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But if you are unwilling to risk your place in the palace for your neighbors, the palace owns you.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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If human rights and equality exist "just because we say so," then activists are not able to persuade, only to coerce. They can force cultures to adopt Western, individualistic ideas of rights and equality by using money, political power, or even military force. But, the charge goes, all this is just the latest stage in the West's inveterate bent to domination and colonialism. Western nations are now doing what they've always done, but disin..
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Timothy J. Keller |
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The fall of Adam and Eve (and therefore the rest of the human race) into sin has been disastrous.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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it is now also cursed because of mankind's fall.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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But the Bible locates the root issue as our separation from God.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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The effects of sin touch all of creation; no created thing is in principle untouched by the corrosive effects of the fall.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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If we base our lives on work and achievement, on love and pleasure, or on knowledge and learning, our existence becomes anxious and fragile--because circumstances in life are always threatening the very foundation of our lives, and death inevitably strips us of everything we hold dear. Ecclesiastes is an argument that existential dependence on a gracious Creator God--not only abstract belief--is a precondition for an unshakeable, purposeful..
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Timothy J. Keller |
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But the Philosopher startles us by arguing that even if you are one of the few people who breaks through and accomplishes all you hope for, it's all for nothing, for in the end there are no lasting achievements.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Pride is an all-around evil. "Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind."
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Timothy J. Keller |
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The gospel calls us out of religion as much as it calls us out of irreligion.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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No one is so good that they don't need the grace of the gospel, nor so bad that they can't receive the grace of the gospel.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Work has dignity because it is something that God does and because we do it in God's place, as his representatives . We learn not only that work has dignity in itself, but also that all kinds of work have dignity.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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We cannot love rightly without hating rightly!
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Timothy J. Keller |
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The gospel assures me that God cares about everything I do and will listen to my prayers. He may not answer them the way I want, but if he doesn't it is because he knows things I do not.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Creation, then, is not the aftermath of a battle but the plan of a craftsman.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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The gospel assures me that God cares about everything I do and will listen to my prayers. He may not answer them the way I want, but if he doesn't it is because he knows things I do not. My degree of success or failure is part of his good plan for me.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Cheer up: You're a worse sinner than you ever dared imagine, and you're more loved than you ever dared hope." 1"
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Timothy J. Keller |
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The sacredness of the individual is not balanced by any sense of the whole or concern for the common good.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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In this Reformed view, the purpose of work is to create a culture that honors God and enables people to thrive.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Our goal is to feed your imagination and stir your action with the richness of what the Christian faith says (directly and indirectly) about this inexhaustible subject.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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He was a perfectionist, always unhappy with what he had produced, often distracted from more important issues by fussing over less important details, prone to worry and procrastination.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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God gives us talents and gifts so we can do for one another what he wants to do for us and through us.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Therefore, everything you have is a matter of grace, and so you have the freedom to serve the world through your influence, just as you can through your competence.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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But really--everyone is Niggle. Everyone imagines accomplishing things, and everyone finds him- or herself largely incapable of producing them.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling, can matter forever.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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There is a God, there is a future healed world that he will bring about, and your work is showing it (in part) to others.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Saving people through identification and mediation--does that remind you of anyone? Jesus Christ,
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Meditate on these things, and the truth will change your identity. It will convince you of your real, inestimable value.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Your work will be only partially successful, on your best days, in bringing that world about. But inevitably the whole tree that you seek--the beauty, harmony, justice, comfort, joy, and community--will come to fruition. If you know all this, you won't be despondent because you can get only a leaf or two out in this life. You will work with satisfaction and joy. You will not be puffed up by success or devastated by setbacks. I just said, " ..
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Timothy J. Keller |
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It could be argued that everything we do wrong--every cruel action, dishonest word, broken promise, self-centered attitude--stems from a conviction deep in our souls that there is something more crucial to our happiness and meaning than the love of God.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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The harmony and perfection of the completed heavens and earth express more adequately the character of their creator than any of the separate components can.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Dorothy Sayers could write, "What is the Christian understanding of work?. . . [It] is that work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker's faculties . . . the medium in which he offers himself to God." 31"
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Pieper argues that leisure is not the mere absence of work, but an attitude of mind or soul in which you are able to contemplate and enjoy things as they are in themselves, without regard to their value or their immediate utility.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Pieper writes: Leisure is the condition of considering things in a celebrating spirit. . . . Leisure lives on affirmation. It is not the same as the absence of activity. . . . It is rather like the stillness in the conversation of lovers, which is fed by their oneness. . . . And as it is written in the Scriptures, God saw, when "he rested from all the works that He had made" that everything was good, very good (Genesis 1:31), just so the le..
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Screen first for friendship. Look for someone who understands you better than you do yourself, who makes you a better person just by being around them. And then explore whether that friendship could become a romance and a marriage.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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The first Advocate is speaking to God for you, but the second Advocate is speaking to you for you.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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The third thing Mary does is surrender completely.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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This means that when facing unavoidable and irreducible suffering, secular people must smuggle in resources from other views of life, having recourse to ideas of karma, or Buddhism, or Greek Stoicism, or Christianity, even though their beliefs about the nature of the universe do not line up with those resources.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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The Spirit does not make us wise in some magical kind of way, giving us little nudges and insider tips to help us always choose the best stock to invest in. Rather, he makes Jesus Christ a living, bright reality, transforming our character, giving us new inner poise, clarity, humility, boldness, contentment, and courage. All of this leads to increasing wisdom as the years go by, and to better and better professional and personal decisions.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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The world does not understand the Gospel of grace, in which holy living is the result of humble, grateful joy, not a way to earn heaven. The world therefore sees all righteous living as self-righteousness and bigotry. We should not be surprised at this (2 Timothy 3: 12), but we should also undermine this false narrative by living lives of humility, forgiveness, and sacrificial service to others.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Many interpreters try to list prayer as one of the items in the armor, along with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Word of God. That won't work, however, because every other item is likened to something like a helmet, sword, or breastplate. When he comes to the end, he just says pray, pray, pray in the Spirit, pray with alertness, pray all kinds of ways, pray all the time.
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Timothy J. Keller |
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How do common phrases like "You have to always be true to yourself" create false worldviews that seem completely self-evident to people?"
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Timothy J. Keller |
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One of the world's most prominent philosophers, Jurgen Habermas, was for decades a defender of the Enlightenment view that only secular reason should be used in the public square.9 Habermas has recently startled the philosophical establishment, however, with a changed and more positive attitude toward religious faith. He now believes that secular reason alone cannot account for what he calls "the substance of the human." He argues that scie..
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Timothy J. Keller |
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Habermas writes: "The ideals of freedom . . . of conscience, human rights and democracy [are] the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. . . . To this day there is no alternative to it."17 None of this denies that science and reason are sources of enormous and irreplaceable good for human society. The point is rather that science alone cannot serve as a guide for human society.18 This was well summariz..
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Timothy J. Keller |