my burg

Recently published:  The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God , by Tim Keller, with his wife Kathy. I'm looking forward to reading this.  I listened to part of the sermon series this was based upon, but I plan to  put this book in the queue soon.  Here are some popular Kindle highlights, and a quote at the end that Trevin Wax posted.  Great insights to think about... Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love. Marriage used to be a public institution for the common good, and now it is a private arrangement for the satisfaction of the  individuals. Marriage used to be about us, but now it is about me.   According to the Bible, God devised marriage to reflect his saving love for us in Christ, to refine our character, to create  stable human community for the birth and nurture of children, and to accomplish all this by bringing the complementary...

Tim Keller, on preaching in a pluralist culture... About every other week, I confront popular pluralist notions, not with an entire sermon, but with a point here and there. For example, pluralists contend that no one religion can know the fullness of spiritual truth, therefore all religions are valid. But while it is good to acknowledge our limitations, this statement is itself a strong assertion about the nature of spiritual truth. A common analogy is cited—the blind men trying to describe an elephant. One feels the tail and reports that an elephant is thin and flexible. Another feels a leg and claims the animal is thick as a tree. Another touches its side and reports the elephant is like a wall. This is supposed to represent how the various religions only understand part of God, while no one can truly see the whole picture. To claim full knowledge of God, pluralists contend, is arrogance. I occasionally tell this parable, and I can almost see the people nodding their heads in agree...

Listening again to Tim Keller's message from the 2006 Desiring God conference, " The Supremacy of Christ and the Gospel in a Postmodern World. " He cites this interesting quote to summarize the changes that's taken place over the past 50 years: "There is a fundamental schism in American cultural, political, and economic life. There’s the quicker-growing, economically vibrant…morally relativist, urban-oriented, culturally adventuresome, sexually polymorphous, and ethnically diverse nation…and there’s the small town, nuclear-family, religiously-oriented, white-centric other America, [with]…its diminishing cultural and economic force…. Two nations…" --Michael Wolff, New York magazine, Feb 26 2001, p. 19.