Uncovering Meaning - Tim Keller - UNCOVER

Well good evening everyone and welcome very warm welcome to uncover uh my name is Josh I'm a member of the Christian union and it's really fantastic to see you here my pleasure to welcome you uncover is a week of events exploring some of the big issues of life and faith and so every lunchtime this week uh we're considering some of life's big questions and then in these evening uh events we're looking at the life that Jesus Jesus offers and the claims that he makes about himself well this evening's title is uncovering meaning and in exploring

that topic we're delighted to be joined by Dr Tim Keller who'll be with us for the whole of this evening this evening series Tim's a New York Times best-selling author and he leads a church in Manhattan Tim will speak for about 30 minutes after which there'll be an opportunity to ask any questions you Have so please do be texting your texting in your questions throughout the evening using the number that will be on the screen throughout out after that we'll hear from Holly who's a student at lmh about how she began to Grapple with some

of these issues for herself and then after Tim's offered a few concluding thoughts we'll enjoy some more live music together well now please join me in welcoming Tim up to speak uh I'm glad to be here every night This week well I was grateful to be asked I Come From A A Town Manhattan the very center of New York City where uh people think of Christianity pretty much the way people think about it in Oxford uh it's understood that the natural and the social sciences have essentially made God and religion unnecessary that it's unnecessary for

uh well understanding The World God in religion is unnecessary for having moral ideals God in religion is Unnecessary for uh living life well and therefore history in a sense has moved on and Christianity in a sense is a spent Force that's how it's seen there that's pretty much how it's seen here the only problem is if you actually lift up your eyes and look at the way life is being lived around the world the the problem with that idea is that Christianity isn't acting like a spent force uh we could start with the Numbers the

uh if you take a look at Korea in the 20th century Korea went from about 1% Christian to about 40% Christian in 100 years uh if you look at China something like that's beginning to happen in China which of course is massively bigger uh but there's it's growing explosively in China in Africa at the beginning of the 20th century 9% Christian at the end of the 20th century 50% just one example is in 1955 there were 16 million Catholics in Africa and Today there's 170 million Catholics in Africa and that's not even the biggest uh

Christian body and I I don't even though the numbers are very impressive I'm not really thinking just about the numbers I'm thinking of the diversity of the places where Christianity is growing explosively uh one of the uh the secularization thesis which when I was young was uh just considered uh just absolutely true that is that the more technologically advanced the more Industrialized uh a society gets the more uh the more secular it gets and the less religious it gets the problem of course is that as China is getting more technologically advanced it's not getting more

secular in fact if I'm in a really bad mood and I can be uh if somebody says to me you know the world's getting more secular I say no some white people are getting more secular but the rest of the world actually isn't getting more Secular and white people by the way are shrinking as a percentage of the population of the world now what does that got to do with you though a few of you look white what does this got to do with you uh a lot because if you're here to try to understand

the world as it is if you're an oxer student don't you want to know what the world's really like don't you want to live in the real world not just the world that you'd like to believe in But the real world in what in that case you need to understand this movement you need to understand the fact that the world actually largely is not becoming more secular as it gets more technically technologically advanced and and um there's a tendency I think for people in Manhattan and Oxford to say when they when they actually hear the

statistics at first they're kind of surprised and they realize the secular ation thesis is perhaps uh Obsolete and yet they say Well that's the Christianity and religion is growing in less developed countries boy if that isn't a western imperialistic attitude and if you would like to be absolutely free of that Western imperialism stop those thoughts and actually say I'd like to find out from the people instead of imposing my idea on them I'd like to find out from them what is the reason why uh so many people are turning in this Way even in our

uh technologically advanced age and I'm going to try to represent them to you in in fact I I I have some confidence that I will be able to do that there is a remarkable amount of at least the things I'm going to talk to you about there's a remarkable amount of consensus across the world about some things when it comes to Christianity even though there's plenty of diversity in the Christian Movement and here's what I think most people would say who Are flooding into Christianity across the world they would say everyone needs meaning satisfaction Freedom

identity and hope meaning satisfaction Freedom identity and hope and they would say not only does Christianity explain why those are those are needs why we can't live without them not only does Christianity explain why we have those deep needs that we just can't avoid but it also Supplies those needs arguably better than any other view of life including the secular view that's what they say say and I would like to present that to you this week one night each you know meaning tonight satisfaction Freedom identity and hope and of course it's not just an intellectual

exercise I do think you just simp simply need to know a major part of of the future this is the future if you go to London or New York you can see with your own Eyes that the future of the world is uh maybe maybe there's certain parts will get more secular but many other parts will not the future of the world is a polarized world when it comes to religion not a religionless future and if you would understand that world I think you if you come out here I think you'll understand it better but

of course I want you to consider it personally too because these are human needs these are your needs you need Meaning and satisfaction and freedom and identity and hope and maybe you will find that this not only explains Christianity not only explains it extremely well but offers maybe unparalleled resources to meet those needs so what I'm going to do each night is I'm going to read you a text from the Bible I'm going to try to uncover uh the the particular theme for that night from that text I when I read you this text I

will not be you might say uh Unpacking it fully I'm going to choose some themes from the text and show how those themes shed light on our our topic but what I'm going to read you for tonight when we're going to be looking at the idea of meaning in life is John chapter 1 the first five verses uh and then uh three verses later on verses uh 14 to 17 so John 1: 1:5 and 14-1 17 in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God he was with

God in the beginning through Him all things were made without him nothing was made that has been made in him was life and that life was the light of all mankind the light shines in the darkness and the Darkness has not comprehended ended it the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory the glory of the one and only son who came from the father full of grace and truth out of his fullness we have all Received Grace upon Grace for the law was given through Moses Grace and Truth came

through Jesus Christ this passage uh indicates three things that there's a meaning in life that is discovered there's a meaning in life that is created and there's a meaning in life who discovers us there's a meaning in life that's discovered a meaning in life that's Created and a meaning in life who discovers us first there's a meaning in life that's create uh excuse me that's discovered in the most obvious thing if you've never heard even this text read before the most obvious thing about it is that John is talking about something called the word in

the beginning was the word and the Word was with God he uses the word word four times in the text in the passage and of course since he wrote in Greek he was using a Greek word and That Greek word was the word logos and John deliberately uses a word that had an enormous amount of cultural and philosophical Freight at the time because the ancient Greek philosophers had talked about a logos and they meant by the logos a spiritual Cosmic order or structure behind the material universe so that if you could discern what the logos

was you would understand the meaning or the reason logos the reason for existence the reason for life The reason for the universe to get the gist of it just imagine this I I'm GNA have because I'm American every you know Americans and and English people are are united by uh divided by a Common Language and we the big words we all believe in but it's the it's words like truck or l or lifter elevator these are the things that divide us and why we can't get along as well as we could otherwise and I I

don't do you do you say space heater room heater you know The little heater it's in our hotel room in case the central heating isn't working very well and you plug it in what do you call that a heater Americans are just you know we're just too overly complexify things all right we call it a room heater space heater so now let's just say you've plugged your space heater in and you're in the bathtub and you say you know the the water isn't hot enough I'd like to Heat my water my bath water with this

with this heater and you put the heater in what will happen you will die and you will die because it's not designed to heat bath water in fact if you plug it into the wrong power source it might uh you might burn down your flat and you better read the directions and the directions actually are an expression of of the logos of the heater that is the people who design the heater design it to work In certain ways uh there's a purpose there's a reason for the heater's existence and if you don't align your use

of it with the designer's a purpose for it you will destroy yourself electrocute yourself burn down your flat whatever and so the Greek philosopher said well what if there's a logos there is a logos they believe to the universe itself and what that means is if we could discern it it and we live in accordance with it if We could align ourselves with it then finally we would we we would be living along the grain of the universe as it were we would be living in a way that uh that uh as life was meant

to be lived and if we didn't if we if we didn't align ourselves with the meaning of life as far as the this Cosmic order behind the universe if we didn't live according to that we'd in a sense burn our our life down and so though the different philosoph I mean obviously every school The the stoics the epicurian the neoplatonist platinus Aristotle they all had different takes on it but they all beli there was a sense there was there were moral Norms there were moral absolutes there was a kind of cosmic spiritual order behind the

material universe and you had to discover that it was objective meaning it was out there you didn't make it up you had to discover it and you had to align your life with it and John is saying the Gospel writer John Christian writer is saying that's right there is a logos there is a spiritual order to the universe that you must align your life with that's the first thing we see from the text the second thing that the text indicates and it's more of a hint but it's a it's it's a it's a delicious hint

is in verse 5 where it says the light shines in the darkness and the Darkness has not comprehended it now the word light in the Bible is a Metaphor uh for truth very common metaphor for truth and what we're being told here is the truth comes into the world but the world doesn't comprehend it now some translations will say the world has not understood it and sometimes it says the world has not overcome it and uh a friend of mine who a new testament scholar Don Carson actually says that this Greek word that's that John

uses here he says is a masterp a masterpiece of planned Ambiguity because what it's getting across is the fact that we have a deeply ambivalent attitude toward truth there's a sense in which we want truth and on the other hand we don't like it being imposed on us and because of that we live in an era that I don't think John could have probably even imagined in which what we actually have is we have a uh we live in an era a culture Western culture in which this deeply ambivalent attitude Toward truth is very much

in play because on the one hand uh I'm going to read you two perfectly good examples of secular uh thinkers who say there is and there is not meaning in life so for example Steph J Gould who was a paleontologist at uh Harvard and a public intellectual uh some years ago actually uh in 1988 uh Life Magazine American Magazine act asked a group of different thinkers um uh what's the meaning of life and uh Stephen J gold Said this we are here because one odd group of fishes Had A peculiar fin Anatomy that could transform

into legs for terrestrial creatures because the Earth we're here because the Earth never froze entirely during an Ice Age We may yearn for a higher answer but none exists this explanation though superficially troubling if not terrifying is ultimately liberating we must construct these answers for Ourselves and then Jerry coin more recently he's a professor of biology at uh University of Chicago and like Stephen Jay Gould would be he called himself an atheist uh Jerry coin put it like this he says the cosmos doesn't have one iota of evidence for a purpose or for a God

so secularists don't give uh don't don't see a Universe without apparent purpose pardon me secularists see a Universe without apparent purpose and realize that we must Forget we must Forge our own purposes and ethics but although the universe is purposeless our lives aren't we make our own purposes and they're real now that I'm not having to read my notes I can tell you what he just said in both cases they said there is no purpose of life I mean because we're just here no one made us there's no logos there's no objective out there create

meaning in life that we have to align ourselves with there's no meaning In life we discover because we were not made for a purpose we're not like the heater we're just here and yet they both say but you can you still need to have purpose in life and you can create that purpose you can decide what you want to live for you want to live to be a good parent for your children you want to live to fight hunger in Africa you decide what the uh purpose is in fact Stephen J gold says it's liberating

there's no purpose that you have to Discover because we're not here for any purpose in a sense there's no purpose to human life but there can be purpose to your life and you create it isn't that liberating there's the ambivalence see there is no truth and yet we need something to live for there is no meaning in life and yet you need to have your own meaning in life life there are some people who've said no wait a minute let's get over this uh uh if you're a secular person and you realize that There's we

we're not created we're not here for any particular reason get over the idea of needing needing meaning in life um you shouldn't need meaning in life but you do uh a recent book in in the states which is a big bestseller uh is called uh being mortal by Atul Ganda he teaches medicine at Harvard Med school and he's also a a working Sur surgeon in Boston and in there he tells a story about uh a man who was the director of a nursing home in Upstate New York and he saw his nursing home patients withering

and dying dying these were aging patients old patients and he came up with an idea and he did a end run around the local Health Inspectors and he brought in pets dogs cats parrots parakeet he brought in uh plants all sorts of exotic plants created a vegetable garden created a flower garden uh didn't ask anybody's permission on every floor so that all the residents Suddenly had a garden to attend to or or or or a parrot to feed or a dog or a cat to feed and over the next couple years you should have seen

what annual deaths went down 20% uh psychotropic drug prescriptions went down 50% 38% it was a Triumph why and what he says is people need meaning in life and what does that mean feeding a pet just to have and here's how he defined it meaning of life is I've got a purpose and I make a Difference something I do lives beyond my life I have a purpose and it makes a difference so so if I do anything that I know lives on Beyond me I feel like I've got a purpose and if I don't have

a purpose I die so we need meaning in life but what we're being told in our culture certainly in a secular culture is there's no discovered meaning objective meaning out there that I've got to align myself with there's only created meaning there's only meaning that I decide for Myself and I make a purpose and it might be feeding a pet it might be raising a child it might be uh uh you know trying to uh do something for public Justice in the in the world today but it's going to live on Beyond me it's going

to make a difference because if I'm Superfluous if nothing I do really matters and nothing I do makes any difference then I have no meaning in life and you've got to live with meaning in life so we need meaning in life and secular people said well you Can have meaning in life you create it you create it question is it true that if there's no God and there's no meaning in life for the human race can you still have meaning in life even without belief in God or anything beyond this world and this life can

you have meaning in life and my answer to you is yes and no but a bigger no than a yes I hope I'm Being fair and you prob may not but okay we're here it's Oxford you can ask questions I can give you answers we can go back and forth but I'd like to say I think if you say I'm a secular person I don't have believe in God I don't believe I'm here for a purpose but I can have meaning in life my answer to you is yes and no I already gave you the

yes the yes is there's empirical uh proof that if even if you have something more important than just Yourself something more important than just clothing yourself and feeding yourself something else you're living for some other cause that maybe will outlive you something you're doing for someone else besides yourself meaning in life and you and you live and that nursing home is a perfect example of it but here's the here's three reasons why I'm going to press you on this three reasons why I think that if you don't believe in God or you don't believe in

Anything beyond this world or after this life that your meaning in life is far less rational far less durable and far less morally and social social useful far less rational far less durable and far less um morally and socially useful give me five minutes to unpack that all right first of all far less rational I know that sounds strange for a Christian to say to people who out there who might be secular that I do think Christianity is Much more rational when it comes to meaning and life what do I mean well let me give

you a couple more quotes and let's see if I can read them Thomas Nagel NYU Professor very prominent guy puts it like this in his little book a very short history a very short intro to philosophy and he has a chapter called the meaning of life and in there he says this even if you produce a great work of literature which continues to be read thousands of years From now eventually the solar system will cool or the universe will wind down and collapse and all trace of your effort will vanish it wouldn't matter if you

had never existed and after you've gone out of existence it won't matter that you did exist if one's life is supposed to have a point as part of something larger it's always possible to ask what's the point of that CS Lewis wrote this if nature is All that exists in other words if there's no God and no life of some other sort somewhere outside of nature then all stories will end in the same way in a universe from which all life is banished without the possibility of return if civilization will if civilization is all there

is human civilization there's no afterlife no God no Supernatural if civilization is all there is then civilization will have been an accidental flicker there Will be no one even to remember it no doubt atomic bombs may cut short its duration on this present Planet uh but the whole thing even if human civilization lasted for millions of years will be so infinitesimally short in relation to the oceans of Deadtime which precede and follow it that I cannot feel excited about its curtailment and uh French philosopher Luke F uh has a section in his book uh on

a brief history of thought in which He does what Tom Nagel says you can always ask if you don't believe in God you don't believe in anything beyond this world you can always ask the question uh what's the point of that he he calls it Lance duance and here's what he me means he says if you everything has to have a point right a purpose a meaning so why are you exercising well the point of exercise is to keep my health good what's the point of the Health so I can work what's the point of

work so I can make money so I can care for my family what's and what Luke F says is uh Le s s is you can always say what's the point of that until you get to a place where it's pointless why because here's in the end if this life is all there is and there is no God and this world is all there is in the end it will not matter whether you're a genocidal Maniac or an altruist it won't matter whether you fight hunger in Africa or some other poor place or whether you're

just incredibly cruel and greedy capitalists and you're just making money and you're starving the poor it won't matter because in the end not only will nothing you do make any difference but eventually nobody will be around to remember what you've done and eventually nobody will be around to remember that there is civilization in the end it makes no difference and what Nagel and F are are being they're just Being consistent they're being philosophers they're simply saying even if you say there's a point to this that I'm doing and it's a point to this eventually it's

pointless you can always ask what's the point of that what's the point of that and in the end it's pointless now you say well yeah they're philosophers and they think like that I'm not going to think like that I'm G to say I'm I'm I'm raising a child or I'm working here I don't want to have to Think cosmically like that well it might break in on you and here's what what I mean toll story you know and 1879 tolto wrote his confession and in the confession he says he talks about something that happened to

him when he turned 50 he said he had a wife who loved him he had a great he had good children he had a large estate which without much effort on my part improved and increased he said I was respected uh and then he came to the place where he Said I realized I could give no rational meaning to any single action in my life how's that he says today or tomorrow sickness and health sickness and death will come they come already to many people that he loved but it will come to me and nothing

will remain but Sten in worms he says sooner or later my Affairs whatever they may be will be forgotten and I will not exist then why go on making any effort how can we fail to see this he Says that's what's surprising one can only live when while one is intoxicated with life as soon as one is sober it's impossible not not to see that it's all mere fraud or a stupid fraud there's nothing either amusing or witty about it my question which at the age of 50 brought me to the verge of suicide was

the simplest of questions lying in the soul of every man a question without an answer to which one cannot live it was this what will become what will come of What I'm doing today or tomorrow what will come of my whole life why should I live why wish for anything or do anything it can also be expressed thus is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy now here's what tolto is saying and if you're a Christian and for argument sake will you imagine believing Christianity for a minute

just imagine and you're having a terrible day or you're having a terrible Month you're having a terrible year how do you deal with that one of the ways to do it is to think out the implications of what you believe about the universe if you really believe Christianity you say well you know there's a God who made me in love and even though I failed him he sent his son into the world to redeem me and now because his Spirit lives in me and he's promised someday to take me to be with him and someday

even to renew The whole earth and and and there's the resurrection of the body and and to create a new heavens and new earth and that means that ultimately the worst that can happen to me right now which is I die would be the best thing that could happen to me and even all these good outcomes are absolutely certain and The Best Is Yet To Come how does does a Christian deal with trouble by thinking thinking being rational thinking out the implications of what we Believe about the universe Tolstoy said that when he didn't believe

there was anything out outside of this world the more he thought about the implications of his actual view of Life the sad he got and it kept breaking in on him now here's my only Point first of the three points is if you really believe there's no discovered meaning in life only created meaning in life then if you really start to think Globally the fact that nothing you do is going to make any difference in the end well of course you're going to be upset because you're thinking out the implications of your view of life

you're uh you're thinking at the implications of your worldview well you don't have to think as much but that's what I'm saying it's not a very rational way to have meaning in life it's less rational than discovered meaning it's less rational secondly it's less durable what do I Mean by that less durable if you've created your meaning rather than discovered it and aligned with it if you created your own meaning then your meaning in life is some point in this life there's something in this life that you said I'm living for that I'm living for

my family I'm living for this cause I'm living for this political cause or something like that and that means that suffering when it comes can destroy your meaning in life totally Destroy it if you're living for your pet if you're living for your child your pet dies your child dies you have no meaning in life left but if you if your meaning in life is actually something outside this world if your meaning in life is to know God to please God to be with God suffering can actually get you in that direction it can actually

enhance your meaning in life it can get you closer to him so Victor Frankl for example uh who Was a Jewish doctor who was put into the death camps uh during World War II and uh he survived and afterwards he wrote a book called Man's Search for meaning and in that book he talked about the fact fact that he could see uh under the terrible horrendous uh uh conditions of the death camps uh people reacted and responded in three ways some people just became evil some good people became evil they started collaborating with the Enemy

they they Just became bad some people just lost hope they just sometimes literally curled up in a ball and died but he says some people stayed Noble Brave self-sacrificing and when he got out he tried to figure out what the difference was and he decided it had all to do with what their meaning in life was he says if you have a meaning in life that the death camp can take away from you and Think about that if your meaning in life is your career or money or your family or some political cause or your

looks if your meaning in life is anything that a death camp can take away from you and any created meaning is then you either become evil or you shrivel up and die he discovered that the people who uh were able to keep with it generally were people who had a meaning in life that was some Transcendent Reference point in some cases it was traditional religion and he saw a lot of uh Jewish people in the camp actually go back to traditional religion and prayers but he even remember one guy who simply said my wife's in

heaven because she's dead and she's looking down at me and I want to make her proud of me and that's my meaning in life and even that Transcendent reference point made it possible for him to survive death camps could you I don't believe any created Meaning in life something that you just deide is there because there's nothing Beyond this world is durable and Anthropologist will say Western societies are the worst Societies in the history of the world at Preparing People for for suffering and death because created meaning is not only less rational it's less durable

lastly it's way way way less useful for uh I said morally and and socially useful what do I mean by that uh some Years ago in The Chronicle of Higher Education an American uh paper for uh it's a periodical actually for educators and in the chronicle there was an article by a woman who was an anthropologist cultural Anthropologist at a college in Rhode Island I think and she was doing a lot of studies of uh certain cultures in Africa and one of the problems that she had was that the culture is very she found the

cultur is very oppressive to Women and she began to push back and question uh how uh those cultures treated women and she talked to some of the leaders in that culture and and she suddenly realized she was in trouble she says and she writes this uh in the article she wrote it she said as a secular person I believe there are no mind independent values and by that she meant I don't believe there really are any moral absolutes I don't believe there's Something out there objectively that I've got to align with I believe that all

moral values are person person specific or culturally constructed that every culture has its own values and no one culture is better than any other culture and there's no moral absolutes by which we decide this culture is good this culture is bad and yet when she showed up in these places and started saying wait a minute you need to treat women better they looked At her and said don't put your white Western values on us all that egalitarian stuff you know that every culture has its own values and you have no basis for saying that your

culture is better than our culture you have no basis for saying that uh you know your your moral truths are right and ours are not and by the way we just happen to think that these people need to be Controlled and she was incredibly frustrated and here's the reason why if there is no God you can explain moral feeling you have moral feelings I have moral feelings maybe they're the result of evolutionary biology and these feelings helped our ancestors survive maybe these are maybe this is a our culture if there's no God there certainly can

be moral feelings and people can be very moral in their behavior but if there's no God there's No basis for moral obligation moral obligation is saying you need to stop doing that in spite of how you feel about it because as soon as you do that here's what Frederick nii would say nii would come to you and say oh so you don't believe there's a God and yet you believe in human rights and that we should care for the poor he says you're still being Christians and you just won't admit it because the fact that

Matter is there is no moral obligation there's a a Russian philosopher that put n's argument very well salav who said man descended from apes therefore let us love one another what nii would say is that does not follow if you got here through the strong eating the weak if that's the natural Order of Things how dare you say that it's wrong when the rest of us do it and what that woman disc discovered is yeah she had a meaning in life she Was working she decided that she was going to work for this and work

for that but because she didn't believe in a logos because she didn't believe in a a discovered meaning a meaning that she had to align with she had no basis for saying to somebody else you need to stop doing that she had a meaning in life but it was actually morally and socially useless less durable and less rational so if Christianity was true if Christianity was True what would the meaning in life be because up to now and I'm just I'm only going to be brief on this but up to now I have shown you

that if you don't believe in God uh you you have created meaning that I think that you're at a great disadvantage in many many ways but I haven't really talked to you that much about what uh Christianity offers Beyond uh some other religion and here's what I'll just say at the end uh you remember how it said at the end of the text and The word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory glory as of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth there's three things that John is

saying there that I would like to uh I'll tell you two now and after we do uh listen listen to uh one student give an account of her spiritual journey and we do a question answer I'll come back and explain it but here's the first John says three things about the logos number one is the logos is a Person you realize how incredible that is the logos is a person John is saying yes like the Greek philosophers I believe there's a there is a structure behind the universe that we need to get in touch with

and we need to align ourselves with if we're going to be living along the grain of the universe but it's not a set of abstract principles that you have to use your philosophical accum to discern it's a person it's a person Jesus Christ and Have a personal relationship with him that's how you get in touch with the universe do you realize how egalitarian that was it was a bombshell in in in the history of the human of human thought the idea that the the logos is there but a person there's a meaning in life that

has to be discovered no it's a meaning in life who's a person and if I enter into a relationship with that person I'm in connection with the meaning of the universe that doesn't take us to Philosopher to know anybody can do that it's egalitarian it's incredibly personal it's not cold and Abstract suddenly the universe is in a kind of impersonal thing it's a it's it's a it's the creation of a personal God the logos is a personal think of how radical that was but secondly the logos actually comes to us uh you know maybe some

of you have heard may have heard me say this before either uh years ago when darthy sers Wrote her uh Lord Peter Whimsy novels uh the first number of novels and stories uh he had no love interest you know he's an aristocratic detective and um uh about halfway through the uh uh the the Lord Peter Whimsy stories suddenly a woman shows up what's interesting is as you many of you know darthy sers was was one of the early uh female graduates of Oxford and she wrote detective fiction and Harriet vain shows up and falls in

love with Peter Whimsy and they get Married Harriet vain was one of the first women uh graduates of Oxford according to the fictional narrative and she wrote detective fiction and some people say darthy sers looked into her created world and fell in love with her lonely hero and wrote herself into the story to save him and as that's kind of sweet I mean Americans would have gone a but you're British they would they would have gone A but you're British but there's something way greater than that according to John that's exactly what happened God creates

us we turn away from him that's the biblical narrative and God looks into the world he's created sees we need salvation and writes himself into the story and when you have a meaning in life not that you have to use all of your intellectual contemplative powers to Somehow discern and never be sure whether you've got it right instead if you have a meeing in life who's a person who comes and discovers you and that answers the problem remember what I said before that we we we we're ambivalent why because we want truth but we don't

want a truth that's imposed on us we we don't like the loss of our freedom we don't want a truth that's imposed on us but a love relationship changes that when I was Falling in love with my wife I wanted her to love me and I wanted I wanted to change for her and I would go to her and I'd say is there anything that you want me to change and she had her list I remember one one of the things on the early part of the list was maybe I should that I am in

England so I'll be more delicate uh maybe I should say matters of personal hygiene and when she told me about it They was the sort of things that my mother and father had talked to me about and I had said don't you dare tell me how to live my life when Kathy said this is what I like you to change I said okay because in a sense she W when you're falling in love with somebody you want to please that person and that's not that's not meaning you create it's something you discover you want to

please that person that person says these are things I want you to do But to give them to the person you love doesn't feel like an imposition it feels like life itself life itself and see that's what's so different about Christianity the meaning of life isn't the 10 commandments though you should obey the Ten Commandments the meaning in life isn't isn't just you know hoping to please your wife so when you go to heaven she'll be proud of you that's closer frankly but this is Talking about a person that comes into your life and says

know me and you know you're you're in touch with the universe but do the things there's Norms of course there's things you're supposed to do if you're a Christian but do it because you love me do it because of what I've done for you when I came to Earth went to the cross and died for you yeah you know there's a a hym writer 17th century uh American hyw writer has got a Christmas Carol and one of the one of the uh verses goes like this seek not in courts or palaces nor Royal curon draw

but search the stable see your God extended on the straw your God extended on the straw that changed history and that'll change your life the logos is a person and a love relationship is the meaning with him is the meaning in life now you're going to see right now a a short uh account by an Oxford student about Her own spiritual journey and after that we're going to come and I'm going to answer questions and so you can begin to text your questions in to that number and after that I'm going to take as many

as I possibly can in a few few minutes and then I'll wrap up and we'll call it a [Applause] night growing up my whole identity was defined by the fact that I was really good at history I was one of the geeky Kids at school when I arrived to Oxford I felt like I made it in life here I was surrounded by all these people eiki KS me who all loved learning as much as I did I felt like I would Breeze through my time at Oxford as I had at school but that optimism was

very quickly crushed when I received my first essay feedback and with it I felt like my whole identity was threatened nonetheless I made many friends for life that time and I grew particularly close to my college brother however there was a catch he was becoming more and more interested in all that Christian stuff I'd never been to church before but I was certain that all Christians were weird and unfriendly but to spend more time with him I went to a couple of the see meals in our College during that mcus term and I was baffled

here were the most welcoming group of people I had ever met in my life in my second term one of my teachs told me That in order to study medieval history we had to have a really good knowledge of the Bible in the Christian church I decided that I would try to read some of the Bible and I would go to church as I decided that this would be the easiest way to find out a bit more however after going to church that Sunday I didn't return for another 4 months the sermon was on is

Jesus the only one way to God and I immediately took offense to the preacher's line of Argument he stated that Jesus was indeed the only way to God and having been brought up in a multicultural context I found this really shocking later on my college brother had become a Christian and I was Furious I decided to go back to church and began to go to some of the events put on by the Christian union to discover exactly what he was hearing and to try and prove him wrong however rather than challenging his beliefs I found

that my own beliefs were being Challenged in particular I was shocked by the remarkable evidence for the resurrection and the historicity of the Bible this shook me as i' thought historically none of it was viable I discovered that if Jesus did really did rise from the dead then his claims to be God suddenly held a lot more weight as a historian I was determined to follow the evidence where it LED and so I prayed my first prayer God if you're real and I don't know if You are please help me to come to know you

I became convinced that God answered that prayer but then came the first real test my prelims now that I was no longer the best historian I felt like a bit of a failure I didn't really know who I was anymore but I'd heard that Jesus could help me with that too I just had to ask to this day I've never felt so consistently calm in a set of exams as I did that year because I knew that God had it all under control it was Unbelievable to know that the God who created the whole universe

cared about me do we have a working microphone tremendous great so we have a few minutes now for some of the questions that you've been texting in um before Tim wraps up with a few thoughts I'm afraid we're goingon to have to share this microphone again Tim um but in the meantime should we have our first question Up isn't humanism a perfectly conceivable non-religious transcendental goal uh it certainly is conceivable it certainly is non-religious I don't know what you mean by transcendental but I don't think so because as far as I know Transcendent versus imminent

humanism is imminent humanism says that all value has to happen uh within the framework of this world we don't look at some Transcendent Uh Source confusion ious believed in something called Heaven it was something Beyond this world uh of course you know Buddhism thinks that the that the uh physical world is an illusion uh the Greeks believed in the the logos all of them had a Transcendent reference point as far as I know secular humanism I think that's what you mean if you talk about Christian humanism it it it doesn't really make much sense as

a as a question so I I'm assuming you're Talking about secular humanism and secular humanism no doesn't have a Transcendent goal my point uh about nii let me let me draw it out just for a second nii said if there is no Transcendent reality if all we have is the imminent if all we have is uh this life then how can you take any one part of life and put it over Another Part of Life uh as soon as someone says uh this is good and this is bad where do you get that he says

unless you have a Transcendent reference point you can't judge part of life good and part of life bad you have to embrace all of life as it is that was nii and and I don't think there's a frankly I don't think secular humanism has any kind of answer for him I think he's absolutely right because there's no Transcendent reference point uh you can't say you essentially have to accept life and you can't pick and choose and say this kind of life is good this kind of life is bad nii would say That secular humanism because

it believes in human rights it believes in the Dignity of every person it believes that you shouldn't starve the poor and you should do Universal benevolence for everyone should be trying to make a the world a good place for everyone he would say there's you you're not going to read that out of the facts of nature you will never read that out of the facts of nature all you see there is nature readed in tooth and Claw he says you've Gotten that from Christianity and you won't admit it that's nii and I think he's right

so I don't believe that humanism is it's very conceivable and it's non-religious and uh most Christians probably find that most of the ideals of humanism they would agree with but no it's not Transcendent if there is is a logos why do some people live so well without it I would not get far denying gravity so why can I Live Well without your so-called Logos well I that's a great question too I could answer it the Christian answer well not I won't you give you the Christian answer first um I began to answer that question in

the um uh in my answer to the last question uh nii would say that most secular people think for example that human rights is just a self-evident uh he would say no that basically it's self-evident to Western individualistic people and by and large Uh your Western individualism is a Heritage of Christian Christianity uh it's you for example uh in India it's illegal to to commit suicide in Japan it's illegal I believe sometimes there are legal penalties for the family and and uh many westerners say that's just horrible you have the you know if you want

to kill yourself you have the right to do that uh that so much of what many people in the west Think of as self-evident good values really have come down from Christianity and many other parts of the world do not share those so I there's it seems like this question sort of assumes that without religion uh goodness is self-evident it's just not and I think in some ways you you've lived your life perhaps a little bit uh in the western bubble that says our values are not something that we just got from Christianity our values

Are self-evident to anyone who just uses their reason and uh so I think that might be the answer to the very uh probably the answer the the Christian answer this my my I'd say without assuming Christianity I would say um uh there at least in the west people have uh are still being influenced by the the the consensus of Jude judeo-christian values but as a Christian I'll tell you what I think and the answer is we believe in something called common Grace And common Grace is the fact that even though all not all human beings

are uh believ in Christians of course or not nor are all human beings Believers in God we think all human beings were made in the image of God we believe all human beings were made in the IMO day which means that all human beings have a sort of We Believe deep knowledge of right and wrong that uh is there whether you believe in God or not and so we're not surprised we Christians are not Surprised to see lots and lots of people living well without it that they sense in some ways it's like gravity they

they sense right and wrong out there even if as nii shows they have no particular basis in their view of the world for it but they still sense the rightness or wrongness of it we would say it's a common Grace that God gives to all human beings whether or not they're uh believing Christians or not just because it's rational rational Stroke durable stroke useful stroke nice stroke comfortable doesn't make it true has Christianity not just fashioned a God to avoid accepting that really we have no meaning well I'm really glad somebody took notes because those

definitely were my points and I I I I I feel that's a compliment and I I appreciate that very much um no I agree that tonight um I I am I am showing you Tonight more a reason why you should want to explore whether Christianity was true uh if if at the end of this week for example if you come every night this week or you come many nights or get get a a hold of the material and if you say you know Christianity really does create a meaning in life that would be pretty remarkable

it it's uh rational it's durable it's useful and not only that it's based nice and comfortable is a Slightly pejorative way of talking about what I my last point I think uh which is to say the idea that you have moral Norms embedded in a love relationship as opposed to just abstract principles if you say you know that's that sounds attractive satisfaction if I show you that Christianity gives you tremendous resources for those things it's true that along the way I am not saying I that's that proves Christianity is true But it should at least

indicate that you should care whether it's true or not in fact if you really say hasn't Christianity just fashioned a God who avoid accepting that really we have no meaning that yeah maybe but how how can you be so sure maybe you've worked it all out so I'm I'm just showing I would say in a place like Oxford and Manhattan people aren't motivated to find out whether Christianity is true because I started by saying people think it's a Spent force and I'm trying to show you there's a whole lot more heft to it than you

think I am not actually doing what you might call traditional case for why Christianity is true in these evening meetings I'm not doing that however I am trying to show you in many cases that um that if you're a secular person who thinks that God has just been fashioned I want you to see that you're you're not just simply being objective and rational you are living your basis you're living Your life on the basis of a set of beliefs that are not self-evident to everyone in the world that are no more empirically uh based than

than religious beliefs and that have all kinds of problems in them for example the idea that there's human rights but there's no God you if you're the kind of person that believes that nii says you've got profound problems human rights make more sense if there's a God and if you think they're true they're really there if you Have a premise that there's no God that leads you to a conclusion you know you you know isn't true that human beings can be bought and sold like n would say then why not change the premise so I'm

not arguing directly for Christianity being true I'm trying to show you that you should want to find out and I'm trying to show you some of the ways in which Christianity has better truth claims than than uh uh some of the claims of secular reason but I'm not doing the traditional tonight I just didn't do it and I'm not I obviously in I'm trying to take about two or three minutes on each of these questions I can't give it to you now um if you come back and ask uh if you ask more questions I

may be able to give you more uh sketches and there are a couple nights in which I'll get closer to answering that question but I can't do any more than that right now if Heaven is so perfect and life so Full of suffering then what is the purpose of life um if life is so full of suffering what's the purpose of life again let let me uh let me refrain from doing the direct Christian answer every other religion by the way I hate to do this a couple years ago I wrote a book on suffering

and the first third of the book is speaking to this uh every religion practically has a Role for suffering in the purpose of life so the most obvious one for example of course is the karmic religions actually think that uh if you're suffering it's because of something you did wrong in a future in a past life and by handling suffering well in this life and living a good life you actually get better reincarnations and eventually you you get out of uh uh you know you get off the of the merry gound altogether and you finally

leave and get into Bliss And the good thing about the car one of the great things about the karmic religions is there's never unjust suffering never if you're suffering now uh you you it's because you did something bad in the past and frankly karmic religions really explain suffering quite well and say suffering is here as a test as a way of not only it's partly a punishment for what you did in the past and it's a test for you to get into Bliss uh Christianity of Course doesn't see it like that Christianity believes that suffering

is uh your suffering is not necessarily caused by what you have done but that suffering in general is caused by the human race turning from God so suffering in general is our fault but not specifically and that's the reason why I think Christianity's view of suffering is remarkably balanced because on the one hand it keeps you from just feeling like uh uh so Furious because uh all Suffering is undeserved but it's also it's not as fatalistic for example as the karmic religions that say all suffering is deserved it's it's kind of a mixture and if

the purpose of life is to know God and to become like him then you might say if Jesus Christ brought Redemption into the world through suffering if he brought about something incredibly great through something as bad as suffering then if I'm faithful to God in my suffering Christians say Somehow that will be Redemptive too that doesn't mean I'll be saving the world doesn't even mean I'm necessarily having my own sins forgiven I'm not saying that but by but I will become more and more like God I'll become more and more like the one who suffered

for me I'll become more and more uh uh kind and caring to other people frankly uh most of the huy people I know and unkind people I know and uh people who are very very unempathetic are people who've never Suffered generally when I see people like that I say your time will come you're either young enough that you haven't suffered yet or you've lived a CH life and it's one of the worst things for you a Christian therefore Christianity every religion but secularism says that suffering is part of the purpose of life and I just

gave you a little glimpse of what uh it would be in a Christian worldview but um only secularism actually says there's no Meaning to suffering all suffering does is destroy meaning uh by the way eventually the Bible teaches that uh in the in the the last part of Revelation you notice that the city of God comes down out of Heaven it's coming down to earth and So eventually what happens is not so much that we're going up even though when you die I believe you go to heaven I'm a Christian minister but at the very

end of time Heaven comes down destroys suffering and the world Somehow will be more glorious the the the glory we have will be more glorious because of how suffering and evil has been overcome through Christ thank you well I'm afraid that's all we've got time for for Q&A this evening if you do have further questions then as Tim mentioned and as we'll hear there are um further talks this week that might be useful to you um there's also a bookstall at the back you'll notice on your way out um which has a Number of titles

which um will be helpful for um thinking through some of the issues that Tim has raised well I'm gonna hand over to Tim now to wrap up the evening thank you for being patient uh I I mentioned that that that that passage which of course I've just barely um uh touched on it's a very rich passage says three things about the logos John says that the logos is a person not just an abstract principle Secondly the logos isn't something that we necessarily discover as much as it comes and discovers us uh he comes and discovers

us that God has written himself into our story and uh uh the Son of God has come to earth now the one thing I didn't talk much about except only in glancing is what he came to Earth to do and what I want to do in the uh the the the rest of the week uh the rest of the evenings this week he talk more about that but did you remember What I said uh when I read the passage where it said that we beheld his glory glor is of the only begotten of the father

full of grace and truth and I talked about the the fact that he gives us a Grace and Truth the law came through Moses but we get Grace and Truth probably that uh statement about God's glory uh and the reference to Moses is is supposed to make us think about a place in the Old Testament in the Hebrew scriptures in the book of Exodus where At one point Moses says to God Show Me Your Glory this is looking at tomorrow night here uh we are all dissatisfied we're all living with a lack of satisfaction Moses

had a sense that if he saw God's glory his absolute beauty that that would be perhaps the thing he was looking for all of his life he tried to find it in in marriage he tried to find it in in politics he tried to find it in career But he said Show Me Your Glory and God says I can't it will kill you and yet here in John chapter 1 through Jesus Christ we beheld his glory glor of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth the key how could that be the

key is probably the fact where where the Greek text uh is translated the word became flesh and dwelt Among Us uh the Hebrew word there is a very unusual word it's the word tabernacled it literally he pitched his Tent he tabernacled among us and it seems to be a reference to to Jesus being the Tabernacle in the Old Testament in the in Israel the Tabernacle and the temple was the place where God holy shakina Glory presence dwelt in the holy of holies behind the curtain behind the veil and no one could go back there only

the high priest once a year on yam kapore the day of atonement it was uh a way of saying God's glory is not something that can Come into your life because there's a gap between God and us there's a Chasm we failed him there's there's guilt there's things like that but that by Jesus Christ becoming the Tabernacle so that we can now see his glory Jesus in a sense is the priest that ends all priests he's the he's the temple that ends all temples he's the sacrifice that ends all sacrifices and somehow the glory the

uh the power of God can come into our life in a way that could never Have happened otherwise bridges that Gap a uh an Anglican Minister I know some years ago told a story he said in the uh early days of Christianity you he could imagine uh a a Roman neighbor to a Christian coming over and saying I understand you're a Christian and the Roman neighbor says uh are I'm a Christian the Christian says yes the neighbor says well I love religions I love the pageantry tell me more about your religion where are your Temples

and a Christian would say we don't have a temple Jesus is our Temple he tabernacled Among Us uh oh well that doesn't make much sense to the Roman neighbor he says well where do your priests work well we don't have a priest Jesus is our priest really says the Roman neighbor well well where do they where but where do you offer sacrifice IES to Curry favor with your God and the uh the Christian would say Well we don't have any more sacrifices Jesus is our sacrifice and more than that we don't have a remote God

that we have to somehow Curry favor with or even figure out Jesus is the god who's come to to discover us and probably at that point the Roman neighbor would say what kind of religion is this and probably the right answer is it's really not exactly a religion at least not as human beings think of religion it's not really religion it's a Divine person the word Became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory glory is of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth we're going to explore how he

uh bridged that Gap and what it means that he's the final Tabernacle and Temple in the the coming weeks right now Josh is going to come up and he's going to close us up right