Satisfaction Q&A

Thank you for listening to this Q&A session of Questioning Christianity. We hope you'll continue exploring Christianity by requesting your free copy of Tim Keller's book Making Sense of God. Free copies will be shipped while supplies last. copy go to gospelandlife.com slash free again that's gospelandlife.com slash free all right so now to the questions for you

I thought this was a very interesting one and one I'm wondering myself. Tim, is the pursuit of happiness a first world privilege? A personal privilege? A first world privilege. No, that is a great question. I don't know to what degree I totally buy Abraham Maslow's in a hierarchy of needs. There is no doubt that if you're desperate, desperately hungry, and you don't know where your next meal is going to come from, in some ways you don't think that much about...

how do I live a fulfilling life? And you're not caring about your career or anything else. But, no, it's not a first world privilege. Let me give you an example. In Mark chapter 2, of the New Testament. Actually, it happens in Matthew and Luke 2. In Mark chapter 2, there's a story about a man who's paralyzed. He's a paralytic.

And Jesus, of course, is a miracle worker, so his friends bring him on a cot. They can't get into the house where Jesus is speaking because of the crowd. They pull apart the roof, and they lower him. pretty dramatic, to get their friend who's paralyzed to Jesus. Jesus walks over to him and says, my son, your sins are forgiven. If you stop and think about it, you realize how strange that is. I would imagine that the paralytic is sitting there saying, excuse me, you think...

I got a bigger problem than that right now. I mean, you know, like, what are you talking about? That's not what I came for. I've got a more serious problem. And Jesus, in a way, is saying, no, you don't. It's almost like what Jesus is saying, you probably think that if only you could walk, then you'd be happy. But guess what? There's a whole lot of people running around here who are walking fine, and they're not happy either. And therefore, even though...

Jesus, of course, is going to heal him, by the way, in the story. He does heal him. But he's trying to say, you have to realize, if I heal you, that in no way...

actually solves your deeper problems. There's a deeper need you've got, and I'm dealing with it now by talking about your spiritual relationship with me. So that's, by the way, that's not a first world. That's obviously a time in history when... people were not comfortable, et cetera. So I would say a paralyzed person who's having a terrible life could easily say, if only I could walk, I'd be happy. A hungry person could say, if I just had three meals a day, I'd be happy.

the answer of the ages is, no, you won't be. So I don't, no, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's really just a first world thing, in spite of the fact that it's possible you could make the case that the more affluent a society is, the more unhappy people are. And here's the reason why. Remember, Cynthia Heimel said that these two people that she knew, who when they were struggling artists...

they were struggling artists, and then they became famous, and then they became even more unhappy. Why? Because when you're on your way up, you still can live in the illusion that if I get up there, I'll be happy. And it keeps you from realizing how...

discontent you are. It's the people who actually get up there that very often are the most despairing because they spent all their life sure that if only this or that happened, then I'd be happy. When they get there, everything's right and they're not. So you could make the argument that the more affluent societies, people are less happy than in the less affluent societies, but everybody's got the same problem. You quoted Augustine.

He said the quote, you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Someone is asking, though, couldn't that quote or that argument be made for any religion, not just Christianity? Or not only Christianity? Well, I try to say, yeah, I mean, in fact, all the monotheistic religions, I mean, obviously, Buddhism, even Hinduism, they're not looking at God the same way. They don't see God as a...

a personal being who loves, right? So when Augustine tries to say, our hearts are restless till we know your love, that would only work for monotheistic religions who believe in a personal God who loves. not Eastern religions who don't. And I was just trying to say, yeah, it would work for other monotheistic religions. In theory, I tried to show you why I just can't love a God up in the heavens.

I'm just telling you, it's very hard. It would be very abstract. It's the Christian message of what God has done for us in Christ that is very, very moving and makes it, I think. frankly, motivationally, psychologically, it's an enormous advantage for having that kind of divine love or love of God that reorders your heart.

So, yes, but I still say Christianity is by far the best way to accomplish that. I really like this question. It said that you said Christians should love God more than we love anyone. even our partners. As a non-religious person, that makes me feel jealous of God. How can I reconcile my Christian partner loving God more than she loves me? Oh. Yeah. I would hope that, listen, that makes superficial sense. But when I told you, maybe you don't believe me.

I try to say, I love my wife better when I love God more than her. When I love God more than I love her. And I try to explain a couple of reasons why. I would rather not get any more. specific than I have. But the fact is, if you love your spouse more than anything in the world, well, there's three or four things I could say. Number one, you put pressure on your spouse, him or her, to affirm you. And if she or he doesn't affirm you, you have, you know, your identity is undermined.

It's not God's love of you, but your spouse's love of you, and that's going to be up and down. A, because sometimes your spouse will be unhappy with you. Sometimes your spouse will be very angry, might yell at you, and then... If she's the one, or I'm talking about my wife, if she's the one that is the greatest source of love in my life, I'm devastated by that. And I can't even hear her criticisms. I have to defend myself.

Another way it works, by the way, is if your spouse dies. I once heard a sermon years ago that I've never said this, and well, maybe I have, because it's almost unfair. I said, if the main person in your life, the main love of your life, the main source of love in your life dies, how is she going to die? help you when she's laying in a coffin and your heart is breaking. There won't be anybody. The point is, I only love my wife well if I love God more. And so if you have...

the possibility of a Christian partner who loves God more than you. All I can say, it may be hard from the outside of Christian faith to understand this. I'm trying to explain what it's like from the inside. It's not that easy to understand it, but I'm trying to give you the operating principle. My wife knows when my prayer life gets better.

When the spiritual reality of God's love for me becomes more real, she knows that I love her better. She doesn't feel as smothered. She doesn't feel as crushed. But she also doesn't feel abandoned in any way. So I'm just... So I'm just elaborating on what I've already said, and I think I'll stop right there. You shouldn't be jealous, is what I'm trying to say, at all.

Isn't it very selfish if we love God to try and find satisfaction? How is that really loving God? Well, I'm very glad you agree with me, because I tried to say that, and it went by fast. Whenever I get a question... of something i said it's usually because i said it too quickly and i i i i think i did answer that but it went by very quickly um yes when i was using that illustration that some of you laughed at so some of you were awake

When I said, if you go to somebody and say, oh, I want to be your friend. Oh, really? Yeah, because you can help me in my career. You can... You know, you can open doors for me. Frankly, even sex, by the way. I love you because I'm sexually attracted to you, but I really, and I'll feel so incredibly good if somebody as good-looking as you sleeps with me.

But that's using the person. That's not really loving the person at all. And therefore, yes, if you go to God to make you happy, he won't make you happy. It is selfish to go that way. I actually... In some ways, if you say, I believe in God because that's the only way I'll be happy, that makes you a kind of Christian Stoic. It's sort of an amalgamation of pagan Stoicism and Christianity. It's not real Christianity.

So you're totally right. It is selfish. So you should not go to God in order to make you happy. That's why, by the way, this should not be the last. If you're going to hear any of these talks I'm giving, this shouldn't be the last one you hear. Because I'm really not trying to say, oh, if you want to be happy, become a Christian, because that doesn't work that way. Now, admittedly, I would say this, is that, let's be honest, and I think I might have mentioned this the first week.

You almost always move toward God initially because of some lack in your own life. So I don't want to be unrealistic. There's almost no way that people... ever just say, oh, you know, the most noble thing and the most intellectually rational thing would be if I became a Christian. Usually something's wrong or something is missing. And so you start to explore.

So everybody, in a sense, I guess to some degree, starts toward God for somewhat selfish reasons. But what happens is, I think, if you get a grasp on the truth of things... And if you believe what I... I gave you that little illustration at the end with the czar and the young man and all that, because it's a very good analogy. If you were able to believe that, it starts to...

It starts to work away a lot of the selfish reasons for your relationship to God. You start to love Him just for what He's done for you, just for who He is, just for who He is. I'll give you an example of a transformation there. When I was in... When I was in college, I wanted to get a degree. The only way I could get a degree is if I took a certain number of required courses, and one of them was music appreciation.

So, in that course, I had to listen to Mozart and then identify Mozart when it was played to get a good grade. So, see, I listened to Mozart in order to get a great grade, in order to get a degree, in order to get a good job. in order to make money. So I listened to Mozart in order to make money. But today I would be very happy to spend quite a bit of money just to listen to Mozart. Because what happened over the years is...

Mozart became something that was a good in itself. I found Mozart's music just beautiful in itself. satisfaction itself it's not a means to an end it's not a way for me to think of myself as being very very you know aesthetically astute It's not a way for me to get a degree anymore. I love Mozart just for Mozart. And that kind of transformation is what has to happen and does happen for Christians. Does belief in God, I'll repeat that.

does belief in God, even loving God, necessarily mean you will achieve happiness? Can't you have total belief and still be unhappy? Well, certainly. I hope you didn't think, for example, if you have a great marriage and you're a Christian and your spouse dies, you're going to go through the grief. You're going to be extraordinarily unhappy, and you're going to be extraordinarily unhappy for a long time. Please do not think I'm saying that even a strong love of God...

would make you immune to the sorrows of this world. Jesus was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He was always weeping. I mentioned that last week. And he had a perfect relationship with God. and he was always sorrowful. So please don't think I'm saying that if you have the love of God, you wouldn't experience deep grief. In fact, there's a sense in which you might actually experience more grief.

Because I found as the longer I've been a Christian, the more I do tend to give... Being a Christian in some ways makes it easier to knit your heart to other people. That's another talk. But in many ways, Christians very often get themselves very involved emotionally with people, and if that's the case, then in some ways you actually experience maybe more grief than if you were a hard, disillusioned person, like the person that C.S. Lewis talked about.

Having said all that, even if my spouse dies and I'm filled with incredible grief, the love of God is like salt in the meat. You know, in ancient times, you put salt in the meat. in order to keep the meat from going bad. And the joy of my knowledge of the resurrection, the joy of my knowledge of God's love for me and for my spouse, if you... I mean, you're weeping as much as anybody. When you're at the coffin, you're weeping as much as anybody. But there's a hope and a love.

that's you might say rubbed in there so on the other side of the grief as you start to come out of it it makes you wiser instead of more bitter so the answer is the question is no the love of god does not keep you from being extremely sorrowful and extremely unhappy, but it coexists with the unhappiness. A happiness that's based on earthly circumstances, like I'm happy because of my career.

I'm happy because of my family. Happiness based on an earthly circumstance means that unless things are going well, you'll be happy if they go well. If they don't go well, you'll be sad. Christianity, the sadness of losses... coexists with the happiness of Christ's love. And therefore, that's very difficult to understand. There's a kind of background piece.

rather than background noise in a Christian's life that makes it possible to endure a lot of things. But it certainly doesn't mean that you may not be extremely unhappy. And I did say at the end, I hope that one didn't go by too fast. is that the experience you have of God's love in this life is partial. The Bible constantly says the first moment we actually see Him face to face, after death, the first moment we actually see Him face to face.

we'll be transformed by that love because we'll have it fully. But till then, as Paul says, we see in a glass darkly. It's always partial. All the things I said qualify, but I think still don't undermine the basic strength of the Christian offer. Several questions about what...

exactly loving God looks like, like this question which says, does loving God look different from the way that we would love a person? There's an awful lot of analogies. I mean, obviously, God and human beings are two different things, and God is not visible to us, and that makes a huge difference. But there's plenty of analogies. No, I would say...

There's more similarities than dissimilarities. So, for example, you I think, well, in the very beginning, even though you love your spouse, let's say, or you may not trust your spouse, as the years go by and you start to see the spouse being trustworthy, the love deepens. By the way, another interesting thing is that in the very beginning of a love relationship with a partner,

In the very beginning, very often there's an incredible charge the first time you hold hands, the first time you kiss, and 35 years later into your marriage, probably you're not going to get the same charge when you kiss. Probably not. And you say, oh, isn't that awful? Not really, because the first time you kissed, was that love or was that ego? Was that I'm kissing you and I feel great because I love you, or was it

I'm kissing and this person's kissing me back. And it's a charge, but it's more of an ego thing. Like, oh my God. And is that loving the other person or is that in a way? congratulating yourself and sort of like, well, this person loves me. I would say that even though, no, there's no way I get the same charge.

from kissing my wife that I did the first couple of times I kissed her. No way. And we would never want to go back to that. Because we look back, we didn't even know who that person was. We were more in love with the person that we thought they were instead of the person they were.

And we were more in love with the idea of being loved than we were actually sacrificially loving each other. In all those ways, it's the same. You start out, you think you know God and you don't. You think you trust God, but you really don't.

Think you know yourself, and you don't. In the very beginning, very often, there's a high, oh, I've been forgiven. I like this, but it takes time. In many, many ways, loving God and loving a human being. You also have to have communication. That's what the Bible's about. That's what prayer's about. There has to be interaction. So there's more similarities than dissimilarities. All right. This person is asking...

even if my own life is quite wonderful and I love God out of gratitude, how can I deal with some of the tragedies that are happening in the world? Or how can I ignore the tragedies happening in the world? They say like multiple holocausts taking place at the same time.

Well, listen, as I mentioned before, I'll come back to it. Yeah, I think I mentioned it last week. If you go through... the New Testament and look up every time that Jesus is said to have an emotion, every reference to Jesus having an emotion, and you put them in categories, you will see the word that's most often used. about him is the term that really means to be moved with compassion, but it's a word that doesn't just mean love. It usually means being, it means sort of empathy.

or sympathy, or a feeling of the person's hurt. And therefore, because Jesus was perfect, he wasn't selfish at all, he was perfect. He was actually more unhappy about the unhappiness of the world. He did not seal off his heart from it. And that's the reason why the Bible says, or the Bible says, he was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.

and why you see him weeping far more than you see him. I mean, there's only one place where we see him kind of laughing and exulting. When he was here, he was always weeping. And yet... The reason he was feeling everyone else's sorrow and pain was because he had a perfect love relationship with God. Because that love relationship freed him from his self-absorption so he could feel other people's troubles.

You know, as you know, if you are totally self-absorbed, if you're in pain, you don't notice other people being unhappy. Have you noticed that? If you're sick, if you have a cold, if you're miserable, or if there's something wrong in your life, there might be other people around you unhappy, and you don't even notice. Why? Because you're too self-absorbed.

But Jesus, because he had perfect love from God, was not self-absorbed at all. And as a result, he actually did feel the sorrows of the world more than we do. So the idea that I could have a good life and I could have a great relationship with God, but what do I do about all the sorrows of the world? I'll tell you what you do. You cry. Just like Jesus did. That's what you do. You don't try to, how can I ward that off? How can I guard myself from that?

I don't think you should. I don't think you should. How do you explain that there are very happy and content people that do not know Jesus? Would you say that their happiness is fake? No, of course not. I mean, I don't know that any happiness is fake, by the way. Remember, I talked about levels, and I would say that there's... I would say that it's likely that at some point the happiness and contentment they're feeling right now will wear thin.

Because I actually don't think people are different. I think we all have, I believe what Augustine said, that there's deep recesses of the heart. There's a deep cavity down there. that only divine love can fill and nothing in this world can fill now the reality is i doubt very much that a five-year-old for example is aware of that even though a five-year-old is a you know a human being

I don't know the 10-year-olds are. So that doesn't mean the cavity's not there. It just means, for various reasons, they're not aware of it. So, no, I wouldn't say it's fake. I would say it's real, but it's certainly not... as deep as what you could have. And I hope in some ways, in some ways, I hope that it will wear thin so that they do look for something deeper because it's, I think it's the only kind of love that will really get us through things.

This question highlights that you mentioned that C.S. Lewis said, if I find myself longing for something in this world that the world can't meet, then I must belong to another world as a proof that God must exist to meet that need. But philosophically, why can't we have longings that can never be met? I'm sure I said this right. He didn't say that proves. He said it probably means fact.

I'm going to make sure that I didn't read this wrong. I might have, okay. So a duckling wants to swim, there's such a thing as water. A baby wants to suck, there's such a thing as milk. If I find in myself a longing which this world cannot meet... then it probably means that I was made for another world. Lewis wasn't dumb there. He knew that it's not a demonstrable proof.

It's a probability argument, that's all. He's saying, wouldn't it make sense that if you've got desires that cannot be fulfilled, that it's likely, wouldn't that make sense? Or wouldn't the existence of God make sense of that? better than any alternative belief system. Now that's not a proof, because you could say, I mean, I have heard people say that evolution produced people that are always unhappy because they're the best people, they survived.

By the way, I know how you prove that. But beyond that, I'm not really sure why always being unhappy and dissatisfied would make you more fit for survival. I don't think it would. All he's trying to say is Christianity has a really good explanation for that oddity, that idea that most desires have something in reality that fulfills them.

Why would I have a desire like this if there wasn't something somewhere that would fulfill it? It was a probability argument. It's a comparison argument. I think I've got a better explanation than yours. It is not a proof. Didn't say that.

This question is a little long, so I'm just going to pare it down, so I hope you don't mind. This person asks, do you think every human being is capable of loving? What about people who are born with medical deficiencies? Would the Christian gospel imply that that person is not actually human because they cannot love God in order to find satisfaction? Okay, the second part of the question, no way.

Now, we're talking about another doctrine of Christianity. I bring this out. Christianity says that human beings are made in the image of God. If you are a human being and you have a child, you're made in the image of God, they're made in the image of God. Now, what does that mean? Well, there's debate about that. It does mean that human beings reflect God in a particular way, but it has always meant in the Bible.

that anyone in the image of God is infinitely precious and has astounding dignity. So Genesis 9 says, if you kill someone because they're in the image of God, That's a grievous sin. James chapter 1 actually says, I think it's James chapter 1, maybe it's James chapter 3, actually says if you curse someone who's in the image of God, that's a terrible sin. See, what they're saying is the image of God is why you honor.

someone, an individual, why you treat them as sacred and with dignity. Not their capacities. One of the dangers is if you say, well, a person who is mentally retarded isn't a real person because they can't reason. Well, what about your grandmother who starts to get dementia and she can't reason anymore? Does that mean she's not a person, so we can pull the plug on her?

By the way, the secular world right now, and that's another subject which we might get to in three weeks. Two weeks. Three weeks. The secular world is struggling for a basis for human rights. Why should human beings have more rights than trees? And which human beings have rights?

The Christian approach is, all human beings are made in the image of God, therefore they're sacred because God says so. However, having said that, There are people who, because of the fallenness of creation, there are mental handicaps, there are things that would make a human being incapable of love, because it's a little hard to say that...

dementia means you're not loving anymore, but as a pastor, I've spent a lot of time with an awful lot of people who had mental decline as older. And are they loving anymore? Probably not. Are they human beings? Sure. It's very, very sad. And I almost think they need love. If they're human beings, even if they can't love, they still need it. They still need the hugs. They still need the kisses. They still need people to say, I love you. And I think that's true of anyone in the image of God.

Yeah, you can be broken enough physically and mentally that you can't love. That doesn't mean you're not a human being.

I'm actually getting a lot of questions pointing to the fact that, okay, so then if I love God, then that's what saves us. So I don't... I don't think that's what you're trying to say, so I wanted to know if you can address that. Is what you're saying... Yeah. Very smart. Yeah, if we love God enough, then we'll be accepted by him. I didn't say that.

I also didn't say, CSOS didn't say, this proves it. And I didn't say, but I'm really glad you brought it up because, yeah, of course, the danger here is with that illustration at the very end. of the czar and making up the debt. In there, even though I didn't spell it out, the Christian understanding is that we all fall short.

Nobody will love God enough from the heart. I even said that already. No matter how hard you try to love God, you'll never love him like you should. Or put it another way, if it's true that God made you, created you and if every moment he keeps you alive if he looked away from you you would your all your molecules would scatter you owe him everything and you owe to love him supremely and you never will love him supremely

And therefore, if you're saved by loving him, nobody will be saved. I mean, even though I try to say I struggle to love my... my God more than I love my wife. The reality is that I'm constantly losing that battle and having to get back. I'm falling off that horse and getting back on the horse. So if you understood me to say,

if you love God, that's what saves you, think. Because I tried to say, you never get there. It's always partial. And so if loving God is what saves you, no. It's God's love of you that saves you. That is to say, In Jesus Christ, look, let me cut to something that I probably should put later on. If somebody, okay, let's just say,

I borrow your car, if you've got a car. I know you live in New York, so two or three of you might own a car. So I borrow your car, and I drink while I drive. Please don't tweet this. And... I run your car into a wall, and there's $2,000, $3,000 worth of damage. And I come back to you, and I say, oh, I'm sorry, it was totally irresponsible, and it was. It's totally irresponsible. Now, there's only two things that can happen.

You might forgive me and say, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. You don't pay. You don't do anything. It's fine. Well, what that means is that you pay the $2,000 to fix the car or you go without the car. Either way, you bear the cost of my sin, right? Or I could say, no, no, no, I'm going to fix your car, and I bear the cost of my sin.

but somebody bears the cost of the sin. Do you see that? Even if you say to me, oh, I forgive you, the cost of that doesn't go away. You can only forgive me if you bear the cost. Or I can only make, you know, if you don't forgive me, then I have to bear the cost. So how does God forgive us for the fact that we don't love him as we should? He created us. He sustains us. Nobody loves him the way we owe.

We would owe him to love him supremely because we owe him everything, right? So if it's true that we have failed God and that therefore he needs to forgive us for that, how will he do it? He can't just say, I forgive you. Who bears the cost? That's what Jesus did on the cross. It's God coming to earth and bearing it himself. It's a lot like you, if you said, I forgive you and I don't want your money.

I forgive you, but then you bear the cost. That's what Jesus did. Now, that's how you're saved, because you say, I see that Jesus did that, and I put my faith in that, and I ask God to accept me because of that. Now, if you do that,

and you realize what he did for you, that evokes love. But the love is the result of the salvation. It's not the means to the salvation. Hear that? It's the result. Have I just proved Christianity? No, I'm just trying to show you how it works. I'm just trying to show you how it works.

Okay, so you explained how we are saved, but a couple questions on what exactly do you mean by saved? What does it mean to be saved? Right now, let's just go with forgiven. Forgiven. Your relationship with God is restored because he forgives you. And the relationship with God is what you're built for, without which you'll never have the meaning, you'll never have the identity, you'll never have...

the life you ought to have. So you've got to have a relationship with God because you were created for it, but the forgiveness is needed. And therefore, What I'm saying right now, what it means to be saved is to be forgiven and have that relationship restored. Thanks for listening to the Questioning Christianity podcast. And remember, you can find more content to help you explore the claims of Christianity by visiting gospelandlife.com slash explore. That's gospelandlife.com slash explore.

The Questioning Christianity talks in this series were recorded in 2019 in New York City, where Dr. Keller spoke with a local live gathering made up of attendees who did not identify as Christian and their Christian friends who invited them.