Tidbits from The Reason for God #3

Here are some tidbits from chapter 14, The Dance of God.

p. 214 "In self-centeredness we demand that others orbit around us...The inner life of the triune God, however, is utterly different. The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two...Each of the divine persons centers upon the others. None demands that the others revolve around him. Each voluntarily circles the other two...That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love."

p.217 "You will nver get a sense of self by standing still, as it were, and making everything revolve around your needs and interests. Unless you are willing to experience the loss of options and the individual limitations that comes from being in committed relationships, you will remain out fo touch with your own nature and the nature of things...We were made for mutually self-giving, other-directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made."

p.218 "He has infinite happiness not through self-centeredness, but through self-giving, other-centered love. And the only way we, who have been created in his image, can have this same joy, is if we center our entire lives around him instead of ourselves."

p. 218 Quoting historian George Marsden's summary of Jonathan Edwards' idea: "Why would such an infinitely good, perfect, and eternal being create? The ultimate reason that God creates is not to remedy some lack in God, but to extend that perfect internal communication of the triune God's goodness and love...The universe is an explosion of God's glory."

p.224 "Jesus's life, death, and resurrection was an infinitely costly rescue operation...To be a Christian today is to become part of that same operation..."

I certainly enjoyed the book and will be reaching for it regularly. Let me know if anything stuck out to you.

Tidbits from The Reason for God #2

Part 2 of Keller's book deals with 'The Reasons for Faith'. The seven topics are:

8 - The Clues of God
9 - The Knowledge of God
10 - The Problem of Sin
11 - Religion and the Gospel
12 - The (True) Story of the Cross
13 - The Reality of the Resurrection
14 - The Dance of God

As with Part 1 I really enjoyed Keller's style - quick and substantive; he gives you alot to chew on and talk about. Here are some tidbits from chapters 8-13 that caught my eye; they are listed by chapter #, page # and then the tidbit.

8, p.129 Quoting Francis Collins "I can't imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself."

8, p.132 "There is something about nature that is much more striking and inexplicable than its design. All scientific, inductive reasoning is based on the assumption of the regularity (the "laws") of nature...Most people find that normal and untroubling...science cannot prove the continued regularity of nature, it can only take it on faith...As a proof for the existence of God, the regularity of nature is escapable. You can always say, "We don't know why things are as they are." As a clue for God, however, it is helpful."

9, p.153 "If there is no god, then there is no way to say any action is "moral" and another "immoral" but only "I like this."...if there is no God, then all moral statements are arbitrary, all moral valuations are subjective and internal, and there can be no external moral standard by which a person's feeling and values are judged."

9, p.156 "If a premise ("There is no God") leads to a conclusion you know isn't true ("Napalming babies is culturally relative") then why not change the premise?"

11, p. 177 "If you are avoiding sin and living morally so that God will have to bless and save you, then ironically, you may be looking to Jesus as a teacher, model, and helper but you are avoiding him as Savior...That, ironically, is a rejection of the gospel of Jesus. It is a Christianized form of religion. It is possible to avoid Jesus as Savior as much by keeping all the Biblical rules as by breaking them."

11, p.177 "Both religion (in which you build your identity on your moral achievements) and irreligion (in which you build your identity on some other secular pursuit or relationship) are, ultimately, spiritually identical courses to take. Both are "sin.""

12, p.187 "...the cost of the damage must be borne by someone. Either you or he absorbs the cost for the deed, but the debt does not somehow vanish into thin air."

12, p.189 "She went through the suffering of costly forgiveness, which at first always feels far worse than before it can be felt, but it does come eventually. It leads to a new peace, a resurrection. It is the only way to stop the spread of the evil."

13, p.205 "If there had been only an empty tomb and no sighting, no one would have concluded it was a resurrection. They would have assumed that the body had been stolen. Yet if there had been only eyewitness sightings of Jesus and no empty tomb, no one would have concluded it was a resurrection, because people's accounts of seeing departed loved ones happen all the time. Only if the two factors were both true together would anyone have concluded that Jesus was raised from the dead."

Tidbits from The Reason for God #1

Part 1 of Keller's book deals with common questions/doubts/reasons that skeptics and unbelievers raise in regards to Christianity. Here are the seven thoughts he deals with:

1 - There Can't Be Just One True Religion
2 - How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?
3 - Christianity is a Straitjacket
4 - The Church is Responsible for So Much Injustice
5 - How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?
6 - Science Has Disproved Christianity
7 - You Can't Take the Bible Literally

Here are some bits that I marked in my copy. The chapter # comes first, followed by the page # and then the quote.

2, p.25 "If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can't know. Indeed, you can't have it both ways."

3, p.39 "The idea of a totally inclusive community is, therefore, an illusion. Every human community holds in common some beliefs that necessarily create boundaries..."

3, p.44 Quoting historian Andrew Walls, "Cultural diversity was built into the Christian faith...There is no "Christian culture" the way there is an "Islamic culture" which you can recognize from Pakistan to Tunisia to Morocco..."

3, p.46 "A fish is only free if it is restricted and limited to water. If we put it out on the grass, its freedom to move and even live is not enhanced, but destroyed. The fish dies if we do not honor the reality of its nature."

4, p.59 "The tendency of religious people, however, is to use spiritual and ethical observance as a lever to gain power over others and over God, appeasing him through ritual and good works."

4, p.61 "The shortcomings of the church can be understood historically as the imperfect adoption and practice of the principles of the Christian gospel."

4, p.67 "When people have done injustice in the name of Christ they are not being true to the spirit of the one who himself died as a victim of injustice and who called for the forgiveness of his enemies."

Overview of Keller's The Reason for God

This book has been enormously popular in certain circles and, imho, for good reason. It's very intelligent and very readable; whatta combo! It is first and foremost an apologetic book for today. While Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands A Verdict is very factual, aggressive and almost confrontational, Keller's is much more persuasive. There is a gentle tone that strikes me as being much truer to the idea of reasoning with someone, while McDowell's is more argumentative. Granted, there will always be a place for McDowell's factual/historical apologetics but I believe that philosophical apologetics are the sharper sword in today's society.

What convinced me to purchase the book 'hot off the press' and read through it with a friend? The gospel-centeredness and sound reasoning of the author. Keller has only published one other book, Ministries of Mercy, in his pastoral career. But he has written great articles for various publications and his NYC church, Redeemer Presbyterian. And there's a good batch of his free online sermons available at http://sermons.redeemer.com/store/index.cfm. His writings and sermons and the church all seem to have a gospel-centered outlook; it's crazy beautiful! There are some people you read and re-read because it so resonates with your heart and mind. Well, the gospel-centeredness definitely touches my heart and I hope that the repeated exposure will help train my mind and instincts to be gospel-centered.

Well that's enough gushing for one post. I'll move on to some specifics in the next post.