Making Sense Of God - Timothy KellerSample

“God Is Our Primary Audience”

You are now liberated from cultural categories as you look into your heart to understand yourself. There are many things that are true of you—how do you know which ones are “you” and should be affirmed and which ones are not? Do we (like the Anglo-Saxon warrior) follow the dictates of a shame-and-honor culture or those of our contemporary, highly individualistic society?

Christianity says “neither” because it does not see either the individual or the society as having the ability to reveal who you are. God, your creator and designer, alone has the right and the wisdom to show you those things in your heart that, if they are embraced and enhanced, will help you become the person you were made to be.

Passages like Romans 7:14–25 realistically describe warring desires and deep conflicts within, but progress can be made. Ephesians tells how to “put off [the] old self,” which is distorted by inordinate, enslaving desires, and “put on [the] new self, created to be like God” (Ephesians 4:22,24). When we stop building our identity on career, or our race, or our family, or any other created thing and rest in God, the fears and drives that enslaved us recede, and we experience a new freedom and security.

Walking with God, who always sees us and loves us, brings a new integrity and sense of self. We cannot and do not simply blend into each new setting, saying the things we need to say to get the most benefit out of the situation. We are not merely a set of dramatic roles, changing every time we play to a new set of spectators, because God is our primary audience every moment.

Excerpt from Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical by Timothy Keller

Reprinted by arrangement with Viking Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2016 by Timothy Keller