Making Sense of God: Finding God in the Modern World

by Timothy J. Keller

Part of the richness of the Christian life lies in the ways Christianity gives Meaning that are distinct from not only secularism but from other religions as well.

Unlike the concept of karma,

Unlike Bu...

Unlike ancient fatalism, such as the Greek Stoics,

The reason for all these differences is that the Christian view of the universe is so different.

The book of Ecclesiastes

If life “under the sun” is thin on meaning, then we all experience something of its ennui and alienation, because we are all cut off from a direct relationship with the God for whose fellowship we were created.

when Jesus Christ died on the cross,

He then was experiencing the darkness—the meaninglessness—of life without God.

cross Jesus Christ got life without God so we could have life with God. He was putting himself into our lives—our misery, our mortality—so we could be brought into his life, his joy, and immortality.

But unlike the philosophers, Christians believe that the Logos is not a concept to be learned but a person to be known. And therefore we don’t believe in a meaning we must go out and discover but in a Meaning that came into the world to find us. Embracing him by faith can give you a purposeful life that is death camp proof.

Studies find a very weak correlation between wealth and contentment, and the more prosperous a society grows, the more common is depression.

The things that human beings think will bring fulfillment and contentment don’t. What should we do, then, to be happy?

the “early happiness hypothesis” of ancient times. The principle was this: We are unhappy even in success because we seek happiness from success.

To achieve satisfaction you should not seek to change the world but rather to change your attitude toward the world.

In short, don’t try to fulfill your desires; rather, control and manage them.

this approach to satisfaction not very satisfying.

Another obvious problem with the ancient happiness hypothesis was that it undermined any motivation for seeking major social change.

If we stand back to ask what we have learned about happiness over the centuries, it is striking to see our lack of progress.

no one is arguing that we are significantly happier than they were.

Most people get by fine without it, so we shouldn’t worry about how happy we are but instead should simply do things that matter.

Terry Eagleton, however, responds that the problem is masked rather than revealed by the term “happiness.”

we should ask about joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction in life.

The thesis of this chapter is that we have much thinner life satisfaction than we want to admit

It usually takes years to break through and dispel the denial in order to see the magnitude and dimension of our dissatisfaction in life.

Wallace Stevens. “But in contentment I still feel the need for an imperishable bliss.”

nothing was big enough to fill her expectations or desires.

That when that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath I’ll be saying to myself— Is that all there is?

She surmises that “if God really wants to play a rotten practical joke on us, he grants our deepest wish and then giggles merrily as we begin to realize we want to kill

ourselves.”

I...

“If you take away the life-illusion from an average man, you take away h...

Most people, if they really learn how to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world.

There are at least seven strategies that people take toward their discontent.

either live life assuming that satisfaction in life is quite possible,

or

not pos...

four strategies in the first and three strategie...

strategies are based on the assumption that human beings can and ought to live a life of satisfaction and fulfillment. However, many

conclude that it is our expectations of life that are out of line.

This approach is ultimately, and ironically, extremely selfish.

The most famous of the critics is Nietzsche,

out of a sense of moral s...

I have stopped chasing rainbows;

problematic in at least two ways.

creates a certain amount of condescension toward anyone who is not as sophisticated and as ironic as you.

make you as bigoted and self-righteous in your own way as the legalistic re...

from

Heide...

you can dehumanize yourself.