"Making Sense of God 6d" (Tim Keller)

TITLE: Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical
AUTHOR: Tim Keller
PUBLISHER: New York, NY: Viking Books, 2016, (330 pages).

Who am I? Who are you? Often, the answer depends on our upbringing, our links to certain institutions, or our roles and titles. In non-Western cultures, people are identified through their connections with their communities. In Western cultures, this is reversed via "expressed individualism." While it may be overly simplistic, this offers us a glimpse into the differences in mindset that contrasts "self-sacrifice" from "self-assertion"; Keller even points out the hit movie Frozen's song that affirms the latter in Western culture. With secularism, the image of the modern man has become incoherent, illusory, crushing, and fracturing.

Question 6d: "The Problem with the Self: Question of Identity"
On Fracturing:
"In the last chapter we talked about how the secular view of freedom as the absence of restrictions undermines community. Taylor argues (and Bellah demonstrates) that the secular view of identity and self does the same thing. This view, argues Taylor, reduces relationships and community to things 'purely instrumental in their significance.' In traditional cultures our most crucial relationships are more important than our individual self-interest, because our identity depends on honoring the relationships. Therefore they are inviolate and we are solidly embedded in them. A traditional human community according to Bellah, was 'an inclusive whole, celebrating the interdependence of public and private life.'

But when, as in the modern approach, you bestow significance on yourself, then your individual interests are more important than any social tie. If a relationship is satisfying to you, you keep it only so long as it pleases you. 'It fosters a view of relationships in which these ought to subserve personal fulfillment. The relationship is secondary to the self-realization of the partners. On this view, unconditional ties, meant to last for life, make little sense. Human communities become thinned out into 'lifestyle enclaves' or 'social networks' in which people connect, flexibly and transiently, only to people like themselves. They relate to one another around similar tastes in music or food or common wealth status (such as in a gated housing development), but their private and public lives are no one else's business. It is well documented that under the conditions of the modern, individualistic self, social ties and institutions are eroding, marriage and family are weakening, society is fragmenting into warring factions, and economic inequality is growing." (131-132)


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"Making Sense of God 6c" (Tim Keller)

TITLE: Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical
AUTHOR: Tim Keller
PUBLISHER: New York, NY: Viking Books, 2016, (330 pages).

Who am I? Who are you? Often, the answer depends on our upbringing, our links to certain institutions, or our roles and titles. In non-Western cultures, people are identified through their connections with their communities. In Western cultures, this is reversed via "expressed individualism." While it may be overly simplistic, this offers us a glimpse into the differences in mindset that contrasts "self-sacrifice" from "self-assertion"; Keller even points out the hit movie Frozen's song that affirms the latter in Western culture. With secularism, the image of the modern man has become incoherent, illusory, crushing, and fracturing.

Question 6c: "The Problem with the Self: Question of Identity"
On Crushing:
The problem with the modern self is:

"Ironically, the apparent freedom of secular identity brings crushing burdens with it. In former times, when our self-regard was more rooted in social roles, there was much less value placed on competitive achievement. Rising from rags to riches was nice but rare and optional. It was quite sufficient to be a good father or mother, son or daughter, and to be conscientious and diligent in all your work and duties. Today, as Alain de Botton has written, we believe in the meritocracy, that anyone who is of humble means is so only because of a lack of ambition and savvy. It is an embarrassment now to be merely faithful and not successful. This is a new weight on the soul, put there by modernity. Success or failure is now seen as the individual's responsibility alone. Our culture tells us that we have the power to create ourselves, and that puts the emphasis on independence and self-reliance. But it also means that society adulates winners and despises losers, showing contempt for weakness.

All this produces a pressure and anxiety beyond what our ancestors knew. We have to decide our look and style, our stance and ethos. We then have to promote ourselves and be accepted in the new space - professional, social, aesthetic - in which we have chosen to create our selves. As a result, 'new modes of conformity arise' as people turn themselves into 'brands' through the consumer goods they buy.
....

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.

....

In the New York Times, Benjamin Nugent writes about the struggles he had when he was a full-time novelist. He says:

"When good writing was my only goal in life, I made the quality of my work the measure of my worth. For this reason, I wasn't able to read my own writing well. I couldn't tell whether something I had just written was good or bad, because I needed it to be good in order to feel sane. I lost the ability to cheerfully interrogate how much I liked what I had written, to see what was actually on the page rather than what I wanted to see or what I feared to see."

When his identity was based on being a good writer, it made him a worse writer. He announces at the end of the article that he doesn't base his self on writing anymore because he 'fell in love, an overpowering diversion.' But is the love of someone else a better basis for an identity?

....

If we base our identity on love we come to the same cul-de-sac that we saw with the novelist who got his identity from work. Just as he could not beat poor work, so we will not be able to handle the problems in our love relationships. The writer had to believe he is a great writer in order to be sane. We will have to believe our love relationship is okay - if it goes off the rails, we lose our sanity. Why? If our identity is wrapped up in something and we lose it, we lose our very sense of self. If you are getting your identity from the love of a person - you won't be able to give them criticism because their anger will devastate you. Nor will you be able to bear their personal sorrows and difficulties. If they have a problem and start to get self-absorbed and are not giving you the affirmation you want, you won't be able to take it. It will become a destructive relationship. The Western understanding of identity formation is a crushing burden, both for individuals and society as a whole." (128-130)


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"Making Sense of God 6b" (Tim Keller)

TITLE: Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical
AUTHOR: Tim Keller
PUBLISHER: New York, NY: Viking Books, 2016, (330 pages).

Who am I? Who are you? Often, the answer depends on our upbringing, our links to certain institutions, or our roles and titles. In non-Western cultures, people are identified through their connections with their communities. In Western cultures, this is reversed via "expressed individualism." While it may be overly simplistic, this offers us a glimpse into the differences in mindset that contrasts "self-sacrifice" from "self-assertion"; Keller even points out the hit movie Frozen's song that affirms the latter in Western culture. With secularism, the image of the modern man has become incoherent, illusory, crushing, and fracturing.

Question 6b: "The Problem with the Self: Question of Identity"
On Illusory:
The problem with the modern self is:

"In short, do not look to anyone else to validate you. Use no standards from the outside. You bestow the verdict of significance on yourself. But this is an impossibility. You cannot get an identity through self-recognition; it must come in a great measure from others. Theologian Philip Ryken qyotes fmor a contemporary novel about a young single woman. She writes a New Year's resolution: 'Develop inner poise and authority and sense of self as a woman of substance, complete without boyfriend, as best way to obtain boyfriend.' However, she sees a problem. 'My sense of self comes not from other people but from . . . myself? That can't be right.' Yes, it isn't right. In fact, it can't be done.

....

Robert Bellah says strikingly, 'The irony is that here, too, just where we [modern people] think we are most free, we are most coerced by the dominant beliefs of our own culture. For it is a powerful cultural fiction that we not only can, but must, make up our deepest beliefs in the isolation of our private selves.' He goes on to say that modern people simply cannot see how their identities owe to others. 'Insofar as they are limited to a language of radical autonomy' and 'cannot think about themselves or others except as arbitrary centers of volition,' it means 'they cannot express the fullness of being that is actually theirs.'

Our identity then, is not, after all, something we can bestow on ourselves. We cannot discover or create an identity in isolation, merely through some kind of internal monologue. Rather, it is negotiated through dialogue with the moral values and beliefs of some community. We find ourselves in and through others. 'We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love, and learning.' In the end the contemporary identity - simply expressing your inner feelings, with a valuation bestowed on yourself independently - is impossible.



" (125-6)


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"Making Sense of God 6a" (Tim Keller)

TITLE: Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical
AUTHOR: Tim Keller
PUBLISHER: New York, NY: Viking Books, 2016, (330 pages).

Who am I? Who are you? Often, the answer depends on our upbringing, our links to certain institutions, or our roles and titles. In non-Western cultures, people are identified through their connections with their communities. In Western cultures, this is reversed via "expressed individualism." While it may be overly simplistic, this offers us a glimpse into the differences in mindset that contrasts "self-sacrifice" from "self-assertion"; Keller even points out the hit movie Frozen's song that affirms the latter in Western culture. With secularism, the image of the modern man has become incoherent, illusory, crushing, and fracturing.

Question 6a: "The Problem with the Self: Question of Identity"
On Incoherent:
"First of all, our contemporary approach is incoherent. If you look into your heart to find your deep desires, you certainly will discover many of them. And you will discover something else - that they contradict one another. You may very much want a certain career, but then you fall in love with someone whom you also want very much. Because of the particular nature of both the career and the relationship, you realize you won't be able to have both. What you you going to do? You might insist that one of these desires - for career or love - must be deeper and more 'you,' but that's naive. Why assume that your internal desires are arranged in such an orderly way? Francis Spufford writes that you are 'a being whose wants make no sense, don't harmonise: whose desires, deep down, are discordantly arranged, so that you truly want to possess and you truly want not to, at the same time. You're equipped. . . for farce or even tragedy more than you are for happy endings.

.....

Not only do your desires contradict, but they also are elusive. 'What are the wants of the self?' Bellah asks. 'For all its unmistakable presence and intensity on occasion, the experience of feeling good, like being in love, is so highly subjective that its distinguishing characteristics remain ineffable.'

And besides being contradictory and elusive, our desires constantly change. As I have said, part of having an identity is having a stable, core sense of who you are, day in and day out, in different settings and times. That is why the traditional way of forging an identity through connection with something solid outside the individual self made sense. But if your identity is just your desires, they are going to be changing all the time. If in every situation you seek your own self-interest responding in ways that get the approval and control you want at the moment, then identity essentially disappears. 'In the work of Erving Goffman. . . [comes the view that] there is no self at all. What seems to be a self is merely a series of emphasis on 'being yourself' apart from fixed social roles results in there being no sustained 'you' left, which is common to all situations." (123-4)


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Midweek Meditation: "Making Sense of God 5" (Tim Keller)

TITLE: Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical
AUTHOR: Tim Keller
PUBLISHER: New York, NY: Viking Books, 2016, (330 pages).

Freedom is a much cherished right in the West. The progress of a society is intricately linked to the freedom to what whatever one pleases. Anything that infringes on such a freedom would be blasted as evil. If one elevates freedom to the highest importance, all others will have to play second fiddle to this sacred right. Truth is, is this workable? What if the exercise of one's freedom infringes on another person's expression of freedom? Is there a limit to free-will?

Question 5: "Why Can't I Be Free to Live as I See Fit, as Long as I Don't Harm Anyone?"
"If you see a large sailboat out on the water moving swiftly, it is because the sailor is honoring the boat's design. If she tries to take it into water too shallow for it, the boat will be ruined. The sailor experiences the freedom of speed sailing only when she limits her boat to the proper depth of water and faces the wind at the proper angle. In the same way, human beings thrive in certain environments and break down in others. Unless you honour the givens and limits of your physical nature, you will never know the freedom of health. Unless you honor the givens and limits of human relationships, you will never know the freedom of love and social peace. If you actually lived any way you wanted - never aligning your choices with these physical and social realities - you would quickly die, and die alone.

You are, then, not free to do whatever you choose. That is an impossible idea and not the way freedom actually works. You get the best freedoms only if you are willing to submit your choices to various realities, if you honor your own design." (103)

"In their book Bellah and his colleagues show that much of the health of a society depends on voluntarily unselfish behavior. Being honest, generous, and public spirited - being faithful to your spouse and children - regularly infringes on your personal happiness and freedom. If people stop doing these things and (as Haidt says) put personal fulfillment above commitment and relationship, the only alternative is a more powerful and coercive government. Bellah and his colleagues made this case in their original 1985 study. Their case was that the culture's emphasis on personal freedom over commitment to community could undermine democractic institutions. In 1996 and 2008 the book was reissued with a new preface written by Bellah, and each time he pointed out that our situation was worsening.

Let's bring this down to a practical level. Just as a sailboat is not free to sail unless it confines itself in significant ways, so you will never know the freedom of love unless you limit your choices in significant ways. There is no greater feeling of liberation than to feel and be loved well. The affirmation that comes from love liberates you from fears and self-doubts. It frees you from having to face the world alone, with only your own ingenuity and resources. Your friend or mate will be crucial to helping you achieve many of your goals in life. In all these ways love is liberating - perhaps the most liberating thing. But the minute you get into a love relationship, and the deeper and the more intimate and the more wonderful it gets, the more you also have to give up your independence." (107)

One of the most powerful links between God, love, and freedom is written by John Newton as follows:

"Our pleasure and our duty, though opposite before;
Since we have seen his beauty, are joined to part no more...
To see the law of Christ fulfilled, and hear his pardoning voice
Changes a slave into a child, and duty into choice."


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BookPastor >> "Truly Free" (Robert Morris)

This review was first published at Panorama of a Book Saint on April 29th, 2015.

conrade

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TITLE: Truly Free: Breaking the Snares That So Easily Entangle
AUTHOR: Robert Morris
PUBLISHER: Nashville, TN: Thomas-Nelson, 2015, (240 pages).

Freedom is much touted and cherished in the West. From the Declaration of Independence to the enshrinement of freedom in anthems, oaths, and pledges, we may have from time to time be guilty in taking our common freedoms for granted. In fact, we may enslaved more than we are aware of. When Christ came to set us free, we will be free. Unless we become deceived, distracted, discouraged, or depressed. According to lead pastor and author, Robert Morris, for one to be truly free, discipleship and deliverance must go hand in hand. He laments the fact that Christians who are supposed to be living in freedom are unfortunately living in enslavement and snares to several temptations. In a series of what looked like three-point sermons that make up the chapters of this book, Morris begins by systematically using the biblical principles and teachings of Scripture to remind us that freedom in Christ means following Christ and being delivered from the trickery of the evil one and the temptations of the world, and the vulnerabilities of the flesh Dispelling two popular myths, he draws from the wisdom of CS Lewis who wrote in the popular book, The Screwtape Letters:

"There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them."

Faithlife Study Bible (Free until Apr 8th, 2013)

Here is an exciting new kid on the block in the field of software Bible apps. Created by Logos Bible Software, this app is called "Faithlife Study Bible" which is an app that comes with two English Bible translations, a Lexham Bible dictionary, and resources such as devotionals, infographics, photos, and videos. There is also a group reading plan and a way to connect with Bible readers in your neighbourhood. What is most cool about this app is that it is offering the NIV for free until Apr 8th, that is.

Designed for tablets and mobile devices, there are apps for the three big environments: IOS, Android, and the Kindle Fire. Click here for more.

It takes a bit of getting used to. Here are some tips on how to download it.

1. First choose the version you want.
2. Second, remember that the default Bible version is LEB (Lexham English Bible)
3. Third, if you want to default into the NIV, tap the top bar, followed by Settings, and choose from the "Preferred Bible" bar. (you may need to figure this out)
4. In order to download the NIV, you may need to swipe the left window which usually begins with a "Go" and some Bible references. Note that as you swipe the left window from right to left, you will be presented with other options like, "Resources," "Favourites," History," and "Search."
5. Be patient during the first time you are downloading stuff. It takes a while. Once it is all loaded up, the performance will be much faster.

Have fun!

conrade

Book Giveaway - "Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart"

How do you really know that you are saved? Are you assured of your salvation? What about backsliding or people who used to believe? These and many more are tackled in this book. Pastor J.D Greear's new book, "Stop Asking Jesus into Your Heart" takes a renewed look at assurance of salvation, conversion, backsliding, once-saved-always-saved, and many questions pertaining to what it means to ask Jesus into our hearts. Filled with multiple endorsements by many Christian leaders, theologians, pastors, and teachers, this book tackles head on the many questions of doubt and faith with regards to salvation. Don't let the title of the book fool you. It is basically to provoke your thinking.

Thanks to an arrangement with B&H Publishing and A Group Marketing, YAPDATES - A SPIRITUAL ODYSSEY is pleased to offer a book giveaway from now to February 15th, 2013. Please read the instructions below for more details.

RESOURCES ON BOOK

• Blog: Author's page at www.jdgreear.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/pastorgreear
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/jdgreear
• Video: on Vimeo
• Study Guide.

GIVEAWAY GUIDELINES

Here are the guidelines to enter the draw.

1. In order to participate and enter the draw, just make a comment on why you want to read this book, on this post with your name and email address. (Alternatively, you can email me your name and contact at yapdates @ aim.com) 
2. Your address will only be used for the purpose of this book giveaway.
3. The draw will be held on Friday, 15 February 2012, 12pm Pacific time.
4. This offer is valid only to addresses in Canada and the continental United States. 
5. If selected, I will email you a confirmation.
6. All decision made will be final.

This book giveaway is made possible by A Group Marketing and B&H Publishing House.

Remember. If you want to participate, just make any comment about why you like to have this book.

conrade