Tim Keller Makes Stuff Up All The Time

Tim Keller’s Claim About Jesus and the Irreligious

Tim Keller is not as smart as you think he is. He is good at rhetoric, but he does not have even a basic grasp of a lot of things. Here's an example. Let's see if we can take this down in two minutes flat.

Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible believing religious people of his day. However, our churches do not have this same effect, which can only mean one thing.

Our preaching and practices are not declaring the same message that Jesus did. Now, even just at a basic logic level, obviously it could mean other things as well. He says it can only mean one thing, that we don't even have the same message as Jesus.

And that's just simply not true at all. It could mean that the context has completely changed. It could mean that irreligious people of our time are different than the people he's talking about here. In fact, it's interesting how he completely misses the whole point here.

Luke 15 and the Difference Between Sinners and the Irreligious

He's saying that he attracted irreligious people while offending Bible believing religious people. And his proof text for this is Luke 15, 1 and 3. Let's go to that real quick. Now, the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus.

But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, this man's welcome sinners and eats with them. Notice it doesn't say irreligious there. It says sinners and tax collectors. Now, what he wants to do is he wants to make it seem like people that have no religion, people that reject religion, atheists, pagans, things like that, are what the Bible is talking about.

It is not. Those people had a Jewish worldview, so they believed in the Lord. They were sinners, yes, but they were attracted to the message of Jesus saving them, the Messiah. They knew about the Messiah, so they weren't irreligious.

He's wrong about that. And then he says he offended the Bible believing religious people of his day. So he's contrasting non-religious people to religious people, religious people, Bible believing bad, non-religious people good in this story.

Jesus, the Pharisees, and the Misuse of the Text

And the reality is that that's not how Jesus describes the Pharisees. In fact, he says that they actually don't believe. They're actually lawless is what he says. So he's got it all twisted here. The context is all wrong.

And he does this basically, Big Eva's whole purpose at this point, anything to paint the church in the worst possible light. That's what they'll put out there. French is doing this, Russell Moore's doing this, Keller's doing this, anything.