Digest: Making Sense of God
Rediscover Faith's Rationality and Relevance in a Secular World
In Making Sense of God, Timothy Keller tackles the key questions of modern secularism and the relevance of religious belief. Keller, a renowned pastor and theologian, combines philosophical arguments, historical analysis, and personal anecdotes to argue for the rationality and necessity of faith today. He illustrates that Christianity offers a more coherent and fulfilling framework for understanding human existence, morality, and purpose. The book challenges the notion that secularism is the inevitable result of modernization and education, asserting that religion remains crucial in providing meaning, morality, and hope. Readers will gain valuable insights into the limitations of secularism and the transformative power of faith.
Key Ideas:
The Persistence of Religion: Despite the widespread belief that religion is on the decline, Timothy Keller highlights data suggesting that religion is actually growing globally. He notes, 'The world is expected to become more religious—not less.' This challenges the assumption that modernization and education naturally lead to secularism. For instance, Keller recounts an experience where a business professional was surprised to see thousands of young professionals attending church in Manhattan, contradicting his belief that religion was dying out among the educated.
Secularism's Missing Elements: Keller argues that secular reason alone cannot fulfill all human needs, particularly those related to morality, meaning, and purpose. He references philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who acknowledges that secular reason cannot account for 'the substance of the human.' Keller explains that while science can describe what life is, it cannot prescribe what life ought to be. This gap is evident in historical examples like the eugenics movement, where scientific reasoning led to morally reprehensible practices.
The Role of Transcendence: Many people intuitively sense a transcendent realm beyond the natural world, which secularism fails to address. Keller shares the story of Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon who returned to faith after realizing that secularism could not explain the reality of love, meaning, and morals. Kalanithi found that 'scientific knowledge [is] inapplicable' to the 'central aspects of human life' such as hope, love, and virtue. This realization led him to embrace the values of Christianity, which he found compelling and necessary for a fulfilling life.
Christianity's Contribution to Human Equality and Rights: Christianity introduced the revolutionary idea that all humans are fundamentally equal in dignity, which was unprecedented in ancient times. Keller notes, 'Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity—an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance.' This belief laid the groundwork for modern concepts of human rights and democracy.
The Absurdity of Life Without Meaning: The book delves into the existential crisis faced by modern and postmodern thinkers who grapple with the idea of a meaningless universe. Albert Camus and Bertrand Russell, for instance, argue that inevitable death renders life absurd and leads to 'unyielding despair.' This perspective is contrasted with the postmodern view, which suggests that relinquishing the search for inherent meaning can be liberating. However, this approach is critiqued for being inconsistent and impractical, as it often leads to a superficial and narcissistic existence.
Freedom Through Constraints: Keller argues that true freedom is not the absence of constraints but the strategic choice of the right constraints. He illustrates this with examples such as athletes who submit to rigorous training regimens to achieve peak performance and individuals who sacrifice certain freedoms to maintain loving relationships. Keller states, 'Real freedom comes from a strategic loss of some freedoms in order to gain others.' This idea challenges the modern notion of absolute individual autonomy by emphasizing that meaningful freedom often involves recognizing and submitting to the inherent limitations of our physical and social realities.
The Fragility of Modern Identity: Modern identity is often built on personal achievements and external validation, making it highly fragile. Keller explains that in contemporary society, individuals derive their self-worth from their performance and the approval of others. This dependency on external validation makes people vulnerable to failure and rejection. Keller illustrates this with the example of a novelist who tied his self-worth to his writing quality, leading to a loss of objectivity and increased anxiety. He writes, 'When good writing was my only goal in life, I made the quality of my work the measure of my worth.'
Practical Tips:
Engage in Open Dialogue: Participate in discussion groups that compare different belief systems, including secular and religious perspectives. This can provide a broader understanding and challenge your own assumptions.
Embrace Moments of Transcendence: When you encounter moments of profound beauty or deep emotional experiences, allow yourself to explore the possibility that these moments point to something beyond the material world. Reflect on what these experiences might mean for your understanding of life and existence.
Reflect on Personal Beliefs: Take time to examine your own beliefs about meaning, morality, and purpose. Consider whether secularism alone can provide satisfactory answers to these fundamental questions.
Key Quotes:
Scientific knowledge [is] inapplicable to the central aspects of human life.
The ideals of freedom, of conscience, human rights and democracy [are] the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love.
If the premise of secularism led to conclusions he knew were not true—namely that love, meaning, and morals are illusions—then it was time to change his premise.
To move from religion to secularism is not so much a loss of faith as a shift into a new set of beliefs and into a new community of faith.
Both Ehrenreich and the young man used exclusive rationality... and came to the conclusion that, therefore, they could hardly know anything at all.
We should, therefore, stop demanding that belief in God meet a standard of universally acknowledged proof when we don’t apply that to the other commitments on which we base our lives.
Only when this background belief in the sufficiency of our own reason shifted did the presence of evil in the world seem to be an argument against the existence of God.
Christianity saw the battle for human virtue as no longer one of head versus heart... The battle was over where to direct the supreme love of your heart.
If you say you don’t believe in God but you do believe in the rights of every person and the requirement to care for all the weak and the poor, then you are still holding on to Christian beliefs, whether you will admit it or not.
If your Meaning in life is to know, please, emulate, and be with God, then suffering can actually enhance your Meaning in life.
Christianity teaches that suffering can be meaningful, that it can make you something great.
The things that human beings think will bring fulfillment and contentment don’t.
We don’t believe in a meaning we must go out and discover but in a Meaning that came into the world to find us.
Our lives are inherently dependent on others and subject to forces and circumstances beyond our control.
You can’t be completely free in the contemporary sense of the word and simultaneously in a strong love relationship.
The best way to be free, to ensure that the wrong he has done to you does the least damage, is to forgive him.
Jesus Christ lost his glory and became mortal and died for us. In Jesus, God says, 'I will adjust to you. I will sacrifice for you.
We need someone from outside to say we are of great worth, and the greater the worth of that someone or someones, the more power they have to instill a sense of self and of worth.
The self-made identity, based on our own performance and achievement in ways that older identities were not, makes our self-worth far more fragile in the face of failure and difficulty.
As hard as it is to believe that he is God come to earth, it may be just as difficult not to.
Only in God is there an ultimate loyalty that does not breed injustice and cruelty, and a meaning from which nothing on heaven and earth can separate us.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ provides a nonoppressive absolute truth, one that provides a norm outside of ourselves as the way to escape relativism and selfish individualism.