In his book The Reason For God, Tim Keller gives a philosophical and biblical argument for many questions the world has posed concerning the existence of God. The introduction to the book is incredible. Keller tells the religious to questions their beliefs and for the skeptics to test their own, this produces a more knowledgeable people-group, which Keller hopes will ultimately point to Jesus.
The first chapter, There Can’t Be Just One True Religion, is fascinating and is full of compelling arguments. The reader is presented with three ways that world leaders are attempting to deal with religion.
-The first is to outlaw religion. Most people who back this argument are in the camp that says that all religion does is create disharmony and produce wars and violence. And although many wars have been (unrightfully) waged in the name of God, some of the worlds greatest acts of intolerance and violence and come out of movements to suppress the religious due to their intolerance and violence (Communist China, Khmer Rouge, and in certain ways Nazi Germany). Also, the enactment of this ’secularization thesis’ has come to produce some of the worlds greatest Christian movements. It has spurred Anglican growth in Nigeria (there are 6x more Anglicans in Nigeria than the US), large Presbyterian growth in Ghana, it has created a Koran population built up of 40% Christians, and some say that the same type of revolution may occur in China this century.
-The second is to condemn religion. Through logic, we can see that the legitimate outlaw of religion would be impossible. Keller presents us with multiple argument given by those condemning religion. Among them are “all major religions are equally valid and teach the same thing,”"each religion sees part of spiritual truth, but none can see the whole truth” (I found Keller’s reasoning against this point to be rather compelling), and “it is arrogant to insist your religion is right and to convert others to it.” Keller closes this section with a great thought, “It is no more narrow to claim that one religion is right than to claim that one way to think about all religions (namely tat all are equal) is right. We are all exclusive in our beliefs about religion, but in different ways.”
-The third is to keep religion completely private. I don’t feel like going into much detail on this section, but basically what it boils down to is that it is impossible to keep religion out of the public eye. Whenever a person makes a moral decision it always comes down to what he or she believes to be truth. It is simply impossible to have a moral standard without a religious backbone. Obviously Keller presents this thought better, but I don’t want to ruin the book for you.
In the final section of this chapter, Christianity Can Save the World, Keller gives a Biblical argument for the Christians proclivity to respect people of other faiths (although this doesn’t always happen, it is Biblical.) Essentially what Keller says is that Christians shouldn’t feel superior to non-believers, because it isn’t our works that have saved us, but rather Christ’s work on the cross, thus we have nothing to brag about. The chapter is closed with this thought. “We cannot skip lightly over the fact that there have been injustices done by the church in the name of Christ, yet who can deny that the force of Christians’ most fundamental beliefs can be a powerful impetus for peace-making in our troubled world.”
When I read chapter two, How Could A Good God Allow Suffering?, I didn’t feel like it had convinced me of anything, but after thinking about the ideas presented, I feel that Keller had an effective presentation of his thoughts. This chapter has a lot of deep intellectual conversation, so I am not going to go into lengthy detail, but rather give the basic explanation. The basic thought is that evil and suffering isn’t evidence against God, but rather they may be evidence for God. Just because we can’t imagine a reason why God would allow something bad to happen, doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have a reason of his own. The example of people coming out of tragedies with a renewed spirit, new knowledge, and overall beneficial gain from their own loss is used. *I’ve skipped a lot* Next we are presented with the idea that God has bore the ultimate pain through Christ’s crucifixion. There is no greater agony that the loss of a relationship. As Christ was on the Cross, he lost the relationship with His Father and with His God, while bearing the weight of the world’s sin. This is the ultimate pain (the true exemplification of Immanuel, God with us), which allows for our redemption. The main idea in this chapter is that a good God can allow pain and suffering because of the redemption and resurrection that is in Christ Jesus. God offers redemption of pain in the eternity that is to come. Most other religions with an afterlife allow for the believer to be rewarded with material acquisitions in order to appease the suffering in the life past. Christianity is different in that it does not give material reparations, but rather it provides a cleaning of all pain and essential erases it from every occurring. It isn’t a consolation for the live you never had, but rather a restoration of the life you’ve always wanted. “This means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired but it will in some ways make the eventual glory and joy even greater.”
I will end this chapter with a quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky:
“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”
You should read this book. Hopefully I will be able to review the rest of it on here.
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