refuse to bend the knee to Baal and continue to serve the true God. This is a theme throughout the prophetic books of the Old Testament: that though the majority of the nation of Israel may turn away from God, there will be a remnant that will be saved. How do we apply these things to our own situation? First, we ought not fear the machinations of political powers, because corrupt as they may be, they are ultimately appointed by God and subject to his judgment. The Lord is sovereign over all. Second, we need not fear that the Church will not have leaders in the future or that the Holy Spirit will stop working. While the gospel may be forgotten in one area, it will be proclaimed in another, and this gospel will be preached unto the ends of the earth. Lastly, we will never be alone in our adherence to God's commandments. God will always preserve a remnant of faithful souls who refuse to bend the knee to idols. I believe that all these observations are important as we think about how to reach the West again, which is to say how we bring the hope of the gospel to our neighbors. The days may seem to grow dark, but we have the promise of God that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not and will not overcome it. Before ado is furthered any further, let's head to the interview.
Jon Guerra:[MUSIC PLAYS]
Amy Mantravadi:And I am here with Tim Keller, who is the author of How to Reach the West Again. He was educated at Bucknell University for his bachelor's degree, at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary for his Masters of Divinity, and at Westminster Theological Seminary for his Doctorate of Ministry. He is ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America, and with the support of his wife, Kathy, he planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. He's worked on several initiatives with Redeemer, including co-founding Redeemer City to City, which aims to promote gospel movements in cities around the world, primarily through church planting. He's also a co-founder of The Gospel Coalition. He has many theological interests, which include the integration of faith and work, church planting, ministry in urban environments, addressing the philosophical questions raised by our present secular age, the history and means of revival and renewals, and evangelism of all kinds. He has spoken as part of the Talks at Google series and participated in Veritas Forum events, and he's both written and been interviewed for articles in major publications such as The New York Times and The Atlantic. In 2017, he stepped down from his pastoral role at Redeemer to focus on his work as chairman of Redeemer City to City and spend time training and mentoring pastors around the world. And his published works include The Reason for God, The Prodigal God, Counterfeit Gods, Generous Justice, The Meaning of Marriage with his wife Kathy, Center Church, Every Good Endeavor, Making Sense of God, and many others which I will not list so that we'll have some time left for the interview. And you can find him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram@TimKellerNYC. So Tim, thank you so much for joining me today.
Tim Keller:I'm glad to finally see you and talk to you, Amy.
Amy Mantravadi:Yes, as much as we could see each other in this time of COVID and with everything you're dealing with with your health. So I like to start every interview off with a fun question or two to sort of just establish a rapport and lighten the mood. So when I was considering what question I should ask you, I thought back to something you mentioned in one of your emails, and I have the quote here: you said,"I've likely read Lord of the Rings all the way through at least 25-30 times, and I've read The Silmarillion and the other older works through quite often." So in light of that, I thought we could take the opportunity to call upon your extensive knowledge of the Tolkien legendarium and put a couple of ongoing controversies to rest.
Tim Keller:Oh...
Amy Mantravadi:Yes, these are two questions that pop up often in the world of Tolkien fandom, and I think we can safely say whatever answers you give today will be the definitive answers for all time. Okay? The first question I have for you is one I've heard a lot and it's,"Do balrogs have wings?"
Tim Keller:Uh, they have- no, probably not. They actually have- Well, but balrogs can fly. It doesn't necessarily mean they have wings, but they can fly. I mean, you get that in The Silmarillion. Yeah, sure. And so- But on the other hand, it looks like when it's described in The Bridge of Khazad-dum, that it looks like- he's got shadows that look like wings, in other words, shadow comes out. So it's hard to tell. I would say they probably don't, but they can fly. That doesn't necessarily mean they've got wings.
Amy Mantravadi:Ok, well...
Tim Keller:I just- I did not in any way resolve the problem. So give me another one.
Amy Mantravadi:No, because- Yeah, I've heard that if they had wings, they wouldn't keep falling to their death, and I've heard all kinds of theories. But I think that's probably about of good of an answer as we're going to get.
Tim Keller:Yeah, the movie gives them wings, but...
Amy Mantravadi:Yes, all the artwork seems to give them wings.
Tim Keller:There's a lot about balrogs in The Silmarillion. They are- basically, a balrog and a wizard- the wizards are good versions of what the balrogs are. The balrogs and the wizards were second t ier angels. The Valar and Morgoth was sort of top tier angels, and those were sort of second tier angels. So when Gandalf took on the balrog, they were basically equals, and that's why it's such an interesting conflict.
Amy Mantravadi:Right. So the second question I have for you is,"What kind of being is Tom Bombadil and what is his origin?"
Tim Keller:Well, Tolkien was asked about that a number of times. One of the more fun things to do is to read his letters, and his letters are filled with people asking questions about that, and he admits that originally Tom Bombadil was just a poem, and he was a character that he had created all on his own for his children, but then he inserted- Tolkien had a little bit of a mystical approach to writing. He would very often find that as he was writing- He just found Tom Bombadil- who he had in his head, or he had already created Tom Bombadil- showing up in the story. And he just felt like,"Well, I need somebody like Tom Bombadil to save everything at that point," so he just put him in. Then afterwards you try to say,"Well, who the heck is he? Is he an elf? Is he a this? Is he a that?" And actually he doesn't fit. He doesn't fit in the- Because Tolkien back in World War I, when he was just a soldier, probably just out of his teens, he actually wrote the myths that became part of The Silmarillion. So he had sort of created this universe with Valar and Maiar and elves and dwarves and humans and so on, and Tom Bombadil doesn't really fit- actually isn't anything. And so he just decided, and he actually has a line there where he says,"After all, the world is filled with strange creatures that nobody can quite account for." And so he just thought it was just a way of saying,"This is a real world. In a real world, there are some things that just don't seem to fit our categories." He actually says that. And he thought it was just like,"It happened to me. I put him in there. Afterwards, I looked back and said,'Well, maybe this is like in the real world where you've got some things that just don't fit.'" And so he just left it. So he was admitting that it was a kind of on the spur thing that later on, he couldn't reconcile with, like you said, the laws of his legendarium. But on the other hand, he said in some ways that makes it even more realistic, and that was his whole point. His whole point was the idea of secondary belief. That- reason he didn't like Narnia much was he felt like Lewis didn't work hard enough at making this world believable. That's why he went into such detail because he felt like you want to draw the person in so you're saying,"Man, this is so realistic," and then it works on you more, and that's what he wants to do. So Bombadil doesn't fit, and he was created outside of the Lord of the Rings, and then he was left in there as a way of saying,"There are some strange things that we can never account for in life." This is a much- Why don't we just stay on Tolkien? This is so much more interesting than whatever you're going to ask me about my writing. Let's go. Besides, I know you love legends, epics.
Amy Mantravadi:That is true.
Tim Keller:I know you love romance and fantasy and all that. So, you sure you don't want to just...
Amy Mantravadi:It would be very tempting, but I have a feeling there would be no listeners left by the time we were done.
Tim Keller:Well, you know what, Amy, if just you and I are the only two people who listen to your podcast, that's okay, isn't it?As long as it'...
Amy Mantravadi:It is okay. I mean, we're having a nice conversation, but we probably should move on to talk about less important things like the future of Christianity and what's going on in our world and not trying to go on and discuss how Tom Bombadil is the Middle-earth version of Melchizedek and all that different stuff.
Tim Keller:Oh, I've heard that. Yeah.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah. So talking about your short book, How to Reach the West Again, which I think came out last year, right? That you released two years ago. I forget. COVID has made my whole timeline getting messed up.
Tim Keller:I know. It's a free ebook. Unfortunately, it was coming out just as COVID happened. Anything that was happening just as COVID happened has kinda gotten lost in the shuffle. So I'm glad, actually, to talk about it here.
Amy Mantravadi:Well, I had a child just as COVID was happening, so I know what you're saying in that regard. You start this short book by noting that Christian influence is decreasing in the West and we're entering a post-Christian world. And the dominant ideology in much of Europe and North America is secular liberalism, which has been heavily influenced by Christianity but nonetheless stands in opposition to it in some key areas. You note that,"If there is a moral absolute in today's culture, it is that we must not say that there are moral absolutes, let alone a sacred order with which all people must align," and that today's culture believes,"The thing we need salvation from is the idea that we need salvation." However, Western culture is powerfully attracted to the idea of justice and making a better world. How does this differ from the Christian concept of salvation and are there connections between biblical justice and secular justice that may be useful for apologetic purposes?
Tim Keller:Okay, so now that's two different- I mean, two related questions. The first is- You're right. You already sort of semi-answered the question, which I was always like, when you said that- The idea of justice for the poor and the marginalized; that all races, all groups, all classes- they're equal. They're all equally human, and nobody should be oppressed or exploited. That idea did not come from the East. Didn't come from Confucius. Didn't come from Hinduism. Didn't come from Africa. It didn't come from all the other places. It came from medieval Europe. It came from people who believe the Bible. It came from Judaism and Christianity. And Tom Holland's recent book, which I recommend to people- It's a long book. He's not a Christian. He says plenty of things in there that as a orthodox Christian, I wouldn't agree with, but by and large, he makes a slam dunk case that the idea of justice for the poor, the marginalized is a Christian idea, or it's a biblical idea. That it just doesn't come from any other worldview. And so when secular people adopted, they are in a way- you might say, it's a Christian heresy. Secular liberalism is a kind of Christian heresy. It's not a Buddhist heresy or a Confucian heresy or anything else. It's taking certain Christian ideas and trying to cut them off from God and still have them, basically. It's wanting the kingdom of God without actually having a king to tell me how to live. The second question though, is the difference between biblical justice and secular justice. I've been pretty influenced in the last year since COVID reading Bavinck's- I know you had Gray Sutanto on your podcast- Bavinck's little book on worldview, which is so unique comparatively to- you may think you understand the idea, the concept of the Christian worldview until you read that book. Then you say,"Wow," because what he says is that every non-Christian worldview is reductionistic and contradictory. Basically he says every worldview except the Christian worldview has trouble holding ideas together, or it tends to reduce things. So what happens is secular justice will be based on a relativistic view of things, so a secular person will say,"Don't tell me what I can do sexually, because basically all morality is socially constructed. Every culture is different, and basically there are no moral absolutes. There's just- I have to decide what's right or wrong for me," as soon as you're talking about sex. As soon as you start talking about how you use your money and your power- as soon as you start talking about that, then they immediately get moralistic and say,"Well, that's absolutely wrong. Racism is wrong. Exploiting people is wrong. You need to be generous. You need to give up your power and all that." And you say,"Why? Would you please tell me why now?" And so,"Well, because everybody knows..." Well, not everybody knows. Sorry. Half the world, at least, doesn't see it that way. The idea of individual human rights and equality is not something that is common sense. And you can say,"As a Christian, I believe in the absolute values that come from the Bible," but then that means that I can't do anything I want sexually. And this is apologetics, okay? I can say either,"I can do anything I want, as long as I can get away with it, if it makes me happy," or,"There are moral absolutes that I have to follow," but you can't just say in this area of your life,"I can do anything I want in this area of my life. There are no morals. In this area of my life, there are." So I won't go any longer because we have a lot of other good questions, but I'd say the other thing is secular versions of justice, either secular Right or secular Left- Secular right versions of justice are highly individualistic. They're libertarian. They're saying anybody-"It's unjust to diminish my freedom at all, like to tell me, I have to wear a mask." That's the secular Right version of justice. Justice is done as long as everybody's free to live the way they want. The socialistic view of justice is, of course, very, very state controlled economy, and everything is seen as a- Basically put it this way. Secular Right people say,"If you're poor, it's always your fault." Secular Left people say,"If you're poor, it's never your fault. It's just social structure." You read the Book of Proverbs, anywhere in the Bible, you'll see that it's complicated. The reason for for poverty is sin. In other words, you can't blame the state. You can't blame capitalism. It's sin, and it's complicated. And Christians who are looking for justice, who are trying to help the poor and lift them up, realize there is personal irresponsibility, there are social structures that need to be changed. Christians, Bavinck would say, don't reduce everything and they move toward justice. But I would say all secular versions of justice are quite reductionistic and contradictory. So anyway, that's just- there's too much more say on that. We ought to keep moving because otherwise we won't finish.
Amy Mantravadi:Well, undoubtedly, entire books could be written in response to these questions and have been.
Tim Keller:Yeah. Your questions are great, because they would lead to infinitely long answers. So anyway, good. That's my that's my thoughts on that.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah. Well, you know, I look at a lot of the things you tweet and the many ways that people react to them, and you recently tweeted out something that I'm sure was a summary of what you've written in a book or said in a sermon where you're talking about how basically the only way we have morality- it has to be rooted in something. Basically making the point you're making now. And many people, of course, responded saying,"Well, you don't need the Bible to tell you that murder is wrong. It's obviously wrong." Or saying,"There are lots of other ways you can get morality." But the thing I was thinking in response to that was, the problem comes whenever you try to apply that morality universally, because even in Western society, we can say,"Okay, everybody in America agrees that it's wrong to kill someone," but if you look historically at most human societies, they have thought at one point or another it was okay to kill people under certain circumstances.
Tim Keller:That's right. And certain kinds of people. That's right.
Amy Mantravadi:Right. So it's when you're trying to make it- if you're going to apply that standard of justice to anyone else, you have to have something universal, and in order to have something universal, you really need something bigger than just human reasoning to be able to apply it to all humans.
Tim Keller:In fact, since- let me give you a little apologetic tip here. A guy named George Mavrodes who taught for many- a Christian guy taught I think with the University of Michigan. I'm pretty sure. In your kind of Upper Midwest neck of the woods, which I can hear in your accent, by the way, you know?
Amy Mantravadi:Yes, yes. Everyone comments on it.
Tim Keller:Well, no, actually I knew...yeah...But he taught in Michigan, Christian guy, and he wrote an article many, many years ago, which now actually probably you can't use, but the title of it was,"The Queerness of Morality." He wrote it long before the word queer had become something else. But what he actually says is if you don't have- if you don't believe in natural law, in other words, if you don't believe in anything but this universe, this material universe- if you don't believe in God, which is supernatural- or like Aristotle or Plato and people like that, they still believed in a transcendent supernatural. They called it a kind of a cosmic order, and Confucius did too. They believed in heaven. They believed that there was a non-material cosmic order that basically created moral absolutes. A moral absolute has to be something based on something not in this material world. So if you don't believe in any kind of transcendent or supernatural basis for moral absolutes, then you have to say morality is based in culture or my feelings: one or the other. Now what Mavrodes said was that evolution or culture can account for moral convictions, but it cannot account for moral obligation. That was the key word: obligation. In other words, I can say,"Hey, I just know that this is wrong, and yes, my culture tells me that, or my genes tell me that, or my choices tell me that. But see, I just know it." Fine, but then you have to ask and say,"Why should your feelings, your convictions oblige me, because I don't think there's anything wrong with what you're saying. You think doing X is wrong, but I don't think it is wrong. So why should your feelings or your convictions take precedence over mine?" And he says unless you believe in a transcendent moral order of some kind, you can account for moral feelings, you can explain why people have their values, but you can never, ever make a case for moral obligation. And Christian Smith recently wrote a book called Atheist Overreach in which he makes the very same point. He never cites Mavrodes, but he basically says, that's where you are. Whenever people say,"Everybody knows this is wrong," it's never true, and as soon as you meet cultures or other people who don't agree with you, then on what basis can you say,"You know what, even though you think what you're doing is okay, your feeling- your culture tells you it's okay to molest...." I mean, there's, as you know, Middle Eastern cultures-"...it's okay to sexually molest boys, because that's just something you do at a certain point. Your culture says that, but it's wrong. And what I'm telling you has to- you are obliged to stop doing that, even though you don't see anything wrong with it." And Mavrodes said, and Christian Smith says only if you believe in God, or some kind of transcendent natural order- there is no answer for that. I think the Mavrodes article, as good as it is, is a little bit dated, and that's why Christian Smith's book Atheist Overreach is the best place to go for that. Okay. Sorry. I just...
Amy Mantravadi:No, no. It's ok.
Tim Keller:It's important. Very, very important.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah. The decline of Christianity in the West has been lamented for a long time by evangelicals and several different strategies have been suggested in response. You note that some choose to withdraw, others choose to assimilate, and still others attempt to enforce their desires through political domination. You suggest another path which you call a missionary encounter. How does this strategy differ from the others?
Tim Keller:I love your questions because they're leading questions, dear sister, and I like that. That's fine. Because people don't get converted if on the one hand- I'm looking at your question here- if on the one hand, if you're too much like them, if you just assimilate, if you basically blend in, well, then that doesn't convert anybody. Basically, you've gotten converted if you assimilate.
Amy Mantravadi:Yes.
Tim Keller:Okay. So secondly- the second thing is if you withdraw, meaning you get into the little Amish kinds of communities, nobody gets converted, because you're not talking to non-Christians. But number three, if you get into power and just sort of impose your will on people, that doesn't convert people either. It usually alienates, because in some ways you're demanding, you might say, Christian behavior before you're actually getting a Christian convert- Christian heart. Also, one of the problems with politics is it's okay- Look, if you believe in, you say, higher taxes and more government regulation of business, well, there's no way to get that passed without to some degree being pretty critical of business or unregulated business. So you have to be adversarial to some degree in politics. You have to be. It doesn't matter how nice a guy or woman you are. You kind of have to go after your opponents and you have to be pretty critical. So when Christians in the name of Christ, get political and say,"As a Christian, this is the right candidate to vote for," and all that, what you're really doing then is you vilify the other side, which you have to. You're alienating people. You just are alienating people from the gospel. For example, I just remember- believe it or not, I was in Tennessee somewhere where a friend of mine told me that he had been bringing up an African-American, a non-believer, kind of an atheist to a church service and trying to get them- bring the guy to hear a really good preacher. And so he brought his friend and sometime during the time they were there, he went into the men's room to go to the bathroom. And when this African-American was in there, he heard at all kinds of very conservative political people saying awful things about Obama: making very caustic remarks, nasty remarks, that sort of thing. And he was an Obama supporter and he suddenly came- He suddenly realized,"This entire church thinks Obama is horrible and Democrats are horrible." And he came out and says,"I don't want to stay for the sermon," and that was it. And I mean- So the only way you get converted is if someone engages you, challenges you, but does it in a somewhat winsome way. That's what a missionary encounter is. The term came from Lesslie Newbigin, who was a lifetime missionary to India, but it's really nothing special. Every missionary knows if I'm too withdrawn from the people, if I'm too assimilated, or if Christians frankly have the reputation for being bullies or really just a political power block, then people on the other side of politics- they're just not going to listen to you, and you're not really converting people. Lesslie Newbigin is the one who used the term missionary encounter, cause when he came back from India after a lifetime of being in India, he came back to the UK in retirement in the late Seventies, he realized that Western culture now was a non-Christian culture. But he says, the Church in India, the Church in China, churches outside of the West, he said, always were in a missionary mode trying to find a way to convert people. He said, what happened is the Church for many years in the West, didn't seem to recognize the fact that- I mean we do now, but he was thinking Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties, when he was still alive- he says, the Church is just complacent. They still act as if everybody here is a Christian. The Church is sort of a caretaker chaplaincy. It's not in mission. And that's why he was saying, you've got to get in mission. We now know what he was saying is true, but it's a little late. I would say. We're getting to the dance pretty late. Every single church in the West, even in the middle of Mississippi, has to be in a missionary mode- not just assume that people are Christians and they're just going to come to church if you have a great youth program, which is the way- In Christendom, when everybody was a Christian, the way a church grew was better preaching, better music, better youth ministry, and then you just cornered the market in your town, and the market was all these people who are already Christians looking for a church: your church shoppers. Now you actually have to evangelize people, and we don't know how to do that.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah, I remember the first time that I visited England when I was in college. I was there as part of a one-month study program, and I was housed with a vicar's family in Oxford. And it was very interesting to see- to hear him and his family talk about their experience as faithful orthodox Christians in the United Kingdom, which obviously is still an officially Christian society- was for many years a very dedicated Christian society, but now is essentially a non-Christian society in practical terms. And he was saying that they have a little part of their building that is adjacent to the sanctuary, but isn't actually part of the historic church building. He said,"If we have an event where we want people from Oxford to come, we can't hold it in the actual church. We can only hold it in the building that's adjacent, because they will not even set foot in the actual church. That's how opposed they are to Christianity. And we can't make it anything explicitly Christian, or they won't want to come." And how different is that from my experience growing up in the Nineties in Midwest America, where we'd have all these evangelistic events and, you know,"Invite all your neighbors," and lots of people would come. And I think we are heading for more like what we're seeing in the UK where- the Christians I've known there- you can't just assume that at your workplace, if you wear a necklace that's a cross that everyone's going to tolerate that. You can't assume that.
Tim Keller:Exactly, exactly.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah, it's a very different mindset. And like you said, probably- I would say, unfortunately, we're going to have to get used to it. One good way to determine what we should do in a post-Christian society is to look back at what the earliest Christians did in a pre-Christian society, which you do several times in your book. How does the example of the early Church provide us with wisdom and encouragement for the present hour?
Tim Keller:Well, one is where we were just going with this last question. So I'll give you two: two ways the early Church is not only an encouragement, but also a model. The one is the fact that the early Church did not evangelize by bringing people to the building, which they didn't have, or to big events, or to hear the great speaker. It just didn't happen that way. I do remember when I was a student at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, 1972 to 1975- I forget. Where were you those years?
Amy Mantravadi:Even my husband wasn't born then.
Tim Keller:Yeah, I know. We had to read a book by Michael Green called Evangelism in the Early Church. It was a scholarly book by a Christian scholar. And it was astounding because basically what he said was, generally speaking, bringing a non-Christian to church wasn't even- in many cases in the early church, it wasn't safe because Christians were a persecuted minority. They were the most persecuted of all the faiths. Larry Hurtado has written some books on that very recently. The main reason was Christians would not worship the idols. Every single home had their own idols. Every estate had idols. Every meeting had idols, and Christians really, because they would not be involved with idol worship and they wouldn't be involved with any kind of right or ritual in which there were idols, Christians were immediately seen as incredibly anti-social, dangerous, terrible. So they were persecuted, and Michael Green said it was dangerous to bring a non-Christian to church to worship, because they might report you and then everybody get arrested. I mean...So he says basically, it all happened through individuals talking to their friends at a time in which being a Christian was incredibly unpopular. It was first of all courageous, but at the same time, it was the ordinary Christian that did all the evangelism. And there was, as we all know- the Christian Church grew quite a lot in those first two or three centuries. So we're just nowhere near there. The average Christian does not share their faith. They're actually afraid now because they do- like you just said, people are more hostile than they've ever been. I do know a friend, by the way, who came to the office when, you know- dress down Friday with a Tim Tebow shirt, I think when he was with the Jets, was he? Anyway. So he came with a Tebow shirt in the back, and two people, two different people come up and say,"So you hate gay people, do you?" So the point is, Christians are afraid and we're not opening our mouths, and in many parts of this country, they're still, I feel like,"Evangelism is something being done by experts or people need to bring people to events." So that's the one place where they're a model and an inspiration for. The other is, and you know this is in the book, the Christian community had a set of values, you might say: social values that just didn't seem to compute, but they were both infuriating and fascinating to people. They were multi-ethnic. They were the most multi- ethnic- this is in the book- they were the most multi-ethnic religion. They did care about the poor- quite a bit- in a way that- the Greeks and Romans looked down on the poor. Christians didn't. So they were multi- ethnic. They cared about the poor. They were reconciling and forgiving. So if you killed them, they didn't come and kill you. They were pro-life- that is to say, they were against abortion and infanticide. They went out and actually took abandoned children, usually girls, and raised them. And they believed sex was only for a man and a woman inside marriage, no other. And like you said, those five things even today are shocking, because they're a kind of combination of what seems like liberal and conservative. And I actually believe that today, progressive churches tend to push the,"We're for justice," and they just play down, or even don't believe what the Bible says about sex. Conservative churches want to lift up,"We're against the gay agenda and all that," but they're afraid of talking about racism cause that's Critical Race Theory. And you really don't have many churches, frankly, that are basically following the footsteps of the early Church in that kind of balance that doesn't fit into the world's categories. So those are the two ways that I said- it's in that every member evangelism and that inability to politically and socially peg Christians: they just don't fit in the categories. In those ways, the early Christians are an inspiration and a model.
Amy Mantravadi:You note in your book the need for a Christian high theory that can critique the failures of the prevailing cultural ideals. I personally fear this could be difficult as evangelicals have either ceded much of that intellectual realm to secularists, or they could face increasing discrimination when they attempt to make their voices heard. We may be past the era in which theologian like Reinhold Niebuhr could serve as a leading public intellectual capable of influencing those on the political Right and Left. What would more conservative Christians need to do if they want to have greater influence in secular universities, the literary world, and the arts?
Tim Keller:Yeah, that's a big- that's a very, very good question. I think it is true that- it used to be the case that leading intellectuals were not necessarily employed by universities. They weren't actually academics. So David Hume was a librarian, and you've got Kierkegaard: he didn't even have a pastorate. He was just this kind of editor, writer. So there's a whole lot of folks who have been game-changing intellectuals, who wrote game-changing books, who were not employed by a university. Now that's harder now, by the way. It's just very difficult to just support yourself, and therefore it's tough without having a tenured position to get heard. I would say that- here's just two things- You might say there's a dominant cultural economy, and there's an alternate cultural economy. The dominant cultural economy are New York Times and Harvard, but there is alternate cultural economies. There are conservative Catholic kind of colleges. There are Christian colleges. There are ways for people to support themselves and still write, I think, pathbreaking, game-changing theoretical and scholarly work. I also do think that in some ways, as bad as social media is in so many ways, it has broken to some degree the stranglehold. When I was younger, it was NBC, CBS, ABC, and the big newspapers. There really wasn't a way to break in. Reinhold Niebuhr, because he was loved by the networks and the big institutions- I agree that there isn't anybody like that, but here's the thing: those institutions, the secular mainline institutions don't have the same amount of stranglehold. That's not good for society in general, but on the other hand, maybe God will use it. Here's one other thing to say is that right now, I do know that there's a move afoot. The hardest thing about getting going as an intellectual is in the early part: you get your PhD or you do your education, and then you have to get that first or second decent book written. Sometimes it means even just getting your PhD out there, but sometimes the thing you need to do to get the PhD from that institution isn't necessarily the best first book, and therefore you need to get that first one or two books written that everybody says,"Wow, that's a real contribution." Now who's going to pay you to do that? Generally, you're not getting hired by these academic institutions unless that book is written or those two books are written. On the other hand, who's paying[inaudible] for that. Years ago, when The Pew Foundation originally was formed by J. Howard Pew, who was a strong evangelical Christian and the president of Sun Oil, and he formed The Pew Charitable Trust, and it really originally was a Christian foundation. It isn't anymore. It's sad how that happened so fast. But in the early days it had something called The Pew Younger Scholars Program, and a whole- I won't mention it cause I'm not sure exactly which ones, but an awful lot of very, very successful Christian academics, largely evangelicals, but sometimes Catholic, got their start with- they got grants to sometimes work for two or three years just on books and things. And it had an enormous impact, but then it went away because Pew went in a very different direction. Right now, there are people who are trying to raise, I know,$50 million or more to do that again. There are people behind- We don't have enough money, but there are people in the Christian philanthropic world, a few people who recognize how important that's going to be to get the writers and the authors and the thinkers- to say,"We're going to get you started, and then it might get you an actual academic post somewhere, or in many cases, it just might enable you to do something else, and you'd be in the alternate cultural economy." Does that make sense? And now I'm not as sure whether what I just said is clear, so ask me any clarifying questions. Did you follow me?
Amy Mantravadi:No, I think that makes sense. I do think that building up kind of alternative institutions- and obviously many of them already exist, but being willing to continue to support them and potentially develop new ones as the circumstances require is going to be a big part of the strategy for how we succeed going forward and getting that counter messaging out. And I heard someone mention a while back about the idea of churches actually having a writer-in residence at the church, and to me, I'm like,"Oh, what a novel idea: paying writers for their writing!" But I mean, that's a little bit the cynical experience of being a writer and knowing so many other struggling writers, but I think that actually is a good idea, and a lot of churches don't think that way. I'm sure there are some- maybe Redeemer or some large churches in large cities that are definitely thinking that way, but that doesn't seem to be- usually if we think about missions in the average church, we're thinking about overseas missions or maybe charity locally. We're not thinking about developing people who can sort of speak into the culture, as writers or speakers or anything like that. And maybe it seems a little self-serving for me to be putting that plug in when I myself am a writer.
Tim Keller:No, it's not. No, no, no. I know. It's not. Now see, the thing is there is a need for that. I have to say, yeah, big churches can usually afford to have a theologian-in-residence or a writer-in-residence or an artist-in-residence. However, one of the big problems we have is- I've already mentioned it- is the area of Christian philanthropy. There are plenty of wealthy Christians. An awful lot of them I don't think have a vision for what we're talking about. You can get them to give to evangelistic projects and that sort of thing, but as soon as you start talking about writers and artists and theologians and academics and scholars- One of the troubles is, it doesn't seem like there's a way to measure that. One of the reasons why- A lot of people who are wealthy Christians come from the business world where they want to see metrics, have you say,"Well, there's so many conversions, so many new churches, so many this and that." It's easier. But I do think that there is a possibility of developing a philanthropic community or certain foundations, like in the secular world, that really understand the culture shaping power of writing and theologians. So I want you to- Listen, as long as I'm still alive, I'm really trying to encourage that behind the scenes. One of the nice things about getting a little more high profile with my books and all that: I have been able to talk to more wealthy Christians that I'm able to say,"Look, I'm not asking for any money now. I'm retired. I'm fine. But you really ought to be giving to these things," and trying to give them a vision for that. A lot of Christians with wealth don't have that vision. So the high theory stuff: I've been trying to give people a vision for why that's so important. Now, Augustine didn't write a book on,"How do we know the resurrection happened?" though he believed it. He wrote The City of God, which is an absolute game changer. It basically said,"The pagan worldview doesn't work. It will never give itself the justice and peace that it aspires to. Only Christianity will do that." And that's high theory. And we don't have people doing that, but I do think it's the academics and the intellectuals and the writers and things. So yeah, it might be self-serving, Amy, but I think- Also, by the way, these folks need to be put into community. That's the reason why smaller churches ought to be able to get grants to put people on, so that the people's ties go to supporting the minister and all that. But at the same time, you don't want these detached intellectuals, you might say. They need to be embedded in real Christian community. So what I'd love to see would be that these grants would not just come to individuals, but also to churches that have a vision for supporting them. Anyway...
Amy Mantravadi:You mention the need for better catechesis in the doctrines of the faith, as well as counter-catechesis against worldly thinking. While Protestants often treasure our Reformation era confessions, there's a case to be made for developing additional statements and tools that confront issues the Reformers did not anticipate, such as present debates over gender and sexuality. On the other hand, we see a great proliferation of statements from different Christian organizations, some of which are more helpful than others. You and your wife, Kathy, worked on the New City Catechism that was released a few years ago. Can you describe the goals and philosophy behind that project and how you see it fitting in with historic confessional statements?
Tim Keller:Ah, okay. First of all, the New City Catechism wasn't part of the counter-catechesis project. At that time, we were actually just trying to get people to get into the bigger, longer catechisms. So the New City Catechism is kind of a short summary based on the Heidelberg and the Westminster Catechisms, so it really was just kind of a starter thing. The counter-catechesis project comes from something that Harvey Conn, who was a friend of mine at Westminster Seminary years ago when I was teaching there and Harvey Conn was also teaching- Harvey had been a missionary to Korea, and he said confessions, he thinks, had and have always had three possible functions. He says, one is instruction. It's a way of instructing people on the basics. Secondly, one is qualification- that is to say,"Do you believe this? Okay, you can be an elder. Do you believe this? You can be a pastor." But the third is interaction: basically, I'll say witness- confessions were witness. That's why the word confess. So he says it was a way of speaking to the issues of the time. It was giving biblical answers to the questions of the culture. And he says- just to give you an example, he says, if you look at the Westminster Larger Catechism, especially on the Ten Commandments, and you get to,"Honor your father and your mother." You'll see that what it does is it goes way beyond father and mother and says,"Well, the implications of this are we should be honoring all people in authority over us." And Harvey says they were writing this into a culture in which things were really changing in the 17th century. People were moving to cities. It was just the very beginning of the more Industrial Revolution, which was...And he said there was, there was a sense of being, there was a breakdown, they thought, at the time of social structures and honoring your people in authority- but really pushing that. Then he says, when the Presbyterians came to Korea- they were Presbyterian missionaries- and when people started becoming Christians, they started a Korean Presbyterian church. And they said,"Well, you need to adopt the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechism." And Harvey says, however, in Korea, the danger was not people not obeying authority. He says in Korea, the problem of honoring your father and mother- the real problem in Korea was ancestor worship. There is another side. In other words, the Bible says,"Honor your father and your mother," so that dishonor is disobeying, but to worship them is too. And therefore he says, Westminster in no way really addresses that- doesn't use the Bible to address ancestor worship and an overemphasis on authority. And he says, as a result, the confession never really dismantled the Confucian approach to authority that was seeping into the Christian Church, and it was more from Confucianism than the Bible. And he really convinced me that- now he says,"Here's what I want you to know," is he says,"The Westminster Confession is still- it's hard to imagine anybody doing a better job today. So you don't want to just rewrite confessions, but you still need new confessional documents because the times change." So I am not a person who says,"Oh, I think we ought to rewrite our confession because it's dated." Nah, it's still...I'm Presbyterian, so my belief is I just can't imagine a better confession right now for qualifying people, and it's also pretty good for instruction, but I do think you need to create confessional statements that interact with today's narratives. So right now I'm catechizing my 10-year-old granddaughter, and what I'm doing is I'm basically bringing in kind of the traditional catechism mantra- the Trinity, or the traditional catechism on the deity of Christ and all of that- but then I'm taking what she's getting catechized from the world- that is, she's getting- The world is talking about identity. The world is talking about freedom. The world is talking about happiness. And I'm always bringing in what the world says about these things, and she recognizes that. I'm giving her examples from Taylor Swift and from Elsa and people like that. She knows that. And then we're trying to say,"Now, if this is true and this is- they both can't be true." Now that's counter-catechesis. And so I am not in any way ready to abandon the older ones, but I believe that every generation, you need to do new instructional and confessional, in a sense- witness confessions that speak more to the moment without getting rid of the older confessions. I mean, we never got rid of the Nicene Creed, did we?
Amy Mantravadi:Well, hopefully we didn't...
Tim Keller:I mean, the Westminster Confession didn't get rid of the Nicene Creed: it built on it. So I don't want to get rid of i t and say,"Oh, we have to update." T he Confession wasn't an update of the Nicene Creed. It was a supplement. And so I w ant to supplement without getting rid of the older ones. O kay. Does that help?
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah, no, I think it does. And I think it's kind of the way that- well, it's not a great comparison, but we think about the United States Constitution that was written back in the 18th century, and sometimes we have this view that it kind of descended from on high from God to us or something. No, it's a human document and it's a very good one and, do we want to change the First Amendment? No, we don't want to change the First Amendment, but there have been amendments added over the years as issues arose, and actually the people who wrote the Constitution understood that there would be a need to add things to the Constitution.
Tim Keller:Yeah, roughly similar.
Amy Mantravadi:I think that it's safe to say that the Westminster Confession of Faith holds up better than the U.S. Constitution has over the years. So we're not talking about- whether it's that, or if you're someone who holds to the Three Forms of Unity, or the Augsburg Confession, or whatever you hold to. I think those are all very good documents, but like you said, they're not Scripture itself, so they aren't necessarily- there are maybe things that we have to add on occasion. So, yeah, that's a good point. So I started this podcast in large part to address issues that are important to my own generation, and in my conversations with fellow Millennials, there's a deep sense of disappointment or even betrayal from their interactions with the evangelical church in America. The"Exvangelical" movement is the most extreme manifestation of this, but even among those who remain within evangelical congregations, there's frustration over the politicization of the church, mishandling of cases of abuse, and the hypocrisy and arrogance, either real or perceived, of Christian leaders. How much is the departure of younger Americans from the church being driven by the pull of these secular ideologies and how much are they being pushed out by the failures of the Church itself?
Tim Keller:Yes.
Amy Mantravadi:Another one that you could write a book about.
Tim Keller:No, I don't know the percentages. I mean, you're saying it's both. You're implying it's both. It certainly is. It certainly is both. In other words, I do think younger- for example, I see it in younger people who walk away from the Church too quickly, in my mind: that they've kind of imbibed the anti-institutional bias of modern, expressive individualism that basically doesn't believe in institutions of any sort, but we really can't live without them. So they're too quick. There's also a little bit of secular ideology also teaches you a certain amount of self-righteousness like,"My experience. I don't need other people to correct me or tell me. This is my experience, and therefore this rules." There are ways in which secular ideology, I think, makes younger Christians- oh, by the way, it makes them think they can do without institutions, so I can go out and just be spiritual on my own. It makes them think in some ways that they don't need a lot of accountability, which they do. But it also, by the way, it's-modern people are really historically ignorant. You know that. And one of the most amazing things about Church history- I remember when I went to seminary and took two courses on Church history, everybody I remember- I mean, I was 23/22 years old then. Whoever took Church history always felt the same way. On the one hand, we were shocked at how many things went wrong in the Church. I mean, we were shocked at all the heresies and all the awful things. It was incredible how varied and messed up the church has gotten at various times, and yet it was also amazing how resilient it is. It's just astounding how resilient it is. And what it did was it humbled most of us out of the idea that there's only one way to do the Church. We began to realize there's a whole lot of ways. Church history would be such a tonic, I think, for younger people. I'm mentioning it here because I never see anybody talk about it as a way of overcoming both the- Modern secular ideology kind of gives you a feeling like everything in the past was terrible- and you need to see a lot of bad things, but all the good things from the past- but it also shows you that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church: that you are abandoning something that Jesus said,"I'm never going to let this go. I'm never gonna let this die". See, what Jesus says- If you say,"I've stopped believing in Christianity or the Bible," then alright, fine. But if you say,"I still believe in Jesus. or I still believe in God, but I just can't have anything to do with the Church," sorry. Jesus says the Church will not- he didn't say individual Christians. He says,"The Church- I'm never going to abandon it." So there's gotta be a true Church somewhere. They're always has to be, or at least a better Church. So anyway, I'm just saying, you're right. I don't know if it's 50:50 the secularism is making people not find Christianity credible, but it's also true that the Church is right now going, especially in America- the Catholic Church, it's going to be a hundred years to get over the priest scandal and pedophilia scandals. The liberal Church- I just wrote an article about this. The liberal Church, I think- liberal, mainline Church- made itself very non-credible with people by originally hooking itself to liberal politics. One of the reasons why the evangelical Church grew was because in the Sixties and Seventies, the mainline, liberal Church just said,"If you're a Christian, you gotta be for all these different liberal political"- It basically turned itself into just a political animal, and it lost members fast. And now the conservative Church is doing the same thing.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah.
:So, I mean, it's working the wagon of politics, lots of corruption, lots of high profile explosions and people that everybody thought of- well, now we realize was an abuser or a sexual predator and that sort of thing. You put all that together, it's not good. On the other hand, I'm still- by the way, one last thing, Amy, on this one is there really isn't anybody really saying that the evangelical Church is in freefall. It's true that there's somewhat fewer people who are willing to say,"I'm an evangelical." If you ask a white person,"Are you an evangelical?" most people that believe you have to be born again, believe that the B ible's completely right, you have to be born again, you have to believe in Jesus or you're going to hell. So if you say,"You believe the Bible is completely true, you have to believe in Jesus or go to hell, you h ave t o b e born again"- If you ask a white person who believes those three things,"Are you an evangelical?" they'll say probably yes. If you ask a black person in this country who believes those three things, they probably will say no. If you ask the black person,"Are you born again?" they'll say yes. So it's a little difficult to tell, but from what I can tell, there really isn't yet anything like a major decline in people who say,"I've been born again." Non-white people who are- the number of. not only people in t he country are growing, they tend to be more religious. So I really don't see the Church in f reefall, in spite of the fact that on social media, it looks like it, doesn't it?
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah.
Tim Keller:I mean, somebody give me some proof that people who believe that conservative theology about the new birth and all that- that somehow those numbers are in free fall. I doubt it.
Amy Mantravadi:Well, you can look at the numbers for particular denominations, and you see all kinds of polls that talk about church attendance among different age groups. And it certainly is true that non-evangelical churches have generally been losing more people than the evangelical churches. But the bigger issue, like you say, might be people's willingness to identify themselves with the evangelical movement, just because of...
Tim Keller:It's muddying the water. Most of the young people who say,"I'm no longer a Christian," tend to be, like you said, mainline. People with a mainline background are much more willing to say- younger people are more willing to say,"I have no religious preference." It's still difficult for me, if you push down deep, to see a freefall. I mean, right now, post-COVID everybody's attendance is down. But just to give you an idea, in New York City, when I got here in 1989, there were 100 churches- what we call evangelical churches- in center City: about 100 evangelical churches with a grand total of 9,000 Manhattan residents who are going to those churches. Okay? Today it's like- there's 80,000 people in about 275 evangelical churches in that same area, and that's 32 years later. So, I mean, we've gone from 9,000 to 80,000. We've gone from 100 evangelical churches to 260 or 70. We're still planting churches at a pretty good clip. They are generally speaking only about a third- probably overall only about a third white, about a third to maybe even 40% Asian. But there's also a good number of black and Hispanic churches too. In New York, I'm not seeing people walking away from the faith. On the other hand, these are not very politicized churches. They certainly aren't right-wing churches. And yet they're not open and affirming- in other words, they haven't bought the sexual thing. So I'm in a position where I know when I go online, it looks like everybody's walking away from evangelicalism. That's not the way it looks to me.
Amy Mantravadi:And maybe some of that has to do with the fact that even in 1989, cultural Christianity was not as powerful in Manhattan as it was here where I'm living in suburban Ohio, where it's still pretty powerful.
Tim Keller:Exactly.
Amy Mantravadi:You get a lot of people who maybe are more shallow believers or even just nominal believers, and those tend to be the people who- it's a lot easier for them to walk away than it is for people who are really grounded.
Tim Keller:Right. They show up on the polls originally as Christians, and then five years later, they're not Christians anymore. Whereas- you're right. That's the nice thing about a place like Manhattan, where there was essentially no nominal Christianity. Keep going. Sorry.
Amy Mantravadi:Well, that's a nice thing, and then you've got The Met and Central Park, and there are a lot of nice things about New York City. Yeah. Just following up a little bit on that...A lot of people have recently been listening to the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast. We've heard about cases of Joshua Harris walking away from the faith, the Ravi Zacharias sexual abuse scandal. Some of these people were major players in the"Young, Restless, and Reformed" or the"New Calvinist" movements, and when prominent leaders experience a very public fall, it can cause those who appreciated their ministry to ask a lot of questions. And the two I'd like to address, and I know again, could write a book on either of these, but is there anything that evangelical leaders can do to protect against reputation destroying failures, both in spiritual terms and more practical terms? And secondly, to what extent are the rest of us at fault for not spotting character flaws in these men early on, particularly those who knew them more personally or worked with them more personally?
Tim Keller:Right. Well, they're two very different questions. They're not totally different, but they're pretty different. Your first one is- I feel like relationships are thinner than they used to be. People are more mobile. They don't stay where they grew up. They don't stay near friends and family. For all those reasons, it does feel to me that the pressures of ministry are maybe creating more blowups than they used to. I mean, there's always been ministry failures. There are always people who had affairs or embezzled funds. I mean, all my life, you had people going down for those kinds of reasons, but it does seem like there's more now. It does feel like that. Also, there's some studies that have shown that about five years out of seminary, something like 20% of people in ministry just leave the ministry. And so I do think it's worse, and I think it's probably because, A) We are more isolated. We are more mobile. We're less embedded in face-to-face relationships, and so burnout and the kinds of things that can lead a minister- It sort of happens like this: The minister overworks, feels pressure, it thins out their prayer life, it makes them start to- it makes them feel like they're getting- what they're doing is mediocre. They're not having enough time in prayer. They're not having enough time to read. They don't feel excited about what they're offering people. They start to look to things. It could be pornography. It could be- they looked at other things to kind of soothe them. And then when it comes out, it leads to a scandal of some kind. I think those things happen more often because I think, frankly, people are not as embedded in relationships with friends. There's more people traveling around. There's more people on their phones instead of actually talking with one another in face-to-face relationships. You can hide so much easier. Even phone calls are better, actually, than texting and emails and things like that. So I actually do think there's something about the fact that we're all more isolated, we're all lonely, or there's more anxiety. There's more depression. There's more breakdown, because frankly we are not in community. That's number one. On the other hand, the second question, which is a pretty interesting one is"To what extent are the rest of us at fault for not spotting character flaws in these men early on?" Boy, hindsight is so 20/20. If somebody commits suicide that you know, you immediately start to second guess yourself, and you either say,"I should not have said X, Y, Z to that person," or,"I should have gone and said X, Y, Z to that person," and you'll never know if you're right. Whenever there's a ministry blow up, I always- I kind of laugh a little bit. Example: Mark Driscoll. I knew Mark Driscoll. So in hindsight, I remember when Mark Driscoll blew up in 2014, a couple of people went online and said,"Tim Keller invited Mark Driscoll up into The Gospel Coalition and gave him this incredible platform, and therefore he should bear some responsibility for what happened." Now, here's what's funny: When we started The Gospel Coalition in 2005, first of all, there was no Gospel Coalition platform. Number two, Mark Driscoll had a big one. Mark Driscoll and John Piper had big platforms. In other words, they had internet platforms, and they had been writing books. You know, I didn't write a book'til 2008. I was 58 years old. When Gospel Coalition came together, I hadn't written any books. There was no platform. There was no website. We weren't even sure we were going to have a website. We just started having conferences. Mark and John had huge platforms. So the idea that Tim Keller had this big platform, which I didn't- I didn't even- I was just, like a normal person my age, I just was stupid about the internet. Hadn't written any books. Somehow that I platformed Mark? My goodness. If anything, Mark might've platformed The Gospel Coalition. I mean, in hindsight, people have some idea that if you'd just done this and this and this and this, then that wouldn't have happened, so you're to blame. Maybe I should have said something more to him when I began to see some of the brashness, but it's difficult to know. After the suicide, you might say, it is very difficult to know whether- maybe I would have made things worse. Maybe it would've happened faster. I'm not really sure. So I'm quite willing to let people do post-mortems after these blow up and start to say,"Maybe we should do more of this or that," but I'm unconvinced that there's some formula that if everybody does it this way, these blow ups are going to stop. They're just not. So I'm really trying to- People who are absolutely sure of what we should have done: I think we have to be careful about that. Let's not beat ourselves up too much. Ultimately, what I have to say to people who are upset because I could have stopped that suicide- I used to say, in the end, the person who commits suicide: it's their responsibility for what they've done. And also, I'm not sure in the end, if somebody wants to commit suicide, there's any way to really stop them. So anyway- to me, there is a similarity when after these blow ups, it's very easy to go back and say,"This is exactly what you should have done, you should have done, you should have done..." On the other hand, let me just say one more thing. Listen, I have seen pulpit committee after pulpit committee hire guys who are great preachers, because they want the pews filled, even when the references show the guy is not a good pastor, the guy is not a good leader. Over and over again, I've seen people, pulpit committees, and churches- They want a person who can draw people in the door, because they want the nickels and noses. Okay? They want the nickels and noses. And then what happens, of course, is the guy is not a very good leader. The guy might be actually- there's all sorts of other ways in which the person's not particularly spiritually mature. And then what happens is the insiders- the people who are really doing the ministry- they see that and they lose respect for the man. Meanwhile, the people who are coming in the door, who don't know him very well but just love his preaching: they become his fans. So then you have a problem where the fan base is propping the guy up, but the internal group of people who see him are starting to say,"I'm not sure this is the right guy for the job." And when that happens, you've got a disaster coming. That's exactly what happened to Mark Driscoll. And I don't know what you do about that other than- you know, especially when he started the church. But what happened was he was using the people close to him, and so they would leave, but the people who were the fan base: that was his source of power. I've seen this happen over and over and over again, and that is, frankly- that is the fault of the congregation and the original leaders who let the guy go there because they wanted to see the growth. Now, what do you think of that? You're a lay person. So I'm on the one hand saying let's not beat ourselves up after it's over to be sure what we should have done, but that dynamic I've seen happening more and more today because people want success, and so they go for people who can put people in the seats, and then that creates the fan base that keeps the thing going too long. And the internal group of people who are trying to blow the whistle and getting beaten up by the fan base. So it happened to Mark, but I actually see it in less explosive ways all over the place. Happens all the time.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah. I mean, and we're about maybe a decade on now from what people see as the height of the"Young, Restless, and Reformed" movement, and there are a lot of- well, I wouldn't necessarily say they're all post-mortems, because I don't think it was a complete failure by any means, but a lot of people looking back now and it's become- now we're looking back at it as history and considering what should have been done differently. We see some things that have come out of that period that are still with us that are very good, and we're thankful for that. But if I think back of my own experience with that movement, back around the time you were founding The Gospel Coalition, back around the time that all this was happening, I was in college. I was really pretty unaware of all of this. I think it wasn't until I was in college that I even heard the name John Piper or knew who he was, and it wasn't until I visited New York City in 2007 and a friend of mine was attending your church, and so I came to visit your church: that was the first time I heard of you. So I was not affected by it in the same way as a lot of people my age were, who were reading everything by Mark Driscoll and listening to his sermons all the time. And I was much more in the political world at that time, and I'm glad I'm not in the political world anymore. But if I were to say what was the one factor that maybe should have been setting off alarm bells- I mean, there's so many things we could talk about: the trend toward megachurches, and celebrity pastors, and all that kind of thing. But for me, the root that's always at the bottom of all this is pride in some form or another. And what was the thing that was similar about Mark Driscoll or Ravi Zacharias? They both, in their own way, believed that they had some kind of right to use or abuse other people because they were such great leaders that they had- you know, this is what we're hearing that Ravi would say to people:"I've done such a great work for God, and so I've kind of earned this." And whether you're abusing someone sexually, or abusing them verbally, or however- anytime you're abusing someone, you've taken this view that you can somehow possess them and you're not fully honoring their humanity. And the way- I mean, a lot of times this kind of thing will be hidden away from the average person, but what you might see is a kind of prideful attitude. And I remember back 10 years ago, when I was watching videos by some of these people, there was something about them that just seemed a little off: it seemed kind of prideful. And sometimes that's the only thing you can see, especially if you're someone like me who's never met them, or someone who meets them once a year and never really gets to know them that well. And I think sometimes, because we are looking for people who are going to be strong leaders, who are really gonna hit back against the cultural narratives we're hearing, that are going to do kind of- you know, we're talking about the need for people who are going to speak to the culture, right? But sometimes instead of gravitating to people who are making really good nuanced arguments, that are people of character, we just sort of gravitate toward the people who are loud and charismatic. And sometimes I think we are not wary enough of the sin of pride in our leaders. And that is something that if I had to pin it down to one thing- but many others have written at length and probably much better than I would about that. So I don't think we can entirely let ourselves off the hook when things like this happen. But like you said, I mean, particularly in the case of Mark Driscoll- I remember a few years before everything really blew up at Mars Hill, there were some elders who got dismissed, and at the time he gave this talk about it where he was saying people just need to"shut up and do what they're told." I've ever is that was the quote that he gave. And to me, I was like,"Wow, that's a real red flag right there when you're taking that attitude towards the elders who were supposed to be your accountability.' And that kind of spirit really does- it can pop up anywhere, whether it's a non-denominational church, or a Lutheran church, or a Presbyterian church, it could pop up anywhere. So I think we really have to be vigilant against that, and I guess that would be my response.
Tim Keller:Epilogue, then we better do our last question, but the epilogue is- this has been great. I would say what you really- you're exactly right about pride, but it's also, like you said, you just hinted that it's pride on the part of the listeners too. In other words, people are proud of going to this great church and to have this big church. And so in some ways it's our own pride that makes it- that leads us to make excuses for somebody like Mark. Here's the other thing though. With people like Mark and Ravi, I'll put it this way: the pride also leads to self-pity. The self-pity comes when, even though your ministry is doing well, it's costly. You're tired. You also get a lot of criticism. And so what always happens is there's an internal- you have to really watch this- there's an internal self-talk that goes like this:"Nobody knows what I have to go through to do this ministry. Nobody knows the cost. Nobody knows the pain. Nobody knows the hours. Nobody knows what I've had to go through. And therefore I deserve this." That's self-pity. That certainly-"Therefore I deserve this release- this sexual release. Certainly I deserve people just to stop giving me guff, and I shouldn't have to work through for two years to get the elders to agree to something. They should just do..." In other words, the pride plus the hardness of the ministry leads to self- pity, and that self-pity is really what kills you. Absolutely kills you. You better go on here.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah, we've been- I don't want to- we've been taking up so much of your time. So just in closing, many listeners will know you've been receiving treatment for pancreatic cancer. Could you just give- I know you regularly give updates on social media, but could you let us know how you're doing and how we can be in prayer for you and your family?
Tim Keller:Sure. It's hard on social media. It's hard in emails to get it right, because on the one hand, as many of the listeners may know, the great majority of pancreatic cancer patients die within a year of diagnosis, especially with stage four, which I have: metastatic. So like I said, 90% pretty much die within a year, and it's been a year and a half almost for me. So in that sense, I'm doing awfully well. I mean, in that sense, God has really answered a lot of prayers, and my doctors say my chemo treatments are being unusually effective, because they're keeping the cancer at bay in a way that- usually the cancer breaks through the chemo and just comes no matter what you do, and this has kept it at bay. So that's the incredibly good news, and you don't want to mute that. You don't want people not to say,"This has just been astounding," so please keep praying. On the other hand, it's every other week. Chemo is not easy. And also anytime it could just turn around and start breaking through. So what we just pray is,"Lord, keep it at bay or eradicate it." And every three months I get a scan, and we might get a completely different reading than- so we're just- it's been almost a year and a half, and we pray for more time. And on the other hand, I would never want to go back. Cathy and I never want- you probably heard me say this- we would never want to go back to the level of spiritual life we had before I was diagnosed with cancer, because it's just- in other words, there's nothing that drives you to Christ other than trouble, and then when you go there you say,"Gosh, I had no idea this was available before. Why didn't- I just wasn't motivated." I mean, there is stuff available in prayer: there's spiritual reality available in prayer through the Holy Spirit, and we don't get it because we are too busy or we're not motivated. We're too self-sufficient. So I would never want to lose what I've gotten through cancer. I know it sounds kind of, I don't know, John Piper-ish or something, but I'm just telling you the truth. Thank you for asking.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah. Well, and I'll continue being in prayer for you, and I know I often pray to God,"Is there any way you could get me to that spiritual state without making me go through the trial?"
Tim Keller:I've always prayed that. Unfortunately, our hearts are- but you need to keep- Yes, the answer is, if you just say,"I've just got to," you'll make progress, Amy. I mean, in other words, if you just buckled down right now without some kind of trouble or suffering, you'll make progress. I'm just saying you just never- in this life, you just don't make the progress without some trouble and difficulties and disappointments, just because of the hardness of our hearts.
Amy Mantravadi:Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I really appreciate it.
Tim Keller:Okay. It was really nice just seeing you as well as talking with you.
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Amy Mantravadi:It was a pleasure to speak with Tim about his book, How to Reach the West Again, and I wish him all the best as he continues to undergo treatment for pancreatic cancer. I'd like to offer a final word about how those of us who are orthodox Christians should think and behave in an age when we are becoming an increasing minority in the West. Though we are called in traditional language"the Church militant," we must not be militant as that term is now commonly understood. We battle against sin, the world, and the devil, but not with the weapons of this world. It is the Lord himself who goes before us, and the battle belongs to him. In times of change, we trust in the unchanging One. Hope springs eternal for those whose hope is in eternity. When they write about us in years to come, let them say that we gloried in our weakness and saw the power and glory of God, that we made ourselves poor to become rich, that we took up our crosses and followed where he led, that we descended into the depths to ascend to the heights. Whether we light a candle for humanity with our words or with our very lives, we must be the shining city on a hill that gives light and hope to all. For if we feel a rising darkness, how dark is the darkness of those who walk with blinded eyes? We must not let our love grow cold. We must show grace, even as we have been given grace. This brings us to the end of another season of the(A)Millennial podcast. I hope to bring you a fourth and final batch of episodes in 2022. Thank you so much for sharing in these theological conversations for today's world, and thank you to my husband, Jai, for his support while I put together these episodes. This podcast is written and produced by yours truly. Please send all complaints by mail to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC. The music you've been listening to is from the song"Citizens" by Christian recording artist Jon Guerra off his album, Keeper of Days. You may enjoy listening to my interview with him from last season. Reviews and ratings are important in helping people discover new shows. If you have a moment, please leave an honest rating and review for this podcast wherever you listen to it. Also consider mentioning it to friends or sharing episodes on social media. I know your time is valuable and thank you in advance for any help you can provide. If you have any comments or questions about this podcast, feel free to email me at theamillennialpodcast@gmail.com. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen. Have a great week.
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