Making Sense of God Study – Ch. An index of all my posts in this series can be found HERE. His basic supposition is that before a person will consider seriously whether Christianity is true, she must first want it to be true. In chapter one, he’s fighting the reductionist view that religion is worthless and that only idiots believe it. I wish Keller included more commentary in this book to that end, (comparing and contrasting the Christian worldview with other religions) but I understand that his focus with this book is on contrasting just the modern, Western, secular worldview with Christianity, and he just can’t cover everything. I know that for some people, that last bullet point in the above chapter summary may make very little sense and I’d be happy to help explain and flesh it out better. Do you think the “burden of proof” falls more on one side or another? We usually do the same thing when it comes to religion. In this chapter, he’s pushing back against the idea that scientific fact and rock-solid reason are all there is to a secular worldview. The strengths of Keller’s book are several. Many people today do not see faith as a live option, so they are unwilling to spend time examining the evidence for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity. His aim is to present Christianity in a desirable light so that the secular person will want to explore the rationality and truth claims of Christianity. An index of all my posts in this series can be found HERE. Keller argues in this chapter that secularism actually involves “a set of faith beliefs,” or “highly contestable assumptions about the nature of proof and rationality itself.” He explores two main ideas to support his point: Keller goes on to make the case that our ideas of inherent human rights and our positive views of the body and of emotions all came from Judeo-Christian theology, not secular philosophy. In the second and third sections, Keller moves to argue that Christianity delivers stable meaning that can endure suffering, deep satisfaction that is independent of life’s circumstances, freedom that avoids the naively thin modern conception of only freedom from constraints, a sense of self/identity that at the same time produces joyful self-affirmation and humble self-denial for the good of others, hope that can stare death in the face through the promise that paradise lost will one day become paradise restored, a grounded morality that can make sense of the moral feelings that all people experience, and justified support for human rights and compassion toward the oppressed. As to your question, that’s really a great one and unfortunately I don’t have a good answer. Making Sense of God, which serves as an apologetic prequel to his previous book, The Reason for God, exudes the same charitable tone and rhetorical skill that those familiar with Keller’s work and ministry have come to expect. I appreciate that through this book, Keller is encouraging us to stop making reductionist statements ourselves and to also see what’s underneath the reductionist statements of others. Would you say that those other religions took those values from the Judeo-Christian traditions? But when a loved one dies, suddenly they believe their friend or family member is “in a better place” or “in heaven.” Or if something terrible happens, they suddenly believe in God’s judgment or ask why He doesn’t seem to care to make things right. The reason for this, he argues, is two-fold. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window), Making Sense of God Study – Ch. At some point in our lives, some form of “the unthinkable” (however you define that) WILL happen. Change ). Professing Christians say that they believe in God and that He provides the framework for their whole lives, yet they live in such a way that does not reflect His ways or words. | Homeward. We are a group of ladies living overseas who meet each week to eat, talk….and study. Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. I’ve mentioned before how in our modern, Western culture we take so little time to just think. Christians “don’t believe in a meaning we must go out and discover but in a Meaning that came into the world to find us.” (76). The secularist has claimed often that his beliefs are based on reason whereas the religious person’s beliefs are based on faith. CHAPTER SUMMARY The common perception is something like this: the secular worldview = facts, religious worldview = faith. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. I also think this question of how we cope with suffering is so very important. The provocative thesis of Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Sceptical is that secularism as well as religion involves faith. Or some of both? What do you think of Keller’s provocative thesis that one can’t truly have a solely scientific, rational, and secular worldview because there’s a fair amount of “faith” that’s required? In this week’s chapter, Tim Keller examines how various perspectives equip a person to deal with questions about “the meaning of life” and suffering. Chapter three, “A Meaning That Suffering Can’t Take From You,” is coming up next week! Keller evaluates all of these goods that most people in the modern Western culture would affirm as good, and shows how Christianity makes by far the most sense of human experience and lends the best tools for dealing with the unavoidable problems of life. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Enter your email and subscribe below! So the wise path would be to ask: how well equipped are you/am I to deal with those moments and even lesser moments of pain and suffering when they happen? Why? Pingback: Making Sense of God Study – Ch. Many modern, secular people argue, “If, Keller has two questions for this “Everyone gets to define meaning and happiness for themselves” worldview – “Is this a cogent, consistent position? Keller essentially argues for two broad theses. It’s been pretty difficult to synthesize all the info down and keep these posts to a reasonably easy-to-consume length. Chapter 2: Isn't Religion Based on Faith and Secularism on Evidence? Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical, is a prequel to The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. Like today, we might say that Islam or Buddhism seems to teach very similar values, but historically has that always been the case? Setting out to sustain his first thesis, Keller cites a major study conducted by the Pew Research Center that concluded that religion is on the rise whereas secularism is on a steady decline. Two thoughts (of many) from the chapter…First, I think that Keller does a great job of separating out the potential views on these questions and dealing with them individually, but it seems like in practice, many people seem to believe a mix of things, which I’m sure Keller would argue is equally illogical. I welcome it all! I’d encourage you to consider that Christianity provides both true and deeply satisfying answers to questions like “Why there is suffering in the world at all?” and “How do I deal with it when it happens?” Ask me about it if you’re at all curious as to what Christianity teaches on those topics. How do you answer the question, “What is the meaning of life?” Is it composed of objective meaning or created? This argument has generated a great deal of discussion recently, so Keller’s inclusion of it is pertinent. Not only do we live very distracted lives in general, but in our Twitter age, we’re in a place where knee-jerk emotional vents and 140-character summaries of complex issues are about all we have the time or patience for. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window). It’s neat to see the ways this book generates good conversation and questions over different contexts. We live in an age of skepticism. Tim Keller has served as the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan for nearly thirty years and has spent much of his ministry engaging skeptics of Christianity with both winsome humility and intellectual dexterity. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Throughout history, THE question has been, “What is the meaning of life?” But in recent times, this “crisis of meaning…is resisted by many in the twenty-first [century].” (60) Why? We're in chapter two of Tim Keller's Making Sense of God this week. There are many of the same values in Judaism though, which does predate Buddhism, so perhaps some of those values were well-known enough throughout the world at that time for there to be some overlap? C. S. Lewis formerly argued that materialism cannot account for one trusting one’s rational faculties, and Alvin Plantinga expanded on this argument giving it a more philosophically robust treatment in more recent days. Second, many people sense intuitively that something exists that is beyond the natural world. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. ( Log Out / Pingback: Making Sense of God Book Study – Post Index | Homeward. . Wow, thanks so much for your comment, Connie! Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical. I recognized before how impossible it is for anyone to either completely prove or disprove something like the existence of God, but I thought it was very interesting how Keller framed the same idea, that we all have faith, it’s just expressed in different ways and we all just “draw the lines between orthodoxy and heresy in different places.” I think it’s a much more nuanced and reasonable perspective to say look, we all accept different ideas we can’t completely prove, so instead of trying to “prove” something, let’s just look at the evidence and compare it to different belief systems and everyone will make their own decisions. And his challenge is the same to Christians. Questions? 4, Making Sense of God Book Study – Post Index | Homeward. Making Sense of God provides reasons for exploring the truth claims of Christianity. Keller encourages us to go through the process of “doubting your doubts.” Like the example explained above in the chapter summary with the problem of evil and suffering, can you isolate a doubt you have and dig deeper to what assumptions are underneath. Preface: The Faith of the Secular Chapter 1: Isn't Religion Going Away? Conclusion: It may seem that Keller is saying that if science and reason are not as reliable as we think, then truth is unknowable and there’s no way to “weigh and evaluate such philosophical religious statements.” (53) But to the contrary, his point is “only that using demanding, demonstrable, unquestionable proof for them is inappropriate…Rather than unfairly asking only religious people to prove their views, we need to compare and contrast religious beliefs and their evidences with secular beliefs and theirs.” In other words, whether secular or religious, we all have beliefs that can’t be scientifically proven either way and that are taken in a measure of faith.
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