Timothy Keller

Timothy J. Keller is a preacher and Christian apologist. His theological views seem to be a mishmash of Calvinism, Presbyterianism, and various other Protestant beliefs. Keller holds many Conservative American Christian social views: he is homophobic, doesn't support gender equality or social justice, and doesn't support those fields of science which contradict his interpretations of his religion.

Sermon 2020-07-24

While discussing some of the more problematic aspects of the Christian religion, my uncle requested that I listen to this sermon. I said I would on the condition that he listen to audio of equal length. The sermon is about people praying about the doubts they have regarding Christianity. Since I'm a former Christian, I presume my uncle suggested I listen to it it in hopes that it would strike a chord with me.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/praying-our-doubts/id352660924?i=1000485580247

Below are my notes about the sermon with timestamps for each:

• 00:23 - In the intro, we're asked to rate and review the podcast to help people hear and experience the power of God's word. God needs someone to write a good review of a podcast in order to disseminate his message? This reminds me of that wonderful Star Trek V: The Final Frontier quote, "What does God need with a starship?"
• 02:13 - The sermon opens with Psalm 73:1-26. In which the author says the life of a righteous man is very difficult, but, when he enters the kingdom of God, he will see that the wicked will be swept away by terrors because they are despised by God. In fact, it says that God himself placed the wicked people on a slippery place, essentially dooming them from the start. Keller probably views this a wonderful, but I find it utterly barbaric. Purposely setting someone up to fail and then despising them because they do fail, and then sweeping them away sounds like something only an evil entity would do, not a loving caregiver.
• 03:30 - "The religious approach to feelings is to be very uncomfortable with them." I appreciate that he critiques his own beliefs so frankly.
• 04:40 - "The secular approach (which I find indefensible) is that your feelings is really who you are, not your beliefs or practices." I know a lot of truly secular people, and I don't think I've ever heard any of them espouse this belief. To me, Keller is straw-manning.
• 06:10 - Keller explains that the Book of Psalms, when you read all of it, and not just what you find in greeting cards, is full of raw emotions like anger and fear, to the point where it disturbs people today. I appreciate that he points this out, because many of the Psalms are really horrifying.
• 06:30 - Keller says that the authors of the Pslams are "praying their feelings, they're processing their feelings in the presence of God." I don't know of any passages that actually make this claim, so this appears to just be Keller's personal opinion of the Psalms, however, he presents it as fact.
• 07:05 - "Doubt always masquerades as more intellectual than it is." I'm not trying to be funny here, but I seriously doubt that.
• 07:10 - "Doubt is a condition of the soul and heart." Doubt is a condition of the brain not the heart. The heart is a muscle that pumps blood. Also, without a useful definition of a "soul" which means different things to most people, this definition is very ambiguous.
• 09:00 - Keller, like pretty much every preacher I've ever heard, doesn't let the author of scripture speak for himself. Instead, he says, "here is what the author wrote, but here is what he really meant." If the bible is God's word, let it speak for itself, don't tell me why your interpretation is superior, and certainly don't do so with out prefacing it with, "my opinion is..."
• 09:17 - "What is doubt? It's a spiritual form of dizziness or vertigo that happens when your eye gives your brain something that it can't process and makes you put your foot in the wrong place." I think he's defining cognitive dissonance rather than doubt. And this is a quite different definition that he used earlier.
• 11:45 - "The Pslams were not all written by David." In fact, probably none of them were, as biblical scholars do not trust the traditional attributions. The Book of Psalms appears to be an aggregate of texts spanning several centuries from mostly anonymous authors. Some of them even appear to have been plagiarized from other cultures, and many show evidence of redaction.
• 13:50 - Keller describes Thomas as "hard-nosed" for saying he'll need to see the holes in Jesus's hand before he'll believe the person is really him. That's not hard-nosed, that is a perfectly reasonable demand. If someone claims a person was raised from the dead, no rational person would believe it based solely on another person's anecdote.
• 14:35 - Keller agrees with other biblical commentators that Thomas's belief in Jesus is a "confession of faith." No, it's just the opposite of faith. Thomas was wise not to have faith and instead to demand evidence. If you have evidence, you don't need faith. At 14:47, Keller says it's the "greatest expression of belief," again, no it isn't.
• 14:53 - Keller's quote of Francis Bacon's book which talks about doubt being a good thing is quite nice. I like what he says about it, though I disagree with Keller that it applies to Christianity.
• 16:26 - "The bible has an amazing balanced view of doubts." This made me chuckle.
• 20:35 - "There is enormous positive energy in doubt." I totally agree with that.
• 23:40 - Keller says faith is not opposed to reason, rather faith is "holding onto what you know to be true in spite of how things appear to your heart." To me, that statement is opposed to reason. If your senses tell you that you're on a high ledge, but you "know in your heart" that you are on solid ground, it is still unreasonable to jump.
• 25:45 - "Faith is not holding onto something in spite of the evidence." That is essentially how you just defined faith a few seconds ago.
• 25:49 - "Faith is holding onto something in spite of the appearances." The way that something appears is a form of evidence. If a person appears to have dyed their hair blue, that is evidence that they did dye their hair blue, and it would be rational to conclude as much.
• 26:20 - Keller suggests the Problem of Evil is solved by God needing to use evil in order to fulfill his ultimate purpose. This only makes sense for a god which is not all powerful. An all powerful god would never have to resort to needing evil. I like that he admits this isn't a very comforting solution when it happens to you personally.
• 27:10 - Keller says the woman in C.S. Lewis's example needs "faith" in her friends. This isn't really the same definition he used earlier. It's very frustrating that he won't simply define the word "faith" in a meaningful manner and stick to it.
• 31:00 - Keller's inclusion of C.S. Lewis's story about the academics is obnoxious. He paints the academics as not being honest, but basing their intelligence on being popular and being afraid to be Christian. Most of the academics I know are very open and honest about their disbelief. They're not secretly Christians, but have thoughtful and cogent arguments about why aspects of Christianity are false.
• 31:50 - He's saying it's dishonest, prideful, and controlling to have doubt because of the problem of evil and again trying to solve it with God needing evil. I see this as rather harmful.
• 33:30 - Keller says, it's not fair to doubt Christianity unless you go to church, sing, pray, and worship God. Would he also encourage his listeners to go to a Mosque and pray to and worship Allah, or go to a temple and pray to and worship Ganesha? Or the same for the thousands of other religions?
• 34:00 - "You must worship God or you will never find him." That doesn't help assuage my doubt. I can demonstrate the existence of all sorts of things without having to worship them first, why is God that wants to have a relationship with me so elusive?

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