Here is a Tim Keller sermon that will feed the soul of people in our day. This sermon will help you understand some of the reasons you think like you do. And it will show how Christ can set you free. In terms of interacting with the cultural waters in which we swim, it is one of the most profound sermons I have ever heard.
Watch, listen, and be nourished.
Justin Taylor summarizes:
Tim Keller speaking at chapel for Wheaton College (November 11, 2015), explaining that our culture repudiates as oppressive the idea that someone else names us and gives us an identity, but that when you trust Christ you have the only identity on earth that is received instead of achieved.
Keller goes on defend a form of individualism as inescapable but to critique expression individualism (the idea that you must look inside and then express them outwardly no matter what anyone says). He offers five critiques: it is (1) incoherent; (2) unstable; (3) illusory; (4) crushing; (5) excluding.
We are social beings who need recognition and naming from outside—someone whom you love, approve, and esteem—to speak to you.
See also:
Communicating Truth in Our Late Modern Moment
HT: JT
Thank you, Chris…this was so good.
I will have this on repeat and in notes and I am thinking about making signs so that I can remind myself of it daily. This is so good! We are bombarded with the opposite message constantly in our culture. Well done!