Tim Keller and Russell Moore on the Resurrection and Ordering of Our Loves

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), recently welcomed Tim Keller, theologian and founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, to a conversation on his podcast Signposts. This Holy Week conversation focused on the Resurrection, specifically as it’s described in Keller’s new book Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter, as well as the recent Gallup poll showing church membership among U.S. adults below 50 percent for the first time in history.

A few days before the release last month of Keller’s latest book, he authored a related article in The Atlantic titled “Growing My Faith in the Face of Death.” Both the book and article describe Keller’s faith journey since he received the news that he was sick with pancreatic cancer late last spring.

Much of Keller’s book focuses on his subsequent realization that he had allowed his love for God’s gifts to take prominence over his love for God. During Keller’s discussion with Moore, he recounted that after the cancer diagnosis, he and his wife Kathy “realized that we rested so much of our joy in pretty material things.” “We realized when the cancer came that these things went away.”

“We realized it was not God, it was God’s gifts, that we were really looking to,” stated Keller. “When you try to make God’s gifts into God, you actually don’t get as much out of them,” he continued.

After his cancer diagnosis, however, Keller described how he and his wife “started to really go after God in prayer” and “came to realize we actually were enjoying life more than we had before.”

This realization reminded Keller of Saint Augustine’s writings on righty ordered love.

“What Augustine would say is you don’t want to love anything here less, because these are God’s good gifts. You don’t want to harden your heart or detach your heart from them, but your problem is you need to love God more in relation to them,” insisted Keller. 

When asked about regrets that may arise when a person faces death, Keller invoked other renowned Christian thinkers.

“What I get from C.S. Lewis and Tolkien and people like that is that heaven will make amends for all. In other words, there will be no regrets when you get there,” he expressed. 

Keller’s own reckoning with death came amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think the pandemic in a way was a cultural moment in which people said, ‘Wait a minute. All those dystopian movies where a plague comes and wipes out a third of the world… wait a minute, those things can actually happen,’” Keller said. “In a way for the whole world, especially for younger people, there’s been a cultural shattering of your denial about our mortality as a human race, as a civilization.”

Moore described how his own ministry has introduced him to many younger people who may be frightened or questioning their faith during the pandemic. He asked Keller what one piece of advice he would give to this younger generation.

“If Jesus Christ was actually raised from the dead, if he really got up, walked out, was seen by hundreds of people, and talked to them. If he was raised from the dead, then you know what, everything is going to be all right,” Keller answered.

Keller was additionally asked about the aforementioned Gallup poll, which shows that the number of U.S. adults who are members of a church or another house of worship is below 50 percent for the first time in history.

In response to this poll, when asked what the church in America will look like twenty years from now, Keller declared, “When it comes to Protestantism, here is what I think is going to happen over the next twenty to thirty years — first of all, the number of nominal believers… they are being shed. And we’re going to get down to people where basically their religion is not inherited but chosen. And it’s thought out. When you get down to that group, there’s much more retention.”

He explained that such nominal believers have traditionally remained church members not because of true belief, but rather because of social pressure, to gain social benefits, or due to family traditions. 

Keller further explained that this rebuilt church will be “far more multi-ethnic and far more orthodox.” “Ask anybody in demographics, the world is actually going to get less secular,” Keller concluded. 

The full Signposts conversation between host Russell Moore and guest Tim Keller can be found here.