In the second half of his book, Tim Keller talks about ‘clues’ for God. His first clue was that the practice of morality pushes towards a belief in God. How else can anyone differentiate between right and wrong. Without God, anyone who claims something is either right or wrong can legitimately be answered by the old Yale professor, “Sez Who?”
Keller’s second clue is the reality that “there is something fundamentally wrong with the world.” The problem is sin. Human sin that damages the self, the society and has cosmic consequences.
Sin is usually thought of as doing bad things. But the Bible gives the indication that sin is more than that, “it’s not just doing bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things.” Here Keller delves into the reality that people either construct some way to establish their own identities or they find their identity in God alone. Building on the first command, “You shall not have any other gods,” he shows how everybody tries to ‘find himself.” Family, work, power, prestige, pleasure, service, etc. Good things can become very bad when they are put in the center of one’s life. Then God is displaced, and insecurity thrives.
All you have to do is to talk to people, or to read about them, and you will discover that what you were sure would ‘make them happy’ doesn’t. Identity apart from God is unsecure and it is similar to addiction—it controls, the person is in denial about it, we are crushed and despondant when we don’t have it…
And when you put personal sinners together, society is deeply impacted. Consider the despair the optimists of the early 20th century ran into as a result of two world wars. Jonathan Edwards puts it this way: human society is deeply fragmented when anything but God is our highest love. If we live for the good of our family, we will tend to care less about other families. If it is the good of our nation, we will care less about other nations. Etc. Etc. Etc. Edwards concludes that “only if God is our ultimate good and life center, will we find our heart drawn not only to people of all families, races, and classes, but to the whole world in general.”
Personal and societal consequences are but reflections of the cosmic consequences of sin. The whole world (and universe) have been damaged. Shalom has been broken. And we long for all to be put right again. We long for a Savior.
Fail at marriage, in the workplace, in your thoughts and ideals and what will help. Follow after Jesus first and foremost, and when we fall, He will pick us up, one day in an entirely restored creation!
(Thanks to Lee and Steve for prompting me to get back at this blog!)
