Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Sceptical

by Timothy J. Keller

A man who was dying of cancer once quoted T. S. Eliot to me: “Not what we call death, but what beyond death is not death, / We fear, we fear.”44 I asked him what he thought was beyond death. He answered that he had no idea, but he couldn’t understand how his secular friends could be so completely sure that there was simple nonexistence. “It’s crazy,” he continued. “They mock people for betting their lives on the existence of God by sheer faith, but then they bet the ranch that afterwards there will be nothing, no judgment, nada. How can they be sure of that?” There was a pause and I said, “So you are having some regrets?” He nodded emphatically and said that he had wronged many people and he had strong intuitions that somehow deeds of injustice and evil “follow us.” He knew there was no way to “put things right” before he died. Helplessness before inexorable death finally revealed his heart to him, and he was without hope.