The Reason I’m Most Thankful to Have Timothy Keller as One of My Spiritual Fathers
For all his greatness, we should most seek to imitate the late pastor’s humility and indifference to fame.
I went through all my seminary education largely oblivious to whatever pastor or author was currently deemed the most popular in evangelicalism—or, conversely, which pastor had most recently done something silly or sinful and thus immediately needed to be talked about by everyone. It’s a great way to go through seminary, and maybe life. Sure, I had a few favorites even in the early years of my ministry training, but they were literally just a few. And none of them, back then, were Timothy Keller.
I only met Dr. Keller once in person. He came to my seminary as a visiting preacher and lecturer. I didn’t really know who he was, even though it was about the same year he was co-founding The Gospel Coalition and lots and lots of other people apparently knew him. That anecdote speaks of my blissful ignorance.
Yet now, some fifteen years later, when I think over his ministry and the blessing he was to me and so many others, I’m thankful that God extruded him to a place of prominence. I’m thankful for books like Counterfeit Gods that gave me the language to name and renounce my idolatry, the language of “a good thing becoming an ultimate thing.” I’m thankful for those in our congregation who became Christians as we led a study through The Prodigal God. And I’m thankful for the textbook Center Church, and the way it prepared our leaders to plant a church in our city. In short, I’m thankful for the publishing and church-planting empire the Lord built through him.
The one-year anniversary of his death was last month. Christianity Today published a reflection I had about his life and what I’m most thankful for. This may come as a surprise. It wasn’t his writing or preaching, despite the above picture being from the bookshelf in my office which prominently features most of his books.
If you’d like to read the post, you can do so here, “Would Tim Keller Care If We Weren’t Still Talking About Him? Probably Not.” Christianity Today used this line as the excerpt for sharing, which I think gets at the point of my article: “For all his greatness, we should most seek to imitate the late pastor’s humility and indifference to fame.” The article also talks about the little-noticed detail of a brown banana peel that sat next to Keller in a famous photograph of him.
I can’t republish the whole article here, but I will include the first three paragraphs below. I’d love for you to read and share the article.
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In spring of last year, many of us saw a photo of the late Timothy Keller sitting on a park bench. The photo was used on the cover of Collin Hansen’s biography of Keller, and it circulated around the internet in May when he passed away—on social media, blogs, and even Keller’s personal website.
What most of us didn’t see, however, was the banana peel lying on the bench only a couple feet from Keller. The peel has been cropped from most versions of the photo, and understandably so. Who wants to see an ugly brown bit of organic waste in an author’s photograph?
I confess that if I were a world-famous pastor and best-selling author having my picture taken by a professional photographer, I would most certainly have moved the banana peel before someone took my picture. Who wouldn’t? But Keller didn’t seem to care . . .
To continue reading on Christianity Today’s website, click here.
This Changed My Attitude towards the Bible
It is important to observe a passage carefully before we interpret and apply a passage. Timothy Keller, in his book Hidden Christmas, speaks about this importance, sharing a powerful story about it.
Those words—“[this] changed my attitude towards the Bible”—are from pastor and author Timothy Keller in his most recent book Hidden Christmas. The event he’s speaking about was a time of observing one Bible verse for an extended period of time.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of observing the Bible carefully before we come to conclusions about what a passage means and before we figure out how we are supposed to obey a passage. In short, we must observe a passage carefully before we interpret and apply it.
Talking about this importance, Keller writes:
[In the Bible, what] looks like a simple statement, when pondered, can be discovered to have multiple dimensions of meaning and endless personal applications—far more than could ever be discovered with a cursory glance.
At [a formative] Christian conference [for me] . . . there was a session on how to read the Bible. The speaker, Barbara Boyd, said to us, “Sit down for thirty minutes and write down at least thirty things you can learn from Mark 1:17,” which reads, “’Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’” Then she instructed us, “Don’t think after 10 minutes and four or five things written down that you’ve figured it out. Take the whole thirty minutes and try to get to thirty things observed.” So we sat silently and did as told. And indeed, after about ten minutes I was pretty sure that I’d seen everything there was to see in these fifteen words. I put my pen down and wanted to spend the rest of the time daydreaming but everybody else looked like they were still working, so I picked up the pen and started pondering some more. Then I began to notice new things. If I imagined what the sentence would mean without one of its words, it was easier to assess what unique meaning it brought to the sentence. That gave me ability to get another two or three insights around each term. Then I tried to paraphrase the whole verse, putting it into my own words. That showed me more levels of meaning and implication that I had missed.
At the end of the thirty minutes, the teacher asked us to circle on our papers the best insight or the most life changing thing we had gotten out of the text. Then she said, “Okay, how many of you found this most incredible, life-changing thing in the first five minutes?” Nobody raised their hand. “Ten minutes?” Nobody raised their hand. “Fifteen minutes?” A few hands. “Twenty minutes?” A few more. “Twenty-five minutes?” Even more. That session changed my attitude toward the Bible and, indeed, my life.
Timothy Keller, Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ (New York, NY: Viking, 2016), 105–106 (emphasis original).
[Picture by Freddy Marschall / Unsplash]
ENCOUNTERS WITH JESUS by Timothy Keller (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)
When I read this book, I felt like a good friend introduced me to another good friend. You'd probably like to meet him too.
Encounters with Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions by Timothy Keller (Dutton, 2013, 240 pages)
In Encounters, Dr. Timothy Keller explores 10 encounters with Jesus: 5 encounters that Jesus had with non-Christians in the Gospel of John (e.g., Nicodemus and the woman at the well), and 5 encounters with aspects of who Jesus was and what he has done (e.g., his obedience and his ascension).
In doing so, we, as readers, are forced into these same encounters—not, however, as mere spectators, but as those that must make a decision about Jesus: neutrality is not a legitimate option. “Jesus demands a radical response of some kind” (46). And in our response to Jesus, we encounter “Life’s Biggest Questions” (a fitting subtitle).
A strength of the book, as with all of Keller’s material, is the balance between accessibility and profundity—which, incidentally, in my opinion, has a deep resonance with Jesus himself—accessible, yet profound, at least for those that risk the encounter.
At our church, we recently used this book in a class, particularly the first five chapters, to leverage just these kinds of encounters—encounters with Jesus and encounters with the big questions of life—but also with one additional aim: to learn how the Master (that’s Jesus, not Keller) interacted with non-Christians. We emphasized how Jesus witnessed to others and how we might in turn then display Jesus to others. In this regard, Keller was, we might also say, a masterful example of engagement.
A Favorite Quote
Jesus then demands a radical response of some kind. You could denounce him for being evil, or you may flee from him because he’s a lunatic, or you can fall down and worship him for being God. All of those reactions make sense; they are consistent with the reality of his words. But what you can’t do is respond moderately. You must not say to him, "Nice teaching. Very helpful. You are a fine thinker." That is simply dishonest. (Keller, Encounters with Jesus, 46)