Transcript
Tim Keller (0:03)
Welcome to Gospel and Life. How do we share what it means to truly know Jesus, not just as a historical figure or moral teacher, but as savior and king? This month, Tim Keller explores what the Bible shows us about being public with our faith and sharing the hope we have in Christ. The reading today is from the Book of Romans, chapter 1, verses 16 through 21. For I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith, from first to last, just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. This is the word of the Lord.
Unknown Speaker (1:52)
So we are again in a fourth week of a series we're doing called called Public Faith, Sharing the Hope that's Within. And each week into small groups, we're talking about what we are talking about here on a Sunday morning. And we don't live in a society that encourages people to be public about their religious faith and their religious beliefs, which is really ironic because we are encouraged in our society to be public about everything else. We have to tell people who we are. But think about it. There's nothing more fundamental to your identity and who you are than your religious beliefs. And therefore, if we're going to have a truly open and pluralistic society, we all have to learn how to be public about who we are, about our deepest faith beliefs, and yet to do so in a way that's respectful to others and promotes peace. And that's what we're exploring in these morning messages in the small groups each week. Now, this week, we want to talk about how do you talk about God and about God's existence. You're not going to be able to talk publicly about faith if you can't talk about God and his existence. And how do you go about that without getting into a shouting match? And it goes like this. God does exist. No, God doesn't exist. That's the Internet right there, you know, and sometimes actually out on the street. I think one of the ways to make people more reflective is to not ask the question, does God exist? But how do you know? How do you know whether God exists? How do you know God? Or if you say you can't know whether there's a God or not, how do you know that? See, as soon as you start to ask the question, how do you know whether there's a God? Or how do you know whether you can know whether there's a God? It just, it slows things down and makes people reflect a little bit more. And there is no better, more ingenious and brilliant answer to that question, how can you know whether there's a God or not? Than Romans chapter one. In this particular part of Romans chapter one, written by St. Paul, I don't think there's any more brilliant and ingenious answer to the question, how can we know whether there's a God or not? Than here? Because Paul actually gives you four answers pretty much all at once. We're going to look at them all just in these few verses. Here's what he says. He says, we can know God, we do know God, we don't know God. And we can truly know God, we can know God, we do know God, we don't know God all at once, by the way. And there's a way to truly know God. And he says it all right here. Let's take a look. First of all, as I said, he does say here that you can know that there's a God. So, for example, famous verses 19, they're all famous, 19 and 20. What may be known about God is plain. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made. Now what's he saying here? He says in what has been made, that's nature, the created world, there are clues, plain clues to God's existence. He's actually saying that it's possible to infer God's existence from what you see in nature. Now, the reason I use the word clues is many people have, sometimes people have, I think, misnamed these clues as proofs. And so some people say by looking at nature and looking at the world, you can prove there's a God. And if you go online or if you go to any philosophical textbook, they'll give you those proofs. And the proofs that come from looking at nature and the created order are proofs. They have these great Big long names. And once if you know how to say them, then you feel so much better about yourself. That really helps your self esteem. So there's the cosmological argument and there's the teleological argument. Now Paul doesn't use the term proof here and I think that's reading too much in a proof is something that no rational person can deny. No rational person can find any reasons not to believe it. And I don't think Paul's saying that. I think he's actually saying that if our cognitive faculties of our hearts and minds were in better condition, we would acknowledge those clues more readily. But. But they're there. What are they? Well, I'd rather he doesn't tell you much. He just says that God's reality, his divine nature and his power are there's clues to it. I'll just go into the 2 for a minute just to show you how it works. But they're not proofs. But they're clues. The cosmological argument works like this. How could something come from nothing? That's it. So for example, you know the Big Bang theory, the universe started with a bang. How could nothing have exploded? You know, nothing can't explode. So how could the explosion come from nothing? Well, somebody says, well, it wasn't that, it was nothing, there was something. Okay, but where'd that something come from? And if you keep asking that question, where did that something come from? It came from that, or where did that something come from? And if you all would go back to say, well, there was something that had no cause, that it didn't come from nothing, it was always there. Since we know nothing in this world like that, everything we know has a beginning. Every, everything we know is an effect with a cause. As soon as you start talking about an uncaused cause, as soon as you start talking about something that has no, that was always there, you're talking about something supernatural, something that we don't know here in nature, something beyond nature, something divine. And see, that's how the cosmological argument goes and says, how could all this, this come from nothing? And if it didn't come from nothing, then what brought it about? The teleological argument is actually kind of fun too. And again, I'm looking at my watch. They're just fun. They're not enough to make people believe in God. They haven't. But they are there. The clues are there. The teleological argument comes from the word telos, which means design. And it talks about the fact that the world is so perfectly Designed. How? Could it have come about by accident? Now, physicists will tell you this, and I have to look at my notes just to say it right, that the fundamental regularities and constants of physics, things like speed of light, gravitational constant, the strength of weak and strong nuclear forces, all of these things have to be perfectly calibrated. It's almost like there are a hundred dials and every single dial has to be exactly at the right spot. Not a single one can be off a hair. They all have to be so perfectly calibrated in such a way for matter to coalesce. Unless all those things were exactly the way they are, we wouldn't have matter. We wouldn't have a world. We wouldn't have human life. And so what many people have said is so many things had to happen exactly the way they are for there to even be human life, even to be life, even to be matter. That couldn't have happened by accident, so God did it. That's the teleological argument. Now, people like Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawking, who are atheists, spend a lot of time refuting that argument. And you know what that means? It means it must have force or they wouldn't spend the time. But you know what they all say? You know what Dawkins says? You know what Stephen Hawking says? What they say is that at the Big Bang, there could have been an infinite number of possible universes formed, and we just happen to be in the universe where matter coalesces, where all the. The various fundamental regularities and constants of physics are exactly the way they ought to be for life to happen. So there we are. There's zillions and zillions of those universes, and we just happen to be in the one where it happens, okay? And of course, there's a lot. The philosophers have a lot of fun with that. Let me just give you one. Imagine John Leslie is a philosopher that tells you this story. John Leslie tells you this story. He says, imagine there's a man about to be executed. And so the sergeant gets 50 crack marksmen and lines them up six feet from the prisoner. And so 50 crack marksmen with their rifles six feet from the prisoner. Ready, aim, fire. And they all miss. The sergeant says, what happened? Every single man says, gosh, Sarge, I just had a twitch. My nose, you know, Something in my eye, you know, I'm sorry. All 50 at once. And the sergeant says, it can't all be 50 at once. And then one guy who took a philosophy course says, but, sergeant, at The Big Bang. There could have been a zillions of possible universes formed and we just happened to be in the Universe where all 50 crack marksmen happen to, you know, have a twitch in their nose at the very same moment. Now, you know, first of all, the sergeant, if he also took a philosophy course, he would have to say, you're right, I can't prove that this was a conspiracy because we just happen to maybe be in the, in the one universe, right? I can't prove it, but I know it was a conspiracy. I would never in a million years, it wouldn't be reasonable to assume that we just happen to be in the one universe where all that can happen. I want you to assume it's a conspiracy, that it was, that somebody did it, that it was contrived, that there was some personal action, there was some personal design involved, right? He wouldn't assume the one in a zillion chance happened. He would assume there's a personal design. And for you to say there's a one in a zillion chance that maybe there is no God, does that make sense? To base your entire life on that? So these are the cosmological and teleological arguments. And these are basically, you know, forms of the kinds of clues that people have seen over the years. And Paul says, are there, there really are clues. But Paul says something much more radical than that, a lot more radical because he doesn't just say it's possible to know God by looking at nature. He actually goes a little beyond that, way beyond that and says every human being actually does know God. See where he says that, he says God is mad. And why is he mad? The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of people. This is everybody, humanity, who suppress the truth. What truth? What is known may be known about God. And then down in verse 21 he says, for although they knew God, they wouldn't glorify him as God. What he's saying is people, all people, are suppressing the truth about God's existence. Now you can't suppress something unless you've got it. And what he's saying is at some very deep level, every human being knows that God is there. Now this, by the way, is a very offensive statement to people. In fact, just in the newspaper yesterday, in the New York Times yesterday, there was a letter to the editor. The letter to the editor had to do with some op ed piece that I happened to miss. But some op ed person had said this term in one of the op ed pieces earlier this week that there are no atheists in foxholes. You've heard that, that when the shooting begins and even the atheists show that they actually believe in God. And well, one atheist wrote in and he was very offended. And this is what he said, and this is fair. He says, quote. He says the implication that atheists are all really theists at heart and that our convictions are casually and shallowly held and easily abandoned in the face of adversity is simply untrue. He says to say he's an atheist. He says to say that I'm really a theist at heart and my atheism, my beliefs are. Our convictions are casually and shallowly held and easily abandoned. It just isn't true. Well, see, Paul is not saying anything like that. Here's what Paul is saying. Yes, Paul is saying that at some level everybody knows there's a God. But as we're going to see in a minute, he's also saying at a profound level, everybody, we all believe in God and yet we don't believe in God. And what's interesting, the, the, the translators can never get this right because it's a very awkward construction. But Paul deliberately, when he says what may be known about God is plain to them. For since the creation of the world's. For the, since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power, have been clearly seen being understood. The verbs, there are present passive participles in Greek. And what it means is, and this is what the commentators say, what it means is that, that the reality of God bears down on us constantly. That is that there's part of our heart that doesn't believe God's there. And yet there's another part of our heart that's sensitive to his reality and that reality bears down on us. So what Paul is describing is a deeply conflicted dialogue between the part of our hearts that denies the existence of God and the part of our hearts that's sensitive to his reality. There's nothing casual or shallow about that. And yet Paul is saying that at some level, in some part of our heart, we know God's there. Now you say, how would you. What's the evidence for that? See, we're not talking here that, you know, you can look at the arguments for God and infer his existence. We're saying Paul is saying that all people already know about his existence. At some level, they know he's there. Well, how do you. What's the evidence for that? I have, after many, many years of finding it interesting to read the biographies of atheists who've become Christians. I see what Paul's talking about. There's a whole slew of prominent, some more famous than others, British intellectuals who are atheists and who became Christians. I mean, some of them are more famous, like T.S. eliot, W.H. auden, C.S. lewis. Some are a little less famous, like C.E.M. joad and a N Wilson, people like that. They all have initials, lots of initials there. I'm sorry, but these are. A lot of. These were British intellectuals, brilliant men, and they were, you know, biographers and literary critics and thinkers and that sort of thing, and poets. And even though they had rejected Christianity growing up and they became part of the intellectual elites, all of whom laughed at religion and Christianity, they shocked their contemporaries and their peers by embracing Christianity in one form or another. When I look at them and I study them, I see that very seldom, if ever, do they look at the evidence, like the cosmological argument and the teleological argument, and they come to conclude, I guess there's a God. Rather, when they talk about how they found faith, they come to say. They come to see that they believed God all along. They were living as if there was a God. They weren't admitting that they were living as if there was a God. And they finally admitted, he's got to be there. Very interesting. Let me just give you two. One is not as interesting, not as well known as the other. A Wilson, he's more recent. A Wilson was a Kathy. And I know him because he. He really turned on Christianity and he wrote a terrible biography of C.S. lewis, basically attacking him for his beliefs. He wrote biographies of Jesus, of Paul. He was very skeptical of Christianity, rejected it. Very brilliant man. But on Easter 2009, he put an article in the paper, said, I have embraced Christianity, just shocked everybody and gave an Easter testimony. And in it, this is what he said. He says most public voices, he's talking about in Britain, most public voices have accepted the idea that only stupid people actually believe in Christianity. As a matter of fact, it's materialist atheism that is not merely an arid creed, but is totally irrational. For materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat. And he goes on and tries to say, he says people who believe there is no God and that we are just, you know what he called us? You know, he said, we're just bags of chemicals. And animated pieces of meat that have evolved. Then we say, we need to be noble and we need to believe in justice and we need to love each other. And he says, there's no basis for that. Now you say, where does that come from? Let me give you a second case study because it's a little clearer and more fascinating. W.H. auden, a poet, was considered one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th century. What's interesting to me is that his conversion happened right here in the Upper east side years ago. He was British, but he was living in America during World War II and he had embraced atheism just like everybody in his intellectual class. But it started evidently when he was, you know, that just the northern part of the Upper east side, sort of the north eastern part of the Upper east side, Yorkville was back in World War II and in the 30s and 40s, a very, very German place. Lots and lots of German people lived here and there were a lot of. In fact, when we got here to start the church, there were still lots and lots of German speaking churches and restaurants and places like that. Still in the late 80s up in the Upper east side largely vanished. But during the 40s, W.H. auden was. Went to, he was working on his German actually, and there were a number of German cinemas, places that show German films. And he went into a film house somewhere in the late 30s and saw a film that had obviously had been, you know, influenced by Nazism. And he saw, he saw American, Jew, German people, American, German, American people, at least Germans living in America yelling at the screen slurs against the Jews that appeared in the story. And it shook him. And eventually this is what he wrote. He came back to Christianity, shocked everybody. And this is what he wrote. Let me set this up for you because it's very important. Auden thought that all educated, enlightened people would believe in freedom, reason, democracy and human dignity. Basically believe that all educated people, all cultured people, you know, all reasonable people, people who believed in the importance of human reason and her culture, that they would believe in the values of freedom, reason, democracy and human dignity. What happened was that Germany had embraced Nazism and Germany was second to none as a sophisticated, educated society. Tremendous science, tremendous music, tremendous art, scholarship, you know, Germany was second to none. And yet they had embraced the idea of that you. That, well, that loving your neighbor and justice and human rights was a fiction.