A Reason for Living - Pastor Timothy Keller

I think we ought to start off by being frank we all would like the music to keep going right but all good things come to an end and so does a good program I would like to talk to you tonight and after we're done after I'm done with with my explanation of the Christian faith there's going to be a musical interlude and then we have two we have a mic here and a mic here and uh after that musical interlude we're going to have hopefully about 15 20 minutes in which if you have questions you'd

like to ask me come on down and use the mic now obviously if you get down here I'll be able to hear you the reason for the mic is so that everybody else can hear the question and uh we'll have so we'll have 15 20 minutes at least in which you can come and and uh talk back to me what I'd like to uh I'd like to present this thesis Miguel de Cervantes Albert Kimu alus Huxley told pooy voler Shakespeare Jesus Christ they all have one thing in common they all have one message in common

they know that the average person is so busy in uh both work and play that you you ratchet around for years and years without asking yourself what is my reason for doing all this what is my reason for life what is the reason I'm doing anything and everything what's my whole life about or put it another way when all is said and done what will I have really accomplished why am I getting up in the morning what's my reason for life when I I what do they all have in common they all they all know

they're all great thinkers and all the great thinkers realize that most of us run around and we're afraid to ask that question what am I really getting to what am I really accomplishing what's my reason for doing things a good example of that is um if uh I saw one of you after the service and after the program here I said to you uh tomorrow at 2:30 meet me at the corner of 86 in Park Avenue and you said why I said just meet me there uh you'd want to know the reason and you're busy

PE you're probably very busy people you're doing a lot of important things and you would say hey if I'm going to spend my time if I'm going to spend an hour getting to see you seeing you and getting back or more there has to be a reason for it or I'm not going to do it okay that's that's fair enough you want a reason and yet if I ask most of you what is your reason for your whole life what is the reason you're doing your job what is the reason that you're getting married what

is the reason you want to get married what what are you after when your life is all over what will you have really accomplished many many of you will not be able to give an answer you want to know the reason for me to meet you you want to know a reason for that hour you want justification for it yet you can't justify your own life now who am I talking to I'm talking to people in general because that's the message of the great thinkers let me give you a quick example of this Tolstoy I've

got a I've got a series of quotes here they're long quotes you know why because it's Tolstoy all right 1879 Tolstoy wrote his confessions near so somewhat near the end of his life and he talked about a huge collapse crisis that he had in his life when he was about 50 years old uh and he says this he said he had been actually living quite a life he he was very famous he was very influential he was really quite well off and he'd been caught up in celebrity wealth activities and so on and suddenly he

crashed just crashed wasn't a midlife crisis you might have said it was depression but uh it wasn't because of the particular circumstances of his life he crashed and got depressed because he had time to stand back and look at the general circumstances of human life and he writes this he says the question brought me to the edge of the Abyss when I was 50 years old and the question is this what will come of what I do today and tomorrow what will come of my entire life or Express differently why should I live why should

I wish for anything or do anything or to put it another way is there any meaning in my my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death then he goes on my Deeds whatever they may be will be forgotten sooner or later and I myself will be no more why then do anything I therefore could not attach a rational meaning to a single act of my entire life the only thing that amazed me was how I had failed to realize this from the very beginning how can anyone fail to see this that's

what is amazing I'm still quoting totoy now okay it's not me I'm not trying to okay how could anybody fail to see this he says I was 50 years old before I sat down and said I can't attach any meaning to what I'm doing I've never sat back in thought what good is it going to do okay let me keep going that's what is amazing it's possible to live as long as life intoxicates us but once we're sober we cannot help seeing it's all a delusion there's nothing funny or witty about it at all it's

only cruel and stupid yeah now somebody says Ah Tolstoy an artist you know gloomy go ahead you can call him names if you want but you're not refuting his logic I see he says if I'm going to die and if this life is all there is life means nothing because no matter what I do it won't make any difference I'll be forgotten now you say toll sto what do you mean he'll be forgotten he will be forgotten he won't be forgotten as fast as you and me but he will be and he realiz that and

he says it's not funny you know you know at the end of Cheers the last episode of Cheers last 10 minutes is a place where they're all sitting around the bar and Fraser says he says some people think that all life and exist is an accident and therefore all existence and everything that we do is meaningless and I think it's somebody says there's a cheerful thought uh and everybody laughs you know tolto says it's not funny he says you're still intoxicated you're still so busy you don't want to ask the question what is the reason

for my life what am what is my life about because he says the question will bring you to the abyss that's tolto but frankly I could go on with a lot of other quotes and I won't to show you that that's really the the mark of the great thinkers they say stop ratcheting around stop being so busy and stand back and say what am I really living for now there's a lot of answers to that possible question I would like to give you the main one that modern people especially modern people in New New York

have given to that question what are you living for now the main answer that modern people in a place like New York uh give is I'm living to be free I'm living to follow my heart I'm living to find what I want to do and do it with all my might now that's that's there's not that's not the only answer there's plenty of other ways to answer uh but what I'm going to do is I'm going to just take that for the next few moments and try to show you that that is an untenable position

and uh I'd like to reason with you this way now you know I mean this is a little complicated I found that New Yorkers would rather get lost in an in a in a discussion than have their in intelligence insulted I found people out in the rest of the world are kind of the other way around they'd rather follow you uh New Yorkers would rather you you know say go push me okay the argument goes this way you want freedom the great thinkers Kimu SRA other people like that I'm going to give you a little

list here all people say all the great thinkers will say if you want absolute freedom to live your life the way you want you have got to admit the utter meaninglessness of life if you want complete Freedom you must face utter meaninglessness that's the first point then my second point is going to be nobody can live that way nobody can live that way to really believe that me that life is meaningless gets you into convolutions that are emotional convolutions that are psychological convolutions that are that are logical convolutions that are philosophical and you can't even

live that way because life does have meaning and both freedom and meaning are found in Jesus Christ that's the argument let me just let me push it first the average person says ah yes that that's what I'm living for I'm living to be free I'm living to be free I I I I can believe in God I can't believe in God I I don't know what I believe in God about God but the one thing I believe in is that I have got to be free I've got to be free to do what my heart

calls me to do nobody can do that for me nobody can tell me how to live now you know um the person who The Thinker I think who is the most uh brilliant at analyzing the ramifications of this whole position this whole idea is Albert Kimu uh and book I had to read when I was a freshman in high in college was the myth of Copus you know uh recently we've had a spy Scandal the upper reaches of the CIA well you know in Greek mythology there was a very very ancient spy Scandal this is

been a problem that's gone on for a long time uh Copus was found was caught uh giving Secrets Celestial secrets to Mortals and so they caught him the gods caught him you see so this is a problem that's been going on for a long time and what they did to Copus is something that I think the justice department should take notes on what they did to this was incredible they put him in a position where all day long he had to roll a rock up a huge hill all day long he' Roll It and Roll

It and Roll It And just before he got to the top 10 ft from the top always always always every day at the end of every day the rock would fool back no matter what he did and roll back to the to the base of the hill and the next day he had to turn around and start rolling it back up again and go on endlessly and endlessly and endlessly forever now I think if the justice department is going to do that they need to uh update a little bit my suggestion is that you chain

a person to a personal computer that you make the make this spy in this case make the man I guess it's I guess it's only the man right not the man the woman but anyway you make the man uh do data entry data input all day and at 10 minutes before quitting time every day the computer crashes and next day you have to do it again start with page one but the point of the myth and the joke hell is having to execute a pointless act from which nothing ever comes hell is having to execute

a pointless act from which nothing ever comes except the need to do it again that's hell and in the myth of Copus Albert Kimu is honest enough to say this he says we modern people believe in absolute freedom many of us don't believe in God at all many of us don't believe in a God that you can know in other words uh modern people generally either believe in no God or they believe there's no God you can really know and therefore we believe in in no God or no God you can really know because we

believe in Freedom if there was a God and if there was a God that we could know who told us how we had to live and who gave us the rules and the regulations well then we wouldn't be free but because we believe in Freedom and because we don't believe in the traditional views of God and so on uh because we don't believe in God we're free but if we're free we're all like Copus and I I remember very very clearly the basic argument of the book I remember I had to read it and we

had to discuss it in freshman class and it was really quite stunning but basically it went like this Kimu was saying all right think about this way once you realize that you're free because this life is all there is there is no Heaven There is no hell there's no Eternal uh there's no Eternal being and so on you have to realize then that nothing you do makes any difference let's just say you decide you're going to live a very compassionate life let's just say you're going to this person over here it decides you're going to

they're going to live lives of violence and oppression don't you realize in the end when you die you're rot ah yes well but your Deeds live yeah for a little while but don't you realize the 3 or 4 billion years in which organic life is going to live on this planet is just an eye blink just a just a you know infinitesimal moment in relationship to the oceans of dead time that precede and that come after in the end the universe is going to burn up in the end nothing is going to make any difference

this is what Tolstoy realized in the end what you do and how you live makes not one wi of difference to live a good life to live a bad life it doesn't matter if the Titanic's going down and everybody aboard is about to die does it really matter whether you go down hugging or mugging what difference does it make what difference does it make to you or the person you're mugging who cares we're about to die in 5 minutes give me your wallet what's the guy going to say he says what a tragedy this is

this is my entire life savings no what's he gonna say here have the wallet stab me while you're at it and Kimu says don't you know what that is don't you realize okay if it's true that whether you're hugging or mugging five minutes before you die you see if you're about to die in five minutes hugging or mugging makes no difference in other words your life becomes meaningless but don't you realize you're GNA you're going to die in five minutes so to speak anyway and so will the whole world and so will the whole universe

and so the whole civilization we're all Copus says can move if you want freedom total freedom you have a meaningless life simple as that bur and Russell put it this way we're the product of causes that had no provision of the end they were achieving that is our origin our growth our hopes and fears our loves our beliefs are all but the outcome of the accident Al collocation of atams all of our labors all of our devotion all of the genius are destined to Extinction in the vast death of the solar system only within the

scaffolding of these truths only on the Firm Foundation of unyielding despair can the Soul's habitation be safely built yeah what what Copus is saying what Kimu is saying what bur and Russell is saying if you have absolute freedom you must realize that everything you do is pointless if you want absolute freedom you have to understand that everything you do is utterly meaningless oh yes Kimu Tolstoy gloomy artists refute their logic try it put it let me just give you a more up to dat person Steven J Gould who teaches at Harvard and he wrote an

article just a couple years ago in Life Magazine on the meaning of life he puts it this way now well I'll make a comment in a minute he says we are here because one odd group of fishes Had A peculiar Anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures and we're here because comets struck the Earth and wiped out dinosaurs giving mammals a chance they would not otherwise have had available and therefore thank your lucky stars in a literal sense because the Earth never froze entirely we are here because the Earth never froze entirely during

an Ice Age we are here because a small and tenuous species arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago has managed to survive by hook ands especially by crook we may yearn for a higher answer it's good writing isn't it but none exists we may yearn for a higher answer but none exists this explanation though superficially troubling superficially this explanation though superficially troubling if not terrifying is ultimately liberating and exhilarating we cannot read the meaning of life passively as the facts of in the facts of nature we must construct the meaning of life

ourselves from our own wisdom and ethical sense there is no other way see just like Kimu it's liberating the only way to be free the only way to say I can do whatever I want I am my own Master is to admit everything is meaningless the trouble is and let me read one more before I move to the second Point see my first point is you want freedom you want to say well I don't know if there's a God or I don't know that there's a God I can know I certainly there's no God that

I have to submit myself to and obey the argument is you have to admit that everything you do every statement you make every action you take every choice is meaningless and insignificant uh Stephen J go says this is superficially troubling but liberating which means I can do whatever the heck I want but that's dishonest just as I make transition to the to the next Point let me read you a much more honest statement look dealing with the same data by the famous author Aldis Huxley see Stephen J G says it sounds terrifically Noble but now

listen Huxley says in his book ends and means he said I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning consequently I assume that it had none and was able without much difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption the philosopher who finds no meaning in this world is not concerned exclusively with a problem of academics the philosopher who finds no meaning in this world is also concerned to prove that there's no valid reason why he should not personally do as he wants to do or why his friends should not seize political power and

govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves for myself the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of Liberation sexual and political don't you see what he's saying at least he's being honest we know we're talking about here he says look it you come to Urban America you come to college here you come to you come to work here and you say finally finally I can really swing I'm away from Middle America I can do what I want you see you want to be included this is not a matter of of just

academics like he says he says you look at the big issues is there a god is there meaning is the Bible true is there a revealed way in which I should uh should live should I be submitting and you know you go to religion 101 you go to philosophy classes you read books and you think as Huxley says you're being objective you're not no he says I wanted to be liberated therefore I had to adopt the philosophy of meaninglessness and even Kimu admits that he says if I'm I we can't believe in a God we

have to believe in meaninglessness otherwise I wouldn't be free but let me tell you something else that happens you know really what huxley's saying is I would rather choose hopelessness because I would rather rule in Hell than serve in heaven I'd rather be Copus than Moses now the first point you see it somebody says you haven't proved a thing you haven't proved a thing I can tell you're up there trying to make this Christian you know religion palatable and all you've done has made me feel worse about my position okay I feel worse you know

you you've done a little bit of a number on me I I see that now everything is meaning all right but so it is so what how do you know that that's just not the case and I guess the answer would be this there is no way that you can live on the basis of your worldview listen how are scientific theories Justified how are they proven it used to be in days of past they used to say well you prove scientific theor through investigation and observation observable phenomenon that's the way well that's not true nobody's

ever observed an atom nobody's ever observed an electron a quark they haven't observed plenty of things that that scientific uh uh you know science is has essentially demonstrated uh things to be the case theories that have been proven Justified the way you justifi a scientific theory is you say does it account for the way things are and without it are we do we find that there's no way to account for the way things are Kimu sorry true you know the people I was just reading they say yes well life is meaningless I'm free life is

meaningless that's just the way it is there is no way that you can believe what you believe without getting into a collision course with your own self philosophically psychologically emotionally let me just show you what I mean first of all one of the problems that comes up immediately Vol has an interesting statement about this voler says you know he says meaning the doctrine of meaninglessness doesn't quite work he says I am a puny part of a great hole yes but all sensient beings suffer like me and yet like me they also die however what is

the verdict of and he says what is the verdict of the vastest mind he's talking about the universe silence the book of faces fade is close to us man is a stranger to his own research he knows not whence he comes nor whether he goes tormented Adams in a bed of mud boy that's a great line that's what you are tormented atoms in a bed of mud devoured by by death a mockery of Fate but then he says but you know all all things all living things suffer like me and also die but I'm the

only one that's bothered by it he says we're such a puny part of the universe and I'm the only one why do human beings get so bothered by the idea of meaninglessness why do we get so upset about it you know I look at my cat she's a sensient being she's a very puny part of the whole doesn't seem to bother her like it bothers me we're supposed to be the most informed of the species it bothers us why why is it that when I say life is meaningless there's a part of you the emotional

part that says no but if you want to be absolutely free the intellectual part of you has to say yes I guess that's true don't you see already intellectually you're on a collision course with what you know life can't be meaningless there is purpose well you say you haven't impr proven let me go a little further one of the problems one of the pro one of the big problems of this whole thing is on the basis of the view You've Got You Want to Be Free you've got to believe everything is meaningless and yet you

can't live that way do you realize for example this means that nothing is absolutely wrong if I say you I say is rape always wrong well yes you say it's always wrong what do you mean it's always wrong where do you get this idea of being wrong where do you get the whole idea of right and wrong is totally subjective maybe you can say it hurts but how can you say it's wrong is violence always wrong well I don't know is oppression always wrong I don't know you're yes you do but you see you don't

have a basis for saying so SRA had one little Maxim it is forbidden to forbid it's a great maximum I mean at least you know when when you're new in college you get a hold of that one and you say look at that life is meaningless we're free authentic Freedom you see existentialism right existence prees Essence I can construct who I want to be I live in absolute authentic Freedom the only thing is forbidden is to forbid wait a minute you say said you can't forbid anything how can you forbid me to forbid on what

basis do you say that I should be forbidding I shouldn't forbid you when somebody comes up to and says you know all religions are relative you know all truth is relative you can't say that your religion is right so you must stop trying to convert people and you know what's the answer to that say you're trying to convert me what do you mean you're insisting that your view of truth that all truth is relative is right and you don't want me to try to convert people you think that's a a very bad thing where do

you get the idea of bad you say you shouldn't forbid anything except to forbid but you can't forbid me to forbid you've got no basis on which to go you're on a collision course with yourself there's ay named GK Chesterton who years ago wrote about the real problem of the the the philosophy that you know everything is relative and all life is meaningless he put it this way he says the new Rebel in our time is a skeptic and will not entirely trust anything and therefore he has no loyalty and he can't even be a

revolutionary now listen the fact that he doubts everything and he must doubt everything bars his way when he wants to denounce anything for all denunciation implies a moral Doctrine and you can't believe in a moral Doctrine if all things are meaningless the modern revolutionary doubts not only the institution he denounces but the doctrine of moral Truth Truth by which he denounces it as a politician he will cry out that war is a waste of life yet as a philosopher he has to admit that all life is a waste of time a Russian philosopher denounces a

policeman for killing a peasant and then in his other writings proves that by the highest philosophical theory that the peasant should have killed himself a scientist goes to a political meeting where he complains that we are treating native peoples as beasts and then he goes to a scientific meeting where he proves that we are beasts in short the modern revolutionary being an infinite skeptic which he must be is always engaged in undermining his own minds in his book on politics he attacks persons for trampling on morality but in his book on ethics he attacks morality

for trampling on persons therefore the modern Rebel has become practically useless for all purposes of Revolt by rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything you know in the same chapter chesteron says there's a kind of thought that stops thought and that is the only kind of thought that ought to be stopped and the thought that we are absolutely free that there is no God that everything is meaningless is the only thought that stops thought you can't even begin to talk as soon as you say everything is meaningless I have to

ask you the question is that a meaningful statement do you expect me to understand it are you trying to convince me of something are you trying to show me that it's true CS Lis puts it this way if there's no answers if there's no Creator if there's nothing that's really true when you're in love you must remember that only a psychopharmacological reaction in your brain is happening there's no such thing as love you may enjoy music but you have to realize it's only a biological reaction Beauty and ugliness cruelty compassion totally subjective not real all

in my brain synapses and then he says you may still believing this in the lowest sense have a good time but just in so far as it becomes a very good time just in so far as it ever threatens to push you out from cold and pure sensuality into real warmth and enthusiasm and joy to that extent you will be forced to feel the Hopeless disharmony between your own emotions and the universe in which you really live see the only way to enjoy flowers and love is to not think you want to be free and

you have got to have a worldview that cannot account for how things are don't you see if you start with a premise I'm free and there is really no God or no God you can know and on the basis of the premise you have to conclude there's no such thing as evil when you know there is such a thing as evil have to conclude there's no such thing as love when you know there's such a thing as love have to conclude that human beings are no different than rocks when you know there's a difference between

human beings if you start with a premise and you come to false conclusions why the heck won't you conclude that the premise was wrong why not think about the premise why not go back to it that never happened to me before well actually it's never happened to me before in a white church I must admit but but I've been a little concerned that all I've been doing is giving you male thinker quotes here's one Dorothy Seer said years ago in this world there is a view that's called total tolerance but in hell it's called despair

it's the sin that believes in nothing cares for nothing seeks to know nothing enjoys nothing finds purpose in nothing lives for nothing but remains alive why because there's nothing for which it could die now in the passage now now no Freedom no total freedom without losing all your meaning but there's a solution the passage that was read by Bruce just before I came on says in the beginning was the word now when the gospel writer John wrote that he used he was writing in Greek and in the Greek he used a word that was absolutely

and totally loaded he used the word logos from which we get our word logic but that's not the right translation the word logos was an absolutely philosophically loaded term at the time because it should be translated the reason for life in the be see the Greeks argued over something the word logos meant what is the reason for something example if you see somebody trying to pop popcorn in an espresso maker you go to them and you say all right let me explain to you why the popcorn is a such poor quality you don't know the

purpose the Telos the logos these are all the Greek philosophical terms you don't know what the design of that thing was it wasn't built to make popcorn it was built to make expresso and you see if you use something and you don't honor its logos it's reason for existence it's design what the designer put into it if you don't honor it it can't reach its potential let me go one step further if you see somebody cooking weenies on a space heater in their apartment you better say don't do that that's not what it was built

for and in this case it'll be dangerous you could burn down the place well the Greeks said you know what if when you find the reason the purpose for an object it reaches its potential and and of course we and and uh and and we reach wholeness and potentiality what if we found the reason for life if we found out the reason why we were created why we were Des design and we conformed to that and honored that we'd be free we'd have we'd have all we'd reach all of our potential and the Greek philosophy

groups went back and forth for M of years trying to say this is the reason for life this is the reason for life by the time of the time of Jesus Christ the Greek philosophical schools had G gone into utter despair they couldn't agree and basically people started to say there is no reason for life there's no logos and of course that began to sift down into the culture because you see when there's no reason for life when everything is meaningless the culture falls apart because you start to say who's to say what's right and

wrong why make a contribution why love my neighbor and Along Comes John and he drops this unbelievable bombshell and he says there is a logos if there's a design there's a designer we know there's a design and if there's a designer the logos has come I can show you who the re what the reason for life is but it's not an abstract philosophical principle it's a person the designer has punched the hole in the roof of the world and he has descended and you were built not just to honor some philosophical principle but you were

built to know and love this Divine personage and that when you know him and when you serve him and when you love him and when you find out what he built you for and when you comply with it and you submit yourself to him you find find out who you are you know if you have a sailboat you sail on the water and you sail into the wind at the right angle and you soar and would would you ever say in the name of absolute freedom I am going to sail my sailboat down Broadway well

otherwise I'm not free you would never dishonor the design of your sailboat to do that because by dishonoring its design its logos you destroy it and that's what's happening to anybody who doesn't know and love the logos Jesus Christ what's your alternative to John's claim the alternative is go manufacture your own logos but what is it going to be what what is your purpose what is your reason for life your beauty you'll wrinkle H competition somebody will come along and do a better job in the end you'll end up staring into the fire because no

matter what your chosen logos is it'll never help you answer the questions we've been talking about tonight it will not help you face death in the beginning was the reason for life and he was with God and that reason for life became a human being and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory glory as of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth let me pray to finish father we ask that you'd help us to understand these things and apply them into our lives and we ask that you would answer this

request through the agency of your Holy Spirit in our hearts and through Jesus Christ it's in his name we pray amen [Music] [Music] [Music]