The Grand Façade, So Soon Will Burn

If memory serves, I wore blue jeans and a blue-striped shirt, and without missing a note, I sat on the gym stage and played Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” for the eighth-grade talent show. I killed it, the undisputed zenith of my guitar-playing career, except perhaps for when I played Jewel’s “You Were Meant for Me” the following year in the ninth-grade talent show. After these moments in the limelight, I retired early and never played in public again.

And for those wondering, I didn’t sing in either performance. No one wants to get booed by peers, especially in our young teenage years.

Thirty years have passed since middle school, and to say I tinker with the guitar these days feels generous. I play maybe thirty minutes a year. But I still know enough to help my youngest daughter learn the instrument. She’s the age I was when I played Clapton, Nirvana, and Michael W. Smith, so the artists she’ll want to imitate have changed. Still, she wants to learn, and I’m happy to help.

Playing guitar with her has led me to pull out some favorite songs from the past to see if I can still play them—or learn them. One of my favorite songs of all time is Peter Gabriel’s hit “In Your Eyes.” In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2012 when Gabriel rereleased the album, he described the basis of the song as “an ambiguous love song that can be human love, man to woman, or man to God.” Over the years, I’ve come to love this ambiguity of the song.

Sometimes, of course, intentional ambiguity of singing about God or singing about romantic love can go wrong. I’m a hard pass on sappy church worship songs that sing of Jesus as though he were our boyfriend. But in the hands of careful poets, the double referent of lovers and Lover can work. I think of the Song of Solomon and the lines about the flame of the Lord. “Love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD” (Song 8:6). Is the author speaking about his love for his bride or God’s love for us? Both, I think.

The song “From Now On” from The Greatest Showman strikes me as another example of a song with a double referent. Sure, P.T. Barnum’s character, played by Hugh Jackman, sings his repentance to his wife, but could we not also hope that the anthem which starts in his heart is also sung—perhaps even more so—to his creator? Putting aside whatever the historical realities are, I like to think his words double as a song of repentance and coming home to the Lord.

Anyway, back to “In Your Eyes.” The version of the classic song that I love so much is a cover by Jeffrey Gaines. Gaines recorded a live version of “In Your Eyes” that became popular about twenty-five years ago, which, incidentally, paralleled the time I started coming back to following the Lord.

Indeed, I can still remember the exact moment I drove from one major city to another, rolled down the windows, and turned up the volume when the Gaines version came on the radio. I sang along like I was in the front row at the concert. At the time, I’m not sure how familiar I was with Gabriel’s original from ’86. I’m sure I knew it through cultural osmosis, but, to me, it might as well have been Gaines who wrote it first.

In recent days, I’ve been thinking a lot about a particular line, singing it over and over in my head. The pre-chorus goes,

All my instincts, they return
The grand façade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

The line I have in mind is, “The grand façade, so soon will burn.” It names all the fakery we erect between ourselves and God, and between ourselves and others, even those we love.

Twenty-five years ago, I don’t think I understood what I was singing when I sang those lines. I suppose that’s often the case. For some song lyrics, it’s probably better that way. Around that time I had also memorized songs by Nelly and the St. Lunatics, which I will most certainly not be teaching to my daughter, even if I could play them on the guitar.

The lines about burning down our grand façade would ordinarily be a dreadful and haunting prospect. We wear masks on purpose. Sure, part of us wants to be fully seen and fully known by others, lest we live with deep isolation and alienation. But we also most certainly do not want to be fully seen and fully known. We’ve placed our fig leaves, thin as they are, to hide shame. The isolation is intentional. What could be more dreadful than burning the façade we’ve so elaborately manicured? Who would want to be naked before those we’ve wronged, those from whom we legitimately have so much to hide?

But the song lyrics clearly ring with hope, even thankfulness, for the experience of burning. They sound nothing like the lamenting and bemoaning of arson.

The assumption must be that it is good for the façade, grand as we might consider it, to be scorched to ash. It’s good for a man to reckon with his maker. It’s good for us to give up the pretense.

More than when I first started singing the song, I see today how burning the façade is good. It’s good when there is such a thing as Christ. When we have a savior who is holy and happy, powerful and loving, just and good, then dropping the masks is good. Having the unconditional love of a savior means the façade can’t burn soon enough.

Writing about both marriage and the love of Christ, Timothy Keller says, “When over the years someone has seen you at your worst, and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly, it is a consummate experience.” He adds, “To be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us” (The Meaning of Marriage).

In recent days, as I find myself singing the lines, they still ring with hope and thankfulness in my heart. As I play the chords B minor followed by a quick A and a little riff on D, I look forward to the day when whatever façade yet remains will also fully and finally burn in the very flame of the Lord at the second coming of Christ. On that day we will be known even as we are fully known, a consummate experience. In the light and the heat in God’s eyes, we will be complete. In God’s eyes, we see the resolution of all our fruitless searches.

In the good news of Jesus, the future day of judgment and burning becomes a prospect more happy than haunting.

* Photo by Nivenn Lanos on Unsplash

A ‘Holy Dissatisfaction’ with Anything Less than Gospel Grace: An Interview with Matt Smethurst about Tim Keller

As soon as I read Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel by Matt Smethurst (Crossway, 2025), I immediately bought a copy for my father and encouraged a friend to read it and discuss it with me. Since then, I’ve mentioned the book to others many times in conversations. It’s such a good summary of classic Keller: simple and profound, challenging and encouraging, relevant and transcendent.

Matt Smethurst is the lead pastor of River City Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia, and the author of several books. He also cohosts The Everyday Pastor podcast for The Gospel Coalition. Before all of that, when Matt was an editor at TGC, he gave me my first chance to write for an online publication. I reviewed a book about preaching. That was over ten years ago. In the last decade I am thankful for how the Lord has used Matt to bless others through his broader ministry.

Here’s an interview with Matt about writing the book, how it changed him, and what he hopes readers take away from it. Please consider grabbing a copy.

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[Benjamin] Matt, I thought you did a great job including little-known details about Timothy Keller, while still also championing his most well-known themes. How did you balance writing for two audiences, those who are Keller nerds (like me and many others) and those who might know very little of his life and teaching?

Matt Smethurst (picture from River City Baptist Church website)

[Matt] I wanted the book to serve both people who have long appreciated Keller’s ministry and those who are less familiar with his work. There are plenty of Easter eggs in the endnotes for Keller fans, but I was mainly trying to distill and synthesize Keller’s best teaching on Christian living for any believer who wants to think better about applying all of the gospel to all of life.

[Benjamin] Each chapter in the book explores a significant theme in Keller’s writing and ministry. Which theme has been the most significant in shaping your own ministry? (For me, it’s likely Keller’s writing about idolatry in his book Counterfeit Gods.)

[Matt] Likely the way Keller described the gospel as “three ways to live.” There is one way to be saved, but there are actually two ways to be lost.

We see this not only in the parable of the prodigal sons in Luke 15, but in many other passages. Think, for example, about the beginning of Romans. While there is only one way to be saved (Rom. 3), there are actually two ways to be lost (Rom. 1 and 2). The first kind of lostness is obvious: unapologetic idolatry. I live for myself, and I’m proud of it. That’s Romans 1. The second way, though, is more subtle: religious hypocrisy. I live for myself, and nobody can find out. That’s Romans 2. In other words, you can avoid God through immorality, but you can also avoid God through performative morality. The first option is intuitive; the second is insidious.

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In my preaching, I try to explain that you can avoid God by never coming to church, and you can avoid God by coming to church. As Keller points out, you can have two people sitting in the same pew, hearing the same sermons, singing the same songs, and serving in the same ministries—but there for completely different reasons. One is present to bring pleasure to the God who has saved him. The other is there to earn God’s favor or stay in his good graces. And the difference between these two people—even though outwardly everything looks the same—is the difference between heaven and hell.

[Benjamin] When a person does a deep study of a subject, that person is always shaped more than the readers. It might take an author 500 hours to write a book that someone can read in 5 hours. What will be the enduring legacy of this massive undertaking for your own life, maybe even at a more subconscious level of how Keller and the project shaped you?

[Matt] A holy dissatisfaction with anything less than experiencing the wonder of gospel grace. Keller was relentless in challenging us to take the truths in our heads and press them down into our hearts, until—by the power of the Holy Spirit—they catch fire. Keller invoked imagery from Jonathan Edwards, who said that it’s one thing to be an expert in honey and know all its properties, but it’s another to have tasted it. Rather than permitting us to move beyond the gospel, Keller beckoned us to move deeper into it—until we taste and see that the Lord is good.

[Benjamin] You were well acquainted with Keller’s ministry before this project, both his speaking and writing. Many of us are too. But you went down rabbit holes few have traveled, especially in the breadth of his preaching, and specifically his preaching before planting Redeemer Church in Manhattan. What is something new that you learned from his early preaching?

Matt: It was interesting to see how his preaching remained consistent in some ways but evolved in others. For example, I remember listening to a cassette tape of a 1977 sermon on Romans 5 in which 26-year-old Keller quoted from The Richmond Times-Dispatch, the local paper. In later decades, of course, he would be quoting from The New York Times. But that basic burden—to exegete not just Scripture but also the culture, in order to reach people’s hearts—was there from the early days.

In other ways his preaching developed over time. When he was serving in the small-town context of Hopewell, Virginia, his sermons didn’t hum with the theme of idolatry the way they would in Manhattan. Part of that is because he hadn’t yet read Martin Lloyd-Jones’s sermon on 1 John 5:21 (“Little children, keep yourselves from idols”) or David Powlison’s seminal essay “Idols of the Heart and ‘Vanity Fair.’” Around the time Keller was planting Redeemer in New York, he was awakening to the centrality of idolatry in Scripture and how, at bottom, sin is a worship problem. That realization transformed his preaching.

[Benjamin] I feel like people always ask celebrities and influencers about their “morning routine.” I assume this gets asked because people believe that if we can just copy this or that practice, then we’ll get the same results. Of course it’s never that simple. Still, what is one practice of Keller that you have tried to include more in your life, and what results are you seeing?

[Matt] I want to deepen my prayer life just as Keller did over the course of decades. He was disciplined in morning, midday, and evening prayer. And yet, a few months before he died, an interviewer asked him to look back over 50 years of ministry and share one thing he wished he’d done differently. “That’s easy,” he replied. “I wish I had prayed more.” So even though prayer was something he taught on eloquently—and even practiced himself—he still sensed his need for deeper communion with the living God. Immersing myself in Keller has been freshly motivating in this regard.

[Benjamin] Bonus question, Matt. Was Keller a better preacher or writer? Why?

[Matt] He was a better preacher (and he’d say the same). Keller was a preacher who wrote more than a writer who preached. Contrast him, for example, with C. S. Lewis—a generational talent as a writer. Though Keller was a good writer, he wasn’t as gifted as Lewis. That said, Keller was unparalleled in his ability to preach to the heart in simple and compelling ways, while remaining biblically faithful and culturally attuned.

[Benjamin] Thank you, Matt, so much for all the work to prepare this book. I hope your work invites many new readers to the blessings of Keller’s ministry.