Tag: church

Jettisoning Some and Embracing Others

“Keller asked the Oxford students to imagine an Anglo-Saxon warrior in Britain in AD 800. Inside he feels the impulse to destroy anyone who disrespects him. That’s the response his honor/shame culture demands, and so he does. But he also feels sexually attracted to men. His culture demands that he suppress those feelings, so he does not act on them. Now consider a man of the same age walking the streets of Manhattan in our day. He feels just like the Anglo-Saxon warrior. He wants to kill anyone who looks at him the wrong way. And he desires sexual relations with other men. Our culture sends him to therapy for anger management. He will identify publicly with his sexual orientation.

So what does this illustration teach us? Keller explains:

‘Primarily it reveals that we do not get our identity simply from within. Rather, we receive some interpretive moral grid, lay it down over our various feelings and impulses, and sift them through it. This grid helps us decide which feelings are “me” and should be expressed—and which are not and should not be. So this grid of interpretive beliefs-not an innate, unadulterated expression of our feelings—is what shapes our identity. Despite protests to the contrary, we instinctively know our inner depths are insufficient to guide us. We need some standard or rule from outside of us to help us sort out the warring impulses of our interior life.

‘And where do our Anglo-Saxon warrior and our modern Manhattan man get their grids? From their cultures, their communities, their heroic stories. They are actually not simply “choosing to be themselves”— they are filtering their feelings, jettisoning some and embracing others. They are choosing to be the selves their cultures tell them they may be. In the end, an identicy based independently on your own inner feelings is impossible.’”

—Timothy Keller, Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Viking, 2015), 135-136. Quoted in Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2023), 241.

An Unconscious Conspiracy

“Confronted with this kind of violent reaction when they seek to mold their congregations into instruments of evangelism and social healing, pastors gradually settle down and lose interest in being change agents in the church. An unconscious conspiracy arises between their flesh and that of their congregations. It becomes tacitly understood that the laity will give pastors special honor in the exercise of their gifts, if the pastors will agree to leave their congregations’ pre-Christian lifestyles undisturbed and do not call for the mobilization of lay gifts for the work of the kingdom. Pastors are permitted to become ministerial superstars. Their pride is fed as their congregations are permitted to remain herds of sheep in which each has cheerfully turned to his own way.”

—Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1979), 207. Quoted in Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2023), 97.

Feed Souls With the Bread of Heaven

“If a man chooses someone to manage his household, he assigns him duties. What duties, then, has God assigned to us, if not to impart to his people the food of life, that is, his word? Without that, does the title ‘pastor’ mean anything at all? Someone who claimed to be the shepherd of a flock of sheep or the keeper of a herd of cows, but who lets the poor beasts starve to death, would surely deserve to be stoned. Yet we are shepherds, not of brute beasts but of God’s children! Our task is to feed, not bodies with food that perishes, but souls with the bread of heaven. If we do not have what is needed to fulfil our office, do we not mock God by usurping so noble a title when the reality is otherwise?

Observe, then, that to be a pastor, overseer, minister, presbyter and ruler of the church is to be one whose teaching edifies God’s people.”

—John Calvin, trans. Robert White, Sermons on Titus (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2015), 88. Calvin said this while preaching on Titus 1:9-10.

Thousands of Time Machines

“Picture thousands, even tens of thousands, of time machines suddenly showing up all across the land. The nation gasps. News cameras crowd around them. Government officials and police forces quickly engage these strangers as they climb out of their time machines. It feels like a science-fiction movie about an alien invasion. Yet the people say they are from the future. They represent a coming kingdom, they explain. Interestingly, they speak English, dress like us, and otherwise seem pretty normal.

That said, they admit they want to change the way we live. It almost sounds like, well, what’s the word—colonization? For instance, they want to persuade everyone to join them and give primary allegiance to their king. “But no need to worry,” they contest. “We have no intentions of overthrowing the government. In fact, we will encourage people to obey the present government.” What they mean, though, is that they want people to obey the government for the sake of their king. That sounds a little risky. They also explain that each time machine will hold its own weekly meeting, where they will teach everyone who joins to live according to their king’s standards of justice and righteousness. As a result, yes, they expect some of their members will oppose some of our businesses and industries (though not by taking up arms). And they expect some of their members will work to change some of our laws (but mainly by working through the rules of the system). They conclude by telling us to think of their time-machine gatherings as embassies from the future that we are all hurtling toward, and that they are trying to give us a leg up on that future now.

Goodness gracious—what do we make of these strange people? Are they a political threat or not? Some of us feel like they aren’t. After all, they promise not to take up arms against the government. Others of us feel like they clearly are. They want people to identify with their king and to change the way people live.

Perhaps this illustration sounds far-fetched. But it’s exactly what first-century Palestine experienced when the Christians showed up.”

—Jonathan Leeman, How the Nations Rage (Nashville, TN: Nelson Books, 2018), 136-137.