Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

The sages of old, for the sages of old, the cardinal problem had always been how do I conform my soul to reality?

And the solution had been wisdom. You understand that?

He says for ancient people, wisdom was the answer to the cardinal problem of life, which is here's the world. I need to see how it works and then live in accordance with it.

In other words, the cardinal problem is how do I conform my soul to reality, and the answer is wisdom.

But he says, it says, however, for magic and today's science alike, the cardinal problem has been how do I subdue reality to the wishes of my soul?

And the solution is a technique.

I was experiencing an ordeal. Terrible moment, full of struggle, blackness burning. Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved by him. And him who thus loved me, I absolutely worshiped. Yet I knew I must renounce my idol.

I do, Jane. Where shall I turn for a companion and for some hope?

Do as I do, Mr. Rochester. Trust in God and be yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet me there.

Then you will not yield?

No.

I believe this is in The Brothers Karamazov. I believe that like a child, that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a painful mirage, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they shed, that it will make it not only possible to forgive, but to justify all that has happened.

Here's Hamlet.

Is life more like Much Ado About Nothing or more like Hamlet?

Or is life more like Hamlet? Everybody dying disappointed in the last scene.

But when you stand in the presence of Hamlet or Macbeth, you know that you're standing in the presence of a much more profound mirror of what things are like.

Is life more like Much Ado About Nothing or more like Hamlet or Macbeth, huh?

But when you stand in the presence of Hamlet or Macbeth, you know that you're standing in the presence of a much more profound mirror of what things are like.

Is life more like Much Ado About Nothing or more like Hamlet or Macbeth, huh?

What is life, Macbeth? Life is a walking shadow. A poor player that frets and struts his hour upon the stage and then has heard no more. A tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Here's Much Ado About Nothing and here's Macbeth and Hamlet.

This is his biography by Roland Bainton called Here I Stand, The Life of Martin Luther.

Now this was something brought out about 30 years ago. A guy named Thomas Kuhn wrote this in a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

In it he put that the fact that there's no such thing as value neutrality.

You know, 20 years ago, before Thomas Kuhn began to sort of sink down into modern thinking, he used to read... When I came out of college, the counseling textbooks always said, if you're going to counsel somebody, you must do it value neutral. You must never impose your values on anybody. Never. If somebody sits in front of you and gives you a problem, you must be value neutral.

You must not tell that person what's right or wrong, but let them work it out for themselves. But you see, in light of just experience, the most recent counseling textbooks insist and admit that that's impossible.

There is no way, Thomas Kuhn said 30 years ago, to be value neutral. Everything that you see, everything that you question is on the basis of some kind of faith commitment.

I was reading a very popular, not a great book, but a popular book written by a couple of psychiatrists on codependency.

It's a good book and it was written for popular consumption, but what they do in there is exactly what modern people want to do and I'm here to show you, Psalm 8 is here to show you that you may not do this. You may not do this. You can't do it.

You kill yourself to do it. In the first part of the book, they say that codependency happens because people are ashamed of themselves.

They feel unworthy and they say they feel unworthy because they feel that there is a God and that there's a law and that they have failed.

So in the first part of the book, it says traditional religion is a great culprit in codependency and they go on and they say, therefore, you should not be... You should decide what you want to believe.

You shouldn't be oppressed by traditional religion. You decide how you want to live.

You decide what your moral values are. You make those decisions on your own.

Live as you want.

That's the first part of the book. Then in the second part of the book, they come up with the fact that people still persist in believing that they're worthless and that they're valueless and that they're pieces of junk.

So here's what they do.

Suddenly, on page 53 of the book, they say this, many of us were not taught that we are valuable simply because we are. That's all.

We may have failed people, but we are still precious because we are alive and exist.

Therefore, we are of worth in and of ourselves.

And there's a guy here named Francis Lyell who wrote a book called Slave Citizens and Sons and he puts it perfectly well. He says, the profound truth of Roman adoption was that the adoptee was taken out of his previous state and placed in a new relationship of son to his new father. All his old debts were instantly canceled. And in effect, the adoptee started a new life as part of this new family.