Timothy Keller (1950-2023)

My son @michaelkellers posts here on my behalf (see pinned note). Founder of @redeemernyc. Co-Founder of @redeemerctc and @tgc. Loved New York City.

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Hello everyone, Michael Keller here (the son that's helped run Dad's social media since we started in 2013). Thank you so much for all the beautiful memories, stories, and tributes written over the past two weeks about Dad. The original vision for creating these social media 1/3

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

In Western culture, where your identity is based completely on your inner feelings and desires, you realize there is no stable identity.

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

When looking for a spouse you should be looking at the person they are growing into as much as the person they are today.

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

If you don't trust the Bible enough to let it challenge your thinking, how can you have a personal, communicative relationship with the God who inspired it?

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Rest isn't the reward for trusting God.

Sometimes it's the way we trust Him.

—Michael Keller
https://t.co/0LUyWvRMCa

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Whether you're a Christian, a skeptic, or somewhere in between, we all live by stories.

The question is whether those stories can bear the weight of our lives.

The Stories We Live By invites readers to explore a story that is bigger, truer, and more beautiful.

Available now.
https://t.co/fPxt1GBdCN

—Michael Keller

[Gospel in Life @gospelinlife]

Religion says, “I give God a good record, then he owes me a good life.” The gospel says, “God through Jesus Christ has given me a perfect record which I received by faith and I live in grateful knowledge that he has accepted me forever.” – @timkellernyc

Sermon, The Finger on the Wall
https://t.co/0Rt9sLP7ZT

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Which is easier?

Admitting someone else was wrong...

Or admitting you were?

Humility isn't weakness.

It's where grace begins.

—Michael Keller

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Here are seven Habits of social media best REJECTED: 1) The worst possible way to read a post is the right way. 2) If I can impute bad motives to you I don’t have to deal with your argument. 3) If you cite person X at all you must answer for everything person X ever did or said. 4) I only engage tweets that support my narrative of you. Other tweets, videos, articles, or books by you I can ignore as if you never said any of them. 5) I can attribute opinions to you that I suspect you would not own. 6) There are only three categories for tweets: a) those on my side b) those on the other evil side, c) wrongfully trying to compromise in the middle. There are no other kinds. 7) The best way to influence the culture and speak truth to power is through social media and not through books or scholarship or face to face relationships or building institutions.

I believe these seven habits make social media extremely problematic.

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Love is at some level counting the other person's needs and interests as more important than your own needs or interests. Otherwise you are just mutually using each other. Confronting wrongdoing is part of love because it is unloving to let someone sin against you.

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Our culture rightly longs for justice.

The gospel asks a deeper question: What do we do when we're the ones in need of mercy?

At the cross, God's justice and His grace meet. The gospel offers not only justice, but the hope of redemption.

—Michael Keller

https://t.co/EvZIBEIiwf

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

From John Newton's letter: "Of all people who engage in controversy, we, who are called Calvinists, are most expressly bound by our own principles to the exercise of gentleness and moderation." Read the letter and see how he arrives at that conclusion. https://t.co/dSQxAZXGvA

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Humility, patience, and tolerance are ways of speaking about faith, hope, and love. See intro to https://t.co/MzF2GnW3EI. "Tolerance" is here defined to be treating someone as made in God's image even as you disagree strongly. See Calvin's classic statements on this.

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

I've worked w/conservatives and liberals in hands-on efforts to help poor families. The imbalances--conservatives over-stress personal irresponsibility and liberals over-stress structural causes--I've seen. These aren't 'straw men'. "There are more things in heaven and earth..." Here's a great approach to one major social problem that escapes the ideologies of conservatism or progressivism. https://t.co/TS2JJPKOFI. It's an academic book but highly recommended.

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Christianity is not simply a story to believe.

It is a story to inhabit.

The invitation of the gospel is not merely to agree with truths about Jesus, but to place ourselves within His story and be transformed by His Spirit.

The Stories We Live By — available now.

—Michael Keller
https://t.co/EvZIBEIiwf

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

This is a thick book and a bit dense, but one of the foundational books on biblical authority. https://t.co/KjzEMsHnyx

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Many argue 'forgiveness culture' helps abusers escape accountability. Desmond Tutu argued that without forgiveness abusers hold us in thrall, that it was possible to pursue both forgiveness and justice at once. He rejected the Nuremberg Trial model for Truth and Reconciliation.

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

When I've done public dialogue with Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim clerics, we start with the premise that religions make sharply different claims about reality and should be listened to when they do so. We can make common cause too--but only after we accept the differences.

Misc: (1) Jesus' last recorded words are in Revelation (cf. Acts 9). Jesus' dying words are interesting to compare to other dying words. (2) I have great respect for Buddhism, though Hinduism is a more formidable rival for Christianity philosophically. CSL thought so too.

https://t.co/pjhqqJUN8E. See esp articles by O'Connor and Collins. Many impose a framework of sameness or equality on religions instead of letting them speak in their own voices. Religions make sharply different claims about reality and should be listened to when they do so.

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

What the heart most wants, the mind finds reasonable, the will finds doable, and the emotions find desirable.

[Gospel in Life @gospelinlife]

We’ve been looking at the ways in which an experience of the grace of God creates a new interior character of the heart.

At the end of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul tells us that the secret, the key, to developing that interior supernaturally changed heart is to look to the future—to something that’s going to happen in the future.

If we’re going to understand this, we need to look at this whole passage and what it shows us about 1) the problem, 2) the remedy, and 3) how to use the remedy.

Listen to @timkellernyc's "Love and the Future of God" here: https://t.co/bMBcnIOCZc

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Put your little story about what people have done to you into the big story of what Jesus did for you, and you’ll have the power you need to forgive rather than be twisted by anger and to seek justice rather than revenge.