We're Not Dealing With Mortal Beings

The funeral service for Rev. Tim Keller was earlier this week. At the bottom, I hope you might consider my monologue from yesterday’s show on the increase in suicide in America. As we have become more isolated, depression has gone up. The secular world tells us that this is it, and then we die, and there is nothing else. People spend a lot of money and time avoiding the voice in their head asking them why they are here and whether they have a purpose. The world says no. Religion says yes.

Tim Keller was a man who believed we are — every single one of us — made in the image of God, and, as a result, we all have something to learn from one another, including those who reject God. He had passionate friendships with many and led many people to God.

One of Tim Keller’s friends was Dr. Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health. Collins professes himself a Christian. Christianity Today generated outrage from some conservative Christians for publishing a piece by Collins, timed for Keller’s funeral. Collins, due to his work and the work of the NIH in general, has become a villain for some evangelical Christians.

Keller and I had a couple of conversations about his friendship with Dr. Collins. What Keller said to me is no one’s business but Dr. Collins’s. But I know Keller passionately valued their friendship, even their disagreements.

I think you should read the piece. It is not about Francis Collins. It is about one of the most famous twenty-first-century theologians on the planet coming to terms with death and how, as he died, his faith grew stronger and, even at the end, he was more focused on ministering to others than focusing on himself.

I saw some people on Twitter say Christianity Today only published the piece to anger, trigger, or own conservatives. Outrage over grace is always a choice and is sometimes made by centering the self around the self. I think perhaps Christianity Today might have published the piece because Collins watched Tim Keller die and worked hard to save him. He’s an eyewitness to Keller’s struggles and death and a close, personal friend.

In that struggle and death, we can all learn something, which is why I think people should hold their nose if they can’t stand Collins and read an eyewitness account of a theologian practicing what he preached right to the grave. Keller believed passionately we should read and engage with the ideas of those with whom we disagree.

Lastly, as I step away for a few days to conduct the Gathering, I want to leave you with this C.S. Lewis quote that Tim Keller had placed in the order of service for his funeral.

It reminds us that those of us who profess Christ cannot conduct ourselves the way the rest of the world does. We believe that each person we encounter is an immortal being on their way to heaven or hell. And, through us, God might rechart the path of any from the latter to the former. So we cannot rage at the world as the world rages at us. Our ways, in life and in politics, must be different because we have a different mission from everyone else on this planet.

“It is a serious thing...to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

— C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Now, I hope you might consider this monologue from yesterday on my show about suicide, hopelessness, and pulling ourselves and others out of the despair so many are in.

I’ll be back to you next week. Throughout the Gathering, we’ll share clips, etc. with Philip doing the heavy lifting for me. Thanks to Charlie and Philip for doing so much to make this Gathering possible.

Kindly yours,

Erick