Tim Keller - Love's Constraints the Ultimate Freedom

Timothy Keller:

"Love is the most liberating freedom-loss of all.

One of the principles of love--either love for a friend or romantic love--is that you have to lose independence to attain greater intimacy. If you want the 'freedoms' of love--the fulfillment, security, sense of worth that it brings--you must limit your freedom in many ways. You cannot enter a deep relationship and still make unilateral decisions or allow your friend or lover no say in how you live your life. To experience the joy and freedom of love, you must give up your personal autonomy." (p. 47-48)

Love is not without constraints, and constraints are not always bondage.

For instance see this law which is love:

"Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments and to cling to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Jos. 22:5

The Reason for God - Moral Obligation

One thing about Pastor Keller's book that I really enjoyed was his quotations from an array of different thinkers whether scientists, atheists, Christians outside his own denomination, literary authors, etc. One particular quote that struck me was from Raimond Gaita, an atheist thinker, who states:

"Only someone who is religious can speak seriously of the sacred...We may say that all human beings are inestimably precious, that they are ends in themselves, that they are owed unconditional respect, that they posess inalienable dignity. In my judgment these are ways of trying to say what we feel a need to say when we are estranged from the conceptual resources [i.e. God] we need to say it...Not one of [these statements about human beings] has the power of the religious way of speaking...that we are sacred because God loves us, his children" (p. 154)

One thing I have been struck by when reading atheistic thinkers is there use of descriptive words like sacred and wonder and awe and beauty and good and evil. They sound religious, at times, when speaking of nature or the human being or the rights of the destitute. In many ways they want to have there cake and eat it to. They want to use moral language in religious categories, yet deny God. They seem to want the morality and dignity of God in this world but not the accountability and responsibility before the God of this world. This issue of moral obligation for the atheist is a big problem if one remains an atheist. A strict evolutionism and bare scientificism does not ever answer the greatest problems of the world or provide the greatest remedies, but the strict evolutionist and scientist, usually, desires at least in some aspects things like human rights and morality but evolutionary and scientific categories alone cannot give this. It is the desire they have to give it, indeed almost an inner compulsion that leads Keller to say the following of another atheistic thinker, "despite the fact that we can't justify or ground human rights in a world without God, we still know they exist...Without God he can't justify moral obligation, and yet he can't not know it exists" (p. 154-155).

The Reason for God - Thinking of Self Less

I will begin doing a series of posts on Tim Keller's new book, The Reason for God, that I finished yesterday. Hopefully this will encourage you to read the book and encourage you to trust and believe in God. Whether a Christian or not everyone doubts, Keller encourages us to doubt our doubts and to trust God who reveals Himself in Jesus. He encourages his readers to not focus on having huge faith, but instead reminds us that, "Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch" (p. 234). The Triune, transcendent and personal, God of the universe is a strong branch.

Here is Keller on self and Gospel:

"When my own personal grasp of the gospel was very weak, my self-view swung wildly between two poles. When I was performing up to my standards--in academic work, professional achievement, or relationships--I felt confident but not humble...When I was not living up to standards, I felt humble but not confident, a failure. I discovered, however, that the gospel contained the resources to build a unique identity. In Christ I could know I was accepted by grace not only despite my flaws, but because I was willing to admit them. The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued and that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less. I don't need to notice myself--how I'm doing, how I'm being regarded--so often." (p. 180-181, The Reason for God)

The Reason for God: The Website

I've mentioned the book, which is finally out and being shipped to me as we speak, here is the website.

Here is Keller's Newsweek profile.

(HT:SM)

Tim Keller's A Reason for God Sermons

I am awaiting Tim Keller's new apologetic A Reason for God from Amazon, but I learned today that I can listen to sermons he delivered at his church in regards to that topic. The sermons are thematic: Exclusivity, Suffering, Absolutism, Injustice, Hell, Doubt, Literalism. Go listen!

(HT: JT)