O que o cristianismo pode oferecer à sociedade no século 21? | Timothy Keller

[Music] Isaac Watts has a hymn in which he talks about peculiar honors this does feel peculiar for me to be as an American talking to you about this subject but it is an honor I should go down the list of all the people I should be venerating as I speak to you but because I'm an American I know I'll get that list wrong and you've already gone through the list a couple times and so I'm glad to be addressing you on this subject subject is what can Christianity offer British Western our society of the 21st

century and I'd like to answer that question from the last verse that was just read to you out of that famous passage you are the salt of the earth but if the salt loses its saltiness how can it be made salty again it is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot now Jesus is using a metaphor salt and when salt is dispersed into meat it is both savory and preservative on the one hand it's it's savory it brings out the taste the best in the meat but on the other

hand it's a preservative it keeps it from decaying but only if the salt is salt that is only if it's chemically different than the meat if it's not different chemically from the meat then it's of no use at all the metaphor Jesus is using is to say that his disciples that's the Christians should be dispersed in the societies of the world where the salt of the earth he says that doesn't mean the ground he means the world Society and in every society that means that Jesus says my disciples should be bringing out the best in

that particular culture and preventing its worst tendencies as well but only if Christians remain salt which is different from the rest of the culture so I'd like to unpack that a little bit and look at how Christianity how Christians have been salt in a massive way in Western society how it they still can be solved but only if they stay themselves only salt only is helpful to the meat if it's not like the meat if it's itself so one two three first Christianity has been massively salt in our society already and it still is operating

today there's a a professor at a major American University professor of history that had a I think in a very effective way of helping his students see how Western society had developed over the years and here's what he would do with his students he would give them a thought experiment he would say imagine it's late at night and you are on a lonely Street and you see a little old lady coming walking along with a big purse filled with jewels and money and you know that to take it here's three things you know for this

thought experiment one number one she could not resist you number two she probably wouldn't even be able to identify you if you took it and number three in this particular time and place it's not against the law to do it okay for the sake of the thought experiment she won't be able to resist you she won't be able to identify you and it's really not even against the law to do it do you do it yes or no and why so the first question he would ask them is do you do it yes or no

and of course you wouldn't be surprised to know that over the years in spite of the fact that in this thought experiment it's not against the law virtually all of his students always said no you don't and then he would say let me give you three reasons why and I want you to identify which one is your reason a you don't do it because for you to take that money from that person would mean you would be a weak person you would be a dishonorable person to pick on a weak person means you would be

weak you wouldn't respect yourself no one else would respect you that's a B you don't take it because you think about her you imagine what it would be like for her to lose that money you imagine who might be dependent on her okay so a because you don't do it because you would be weak B you don't do it because it would hurt her and see something else you know none of the above and of course you might guess over the years almost a hundred percent of his students always picked B and then he would

begin to teach he said a is an other directed a partly a is a self-regarding ethic it comes from a shame and honor culture in which strength is what really matters strengthen honor B is an other regarding ethic in which the ultimate value is love now he said when the anglo-saxons met the monks when the pagan anglo-saxons met the monks they were in a shame and honor culture and the reason they wouldn't take that money would be because they would be as a weak person but when the monks came along the Christian monks with this

other regarding ethic an ethic of love the anglo-saxons thought this is crazy why the only thing that holds society together is respect for strength and a certain amount of fear for strength Society would completely fall apart otherwise and of course the the Christians won the Christianity won out and this is where the professor would make his point he says I don't care whether you're a Christian or not in this room and he said I don't care even whether you believe in God personally it doesn't matter the point is you have been shaped by Christianity your

moral sense is not the moral sense of an Eastern or Shaymin honor culture and which strength is the most important thing you have an other regarding ethic and ethic of love and that came from Christianity because the monks came saying it doesn't matter the social class of the person it doesn't matter your social class or their social class everyone must be loved for their sake now as soon as you begin to think about this you begin to realize how this worked itself out through Western civilization there's all kinds of scholarship going on now I can

only gesture in the direction Brian Tierney of Cornell University and a whole lot of other people have shown that the idea of human rights the idea of every human being being of equal dignity and worth did not have come up out of the Enlightenment it came up in the Middle Ages and it actually came up out of Christian and biblical roots for example ancient cultures all accepted slavery but the first person we know of ever that protestin says slavery is wrong per se the institution is wrong per se because human beings may not be sold

because they're of infinite worth was Gregory the Bishop of Nyssa who in the 370's wrote I mean priest a very famous sermon in which he said not by the way these are currencies I'm about to tell you in which he said how many obols for the image of God how many Staters did you get for selling the God formed human being for Jesus Christ who knows the worth of human nature has said an entire cosmos is not worthy to be exchanged for human soul who this is gregory of nyssa who can buy a man or

sell a man once you realize he's in the image of God now that idea which was unique in the world at the time is the first person the first voice to come get up and say no human being can be sold to another human being that worked itself out so as Brian Tierney points by the Middle Ages this idea that every human beings made in the image of God began to develop the idea of inalienable human rights for everyone no matter what the race the what the class no matter what the social status Martin Luther

King jr. perfectly talked about it when he says in his sermon the American dream he says you see the founding fathers were really influenced by the Bible the whole concept of the imago Dei the image of God is the idea that all men have something within them that got injected not that they have substantial unity with God but that every man has a capacity to have fellowship with God and thus gives him a uniqueness it gives them a were that gives him dignity and we must never forget this as a nation speaking of the United

States of course that there are no gradations in the image of God every human being from a treble white to abate a base black is significant on God's keyboard precisely because every human being is made in the image of God this is why we must fight segregation with all of our nonviolent might a very different voice Jurgen Habermas says the ideals of freedom of conscience human rights and democracy is the direct legacy of the Judaic Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love the very idea of human rights then works itself out in

a whole lot of different areas David Bentley Hart another scholar talks about how our modern ideal of universal benevolence helping the poor no matter where they are helping the hungry no matter where they are the whole idea of universal benevolence is a Christian idea that grew out of Christian roots dare I say something about sex yes I dare Kyle Harper a great scholar of antiquity writes in his great book from shame to sin that when Christianity grew up started the Roman world sects ethic was completely based on shame and honor the Romans the sects ethic

was completely based of hoist up the social order the hierarchy so if you are a man of high social status and you were married you could have sex with whoever you want your wife couldn't and no woman of lower social status could deny sex demanded by any man of a higher social order she could never deny it along comes Christianity Kyle Harper says and what he calls the first sexual revolution and says all sex has to be consensual and coven ental it has to be done by consent mutual consent in a covenant and it was

a revolution because because the Christian idea the other the other directed ethic of love started to work itself into every area Sarah Williams is going to be here to talk later on about the fact that we're celebrating the women's rights and women's suffrage but where do you see historical research will show that in the West that had biblical roots that had Christian roots okay Christianity has not only been salt it's been salt so massively the ideals that we all take for granted right now are the fruit of the Bible and Christianity and therefore to even

say what can Christianity do for society now it's a little churlish it's a little bit like saying what have you done for me lately but let's suggest this in the past Christianity has been like salt bringing out the best in Western society but in the future it might be more of a way of preventing decay it might be more of a preservative I'd like to talk about one problem that Charles Taylor the great Canadian philosopher talks about that I think would give us an example of this Charles Taylor's great book sources of the self the

making of modern identity in that book he talks about what he calls a contradiction at the very heart of modern culture interestingly enough he's following Nietzsche here completely following Nietzsche and here's what he says he says that our modern culture is deeply incoherent over moral value because on the one hand we have the highest moral ideals of any culture in history we believe in the equality every single human being we believe that we should be seeking justice for every class for every national group for every race we believe in alleviating suffering and and hunger for

every person on the face of the earth that's our ideals so on the one hand we have these high ideals on the other hand modern culture tells you that all moral value is socially constructed or may be the product of our evolutionary biology that all moral value is basically a subjective preference and so what Charles Taylor says is we have these high moral ideals but we don't have the moral sources to support them we say look at these ideals and then over here we say really all morality is relative and he says that creates a

huge problem we don't the moral sources to support our ideals how so well just give you two ways one way is this it's not the most important way but it's a one of the problems when modern people certainly modern people who talk about human rights and human equality when we talk to people who don't share our values all we can do is yell see Justice Anthony Kennedy Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy put the modern view of morality very well in a famous ruling in which he said at the heart of Liberty is the right to

define one's own concept of existence of meaning of the universe and of the mystery of life now that's definitely the message of the culture you get to define your own meaning you get to define right or wrong for you but if that's the case why not be a racist why do I have to honor human rights well Charles Taylor says is when Western people today with our high ideals meet non-western people who don't agree with our ideals all we can do is say well you're just not enlightened like we are and that's the same Western

white imperialism that non-western countries are beginning forever from us because all we can say is well you would just understand if you really were as enlightening is a educated as we are so one of the problems with having high moral ideals and no moral sources for them is that when we try to talk to people who don't share ideals all we can do is yell but a bigger problem is this can we form people anymore in our society who can support those ideals because those ideals take self-sacrifice the way Charles Taylor puts is like this

we tell people especially our young people we say you've got to be true to yourself you've got to follow your own inner light you can't let anybody tell you what is right or wrong for you and not only you got to be true to yourself you have to be true to yourself no matter what your family says or what your community says or what your society says you don't sacrifice for them you make them adjust to you but then we say to them but then you have to actually work for justice and you have to

work to alleviate hunger which of course takes sacrifice what that does is it takes giving up power it takes giving up wealth it takes giving up all sorts of things so how are they going to do that when when Charles Taylor's book source of the self first came out and he made this point an atheist reviewing it wrote this he said perseverance and virtue will require self-sacrifice and self-sacrifice seems to require some transcendental justification or motivation of which the most common and perhaps the most logical is belief in God or so Taylor says circumspectly since

modern freedom entails the rejection of all transcendence modern virtue is wholly contingent can we be good for long without God Taylor's doubts he rights are daunting to me but let me give you an example just to put a fine point on what I'm talking about here and what Taylor's talking about not too far from where I grew up in Pennsylvania in October 2006 a gun man went to an Amish schoolhouse I took a bunch of little schoolchildren hostage and during the during that whole crisis he shot and killed five of them girls I think ages

7 to 13 and that he killed himself within hours of the shooting the Amish community had come around both the parents of that shooter who lived there lived in that area and around the wife and the three children of the shooter who lived there and had come to them and express sympathy and said we want to be with you for the hard days ahead when the shooters funeral occurred more than half the people who were at the funeral were Amish people and an Amish spokesman said that all the family members who lost children forgave the

shooter and his family and of course in America there was a huge amount of discussion about this everybody was shocked at their ability to reconcile to love to reach out and what a lot of people wrote back then I remember it clearly is this is these are this is what Americans are capable of this is us at our best the two or three years later three sociologists wrote a book called Amish grace and in that book they wrote that we should not think that our Western society is capable of producing this sort of thing anymore

forgiveness is an act of self renunciation forgiveness is an act of self-sacrifice for the good of others for the good of the community forgiveness means I could pay back but I'm not going to it's a self it's an act of self renunciation and self sacrifice but the sociologist said our culture increasingly is a consumeristic culture it's an individualistic culture and it teaches self actualization it teaches self assertion and it teaches you never to do self renunciation never do that and so they said we're more and more going to be incapable of having people who can

forgive who can share power who can make sacrifices we're just not producing them and they said but see the Amish culture was based on Christianity and here's what the Amish culture is based on we're saved through what Jesus Christ has done he had all glory he had all power and in every right to be angry at us his creation for turning away from him but instead he gave all that up and he he just he gave and he gave and he gave he gave up his glory and became a human being he gave up his

life and he went to the he went to the cross and died on the cross as he was dying saying father forgive them they don't even really understand what they're doing and what the sociologist said on the basis of that that we're saved through this self giving of Christ then we hear Christ saying what take up your cross and follow me lose yourself to find yourself don't live for yourself anymore but live for God and your neighbor I see that's drilled into the Amish and as a result they can do that but that's not drilled

into us what we need in our society which is producing self actualize errs self-assertive we need millions of people who've been shaped by the self giving of Jesus Christ who say I'm a Christian because of Jesus self giving and we're able to say therefore I live for God and for my neighbor not necessarily for myself because I've got everything I need in him look last point simple last point Jesus metaphor is that Christians can be salt as long as they as long as they're salt meaning not the same as the meat they're different and therefore

Christians will not interestingly benefit society if they're just like everybody else in society we're not going to benefit a society filled with self actualize errs unless we really are different unless we do believe Jesus died for us unless we do believe that we we live through the self-sacrifice of the great the great Jesus Christ and therefore we're going to live by self-sacrifice see unless we are shaped deeply by that that we're really not going to be of any kind of benefit Larry Hurtado of the University Edinburgh has written some books on early Christianity recently and

one of his books is called why on earth would anyone become a Christian in the first three centuries he says as a starting you have to ask that question because Christians were the most persecuted of any religion so why would you become a Christian at a time in which there was no social benefit to you no social benefit at all and he said there's two answers one is Christianity I mean some people say well Christians love their community right he said no everybody was in community everybody had their plans everybody had their families it's not

like we lonely people today back then nobody was looking for community no they didn't go to Christianity free community some people said well wasn't it because Christianity offered miraculous healing and the answer is yeah but all the religions offered it Rebeck miraculous healing what was different about Christianity no social benefit and yet people became Christians and it grew and grew and grew why offer two things Hurtado says one is communion with God not just favor of the gods but a love relationship with God through the free gift of eternal life every other religion you have

to earn you have to work hard you have to be a good person Christianity said no no Christ has has gone to the cross and through his sacrifice has procured your salvation so if you believe in him his death and his resurrection you get forgiveness now and there it is to say in myself am unworthy but in Christ I'm absolutely loved perfectly infallibly without condemnation because of his sacrifice that's what turns you into a person who can be salt that's where all those values go that's where the other oriented ethic comes from that's where the

infinite value of the human soul comes from Christian's you're only going to be a benefit to society if you stay different if you don't become like the society self actualizing if you stay self-sacrifice errs and self givers and here's what the british society can do to get the most benefit out of christians not demand that they become like everybody else our modern society says we believe in respect for difference okay respect Christians difference but here's what you should do for them Oh British society I guess if there's any place that's talked to British society I

guess this is the place to do it Oh British society tell Christians be true to your own ideals and critique them on the basis of their ideals don't repeat them on the basis of somebody else's critique them on the basis of their own ideals how fair that is but how good that will be we deserve the critique how good that is and how how fair that is but how good that will be for British society and Western society thank you [Applause]