Tim Keller Gives Us The Middle Finger

All right, all right, well, let's get to it today. I had a fantastic weekend.

Me and my wife went to the Austin, Texas area and we were at a conference, the conference put on by Right Response to Ministries.

It was myself, it was John Harris, it was Joel Webbin, obviously, and we had a great time.

It was a conference, I would say maybe, you know, 300 people attended, something like that.

So not a humongous conference, but the people that did attend, very like -minded and just such an encouragement for me.

I don't wanna speak for John, but I'm sure it was encouraging for him as well. And people, you know, even though it was a small conference, not everybody was local.

People were driving from, you know, a few hours away, even a few people flew, if I'm not mistaken.

I think one guy flew from Ohio. Just such an encouragement to do that. And my presentation was about Christian protest.

I was, you know, trying to apply, you know, Romans 12, which is a, you know, section of verses that directly talks about how to deal with tyrannical governments.

And I was comparing and contrasting what I believe should be the focus of Christian protest with the trucker thing.

And honestly, I was expecting a lot of pushback for it. I did not get a ton of pushback,

I did get some, but most people were just very interested to hear a slightly different perspective than something they've heard many, many times on Gab and online and, you know, their typical conservative voices in this space.

But all in all, it was very, very good. So thank you if you attended. There was also a few fireworks at the end of the conference.

There was a man who came to the Q &A and decided to make a spectacle of himself, which was handled very well, in my opinion.

So I don't know if they'll leave that in the video, but if they do, definitely watch it. So yeah, all in all, very, very good conference.

And, but before, I'll get back to it in just a second, but I did wanna talk about a

Tim Keller tweet that I did mention in my last video where I did those like four short, you know, two minute kind of videos.

And I've just been thinking this through and I just wonder to myself, you know, how long are you gonna be willing to be just insulted by this man before you just completely jettison any kind of influence that this man has?

Like at some point, it has to be farewell time for Tim Keller because he's the worst kind of troll that you can be.

And, you know, I kind of made a comment, me and my wife were going out with John and his wife for dinner.

And kind of like, as we're getting into the car, I said, well, we're all kind of trolls to some degree. And, you know, I was just kind of, you know, kind of trying to be funny, but Tim Keller's the worst kind of troll because he's the troll that like doesn't respect his audience at all.

Because the thing is like some trolls, like they give a high amount of benefit of the doubt to the people that are reading them.

They know what they're gonna be talking about and they don't pretend like they're not doing what they're doing. Like the best kind of trolls, they understand that they're trolling and everybody knows that they're trolling and they don't try to lie about it.

They don't try to hide it. And I just wonder like Tim Keller, like his Twitter feed, someone said this in response to a tweet of mine.

They said, you know, Tim Keller's recipe is like every week or so say something vague, then spend the rest of the week defending what you weren't saying, but you were clearly saying and then do it again next week.

And it's like, it's just like, it's middle finger after middle finger with this guy. And it's just like, how long are you willing to accept that?

Just because he has, you know, smooth speech and he sounds like he's intellectual, which, you know, to be honest,

I'm starting to question a lot of that stuff too. Like, yeah, he throws a few, you know, kind of references to different philosophers and things like that.

But I'm starting to wonder actually how intellectual he is. I remember being very impressed with him early on, but just the more time passes, the more it's like, this guy's kind of scamming you.

He's kind of scamming us. Like, so you remember that thread, right? I talked about this thread about, you know,

Daniel, Joseph and Mordecai. And he said, you know, these guys were faithful in their positions in a pagan government.

And therefore other Christians can be faithful in today's time in their positions in modern government.

But the thing is like, so of course that's technically accurate. You can be a faithful Christian in government.

And even though the government is not Christian itself, but you can't participate in the wickedness, right?

And everybody knew what this thread was about. This was about all of the media attention that Francis Collins was getting because Francis Collins is, apparently he's kind of a demon.

You know, he's pushing for more, you know, abortion research, like not just accepting passively abortion research, like actively campaigning for more bodies of babies to be purchased so that they can perform scientific experiments upon them.

So it would be like if Daniel, you know, instead of Daniel, you know, going into the lion's den because he refused to only pray to, you know,

Cyrus or whoever, was it Darius? I forget the name of the king, but you know the story, right? He refuses to do what they say.

He prays to God instead. In fact, not only does he pray to God, he doesn't do it privately.

He does it openly for everyone to see. That's the kind of Christian protest that we need. He wasn't hiding in his closet.

He opened his windows. He prayed publicly. So everybody knew he was not bowing to the king of his time.

He was bowing to Jesus Christ alone. Now, that's what

Daniel did. But what Francis Collins, as it turns out, you know, he's like, wow, you know, we haven't purchased enough babies' bodies to experiment on.

Let's get more funding to purchase more. So if Daniel was like, you know, yeah, the king told us to pray to him three times a day.

You know what? Let's pray to him four times a day. That would be an analogy to Daniel or Joseph or Mordecai or Esther.

And everybody knew that Tim Keller wrote that thread about that specific situation because that specific situation is current.

That specific situation at the time was fresh news to a lot of people. And so in response,

Tim Keller writes this thread, but he does one important thing because he's a troll. He doesn't name

Francis Collins. And so everybody and their mother is smart. Tim Keller thinks that they're idiots.

So everybody and their mother is like, Tim, this has nothing to do with the situation with Francis Collins.

Francis Collins is totally different. He's not being a faithful Christian in the civil government.

He's being a completely wicked ghoul in this government. In fact, he's one of the worst of the worst.

Like he's the one that's promoting, because there's a lot of people in government that promote less abortion bodies being purchased in order to do scientific experiments.

In fact, the whole reason that there wasn't enough funding for Francis Collins' liking is something to do with the

Trump administration. And so there are people that are faithful in government. Francis Collins is not one of them.

He's one of the worst of the worst. He's Christian by name only. So Tim Keller defends him.

And then because he's a troll, because he's just giving you the middle finger, he goes,

I wasn't talking about anything specific. Here's the tweet. He says, BTW, my thread about Daniel, Joseph, Mordecai, and Esther on how

Christians relate to culture and publicly traded corpse or government agencies is not about a particular contemporary figure.

Critique the thread, be my guest, but critique my reading of those biblical books and figures.

So this is the point. So he's lying here, okay? Tim Keller wrote the thread because of Francis Collins.

And so for him to say that this thread was not about a particular contemporary figure is a flat out lie.

And quite frankly, it's an insulting lie. It's a lie that makes you recognize that not only is

Tim Keller a troll, but he's the worst kind of troll. He's a troll that doesn't respect any aspect of his audience whatsoever.

He's a liar. And I don't know why he's so comfortable lying like this, but he is.

He's lying to you. Maybe he's even lying to himself, but he's lying to me. He's lying to all of us.

He's lying to all, let's see, how many followers does he have? 477 ,000 followers, almost half a million followers.

He's lying to here because that thread was most certainly about Francis Collins and everybody knows it.

But Tim Keller is here saying, no, it wasn't. It wasn't that. It's just totally luck that I wrote this article that has direct application to Francis Collins.

And it's also totally luck that this is my practice. I do this every week or so where I write a thread about something that's happening, but then when

I get pushback, it's like, whoa, it wasn't about that. It's just by chance every week that I'm doing this.

It's like, this is a man who doesn't respect you. He doesn't respect his half a million audience.

He's just lying. And I'm not sure why he's comfortable lying like this, but he just is.

And I think we all know this. And I guess the question I have, what's it gonna take for you to stop getting the middle finger before you do something about it?

Before you walk away and say, you know what? I'm not gonna take this from you anymore. I don't have to. You're not my pastor.

You're nothing to me. And so I'm not gonna take you putting your middle finger in my face day after day after day after day.

You don't have to do anything, right? You don't have to put your video camera on and record a video about it. You don't have to tweet about it.

You don't have to retweet it. You can just walk away, right? But the thing is, I don't know.

If it's me, it doesn't take very many times before I just walk away, right? If someone's gonna come into my house and insult me again and again and again and again,

I'm not gonna put up with that for very long, right? And the thing is, one of the things that got me a lot of amens at the conference, and I had a few things that people were very enthusiastic to agree with me on, but there was one thing

I said towards the end that I got not only amens at the time when I said it, but also afterwards people coming to me and thanking me for saying it, had to do with this idea, right?

This idea that we should put up with these smooth talkers, right? Like there's nothing really to worry about with smooth talkers.

They've got a good tone, which shows you that they've got a good heart, right? They're not too aggressive.

Like the ones you have to worry about are the ones that are very aggressive because they're not demonstrating the centrality of love in the life of a

Christian, right? So those that are like Tim Keller, you know, they're mild -mannered, they're intellectual, they're smooth.

Those are the ones that you know are indwelt by the Holy Spirit because they're demonstrating love.

They're showing you that love is a centrality in their life. If I have all these things, but I have not love, you know, what good is it?

I'm like a clanging gong. They're like a harp, right? They sound good, nothing to worry about there.

But guys like me, they don't demonstrate love, right? Because clearly they're aggressive, you know, they're fighting against this stuff a little too much and stuff like that.

So that's what you really have to worry about. In fact, I saw this tweet here, and I'm not criticizing this tweet per se, but it did remind me of this kind of mentality.

This guy says, hey, I muted a bunch of accounts that I tend to agree with on matters of theology and politics today, important things, because they tweet combatively and I started to feel my heart shift.

If you feel like the whole world is a quarrel, you become quarrelsome. As Ray Ortlund has observed, the command is to keep yourselves in the love of God, not the anger of God, not the outrage of God, not the wrath of God, even the justice of God, all real and to be honored and obeyed, just not the characteristics to soak yourself in.

Now, I don't wanna disagree with this tweet because I would recommend to anyone if they feel their heart being inappropriately angry or inappropriately wrathful or inappropriately outraged, then you should do anything you can.

I mean, even if you have to chop off your hands, then go ahead and do it. I mean, if God says, if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out, right?

Certainly, if Twitter is causing you to sin, tear it out, right? Just cut it off. I'm not gonna mistrust

Josh here. He's sinning in the kinds of accounts he's following. I suggest getting off Twitter altogether, but if muting is enough, then muting is enough.

But I also, at the same, you gotta check your own heart, right? Because plenty of people are able to use Twitter and see this stuff and not have it affect them.

And so maybe that's not you, so cut it off, but also consider what is it about you that's tending towards inappropriate anger, outrage, or wrath.

But so I'm not criticizing that aspect of the tweet, but if you look at this, this is so interesting.

And of course, this apparently is influenced by Ray Ortlund, so that doesn't really surprise me, but look at this.

He's reading from Jude, right? Keep yourselves in the love of God. And he's contrasting love with anger, outrage, wrath, justice, and he's saying those things aren't bad, but they're not the things to soak yourself in.

And to me, I'm asking, okay, so what does he mean by love, right? And it seems highly likely to me that what he means by love are like these feels, right?

These good feelings, these measured tones and things like that, because the thing is like I identify love in people's anger as long as they're angry about the right things.

Like when somebody gets furious about the fact that there are babies killed in their town every day and they just can't believe it, and it's just like, it's okay, and it just makes them angry, and it's outrageous, of course.

And there's some aggression to their tone when they talk about it.

Like I identify love in that, right? Because they're loving their neighbor, they're loving their baby neighbor and things like that.

Justice, I mean, like, yes, justice, but justice, you have to be a loving

Christian in order to be pursuing justice and pursuing all of these things, right?

These are all interconnected. What does it say in the scriptures, right? Because according to how he's presented it here, it's like love is this thing that you can see online by people that aren't combative or aren't showing anger online or things like that.

It's like, that's weird, because if you look at the scripture, it says, abide in my love, right?

Abide in my love was what Christ says. And then he goes on to expand, how do you abide in his love by doing the things he commands?

And the thing is like, God, if you follow Christ, there's gonna be times when you're commanded to be angry, you're commanded to do justice, right?

And so I just don't see really the point here, but what it does certainly seem to me to be, it's like, this is a tone thing, right?

He's not following people, even though he agrees with their theology, he agrees with their politics.

And I would assume that he means that those things are examples of abiding in the love of Christ, right?

Doing what he commands according to theology, doing what he commands according to politics, which is your beliefs, your religion externalized.

So he agrees with that, but so what's the difference? The difference is, it's a tone thing primarily, right?

You're too angry, you're too outrageous, and it's, how do you know? Well, it's because of tone, because these talk about Twitter people, you don't really know me, right?

And this is the thing, like oftentimes people will say, I'm too angry or I'm too aggressive. And it's, I always laugh at that, because like, you don't really actually know me, right?

You know me on Twitter, you know me on YouTube, but you actually don't know me, the people who do know me are in a very good position to know if I have an anger problem, right?

Like my pastor is in a great position to know if I have an anger problem or a wrath problem. My wife, my brother, my family, they're in a position to know if I have an anger problem, right?

You're not, but the thing is like, so this certainly strikes me as a tone thing.

Josh is saying, look, I had to unfollow these accounts because of tone. Now, here's the thing that I got a lot of amens on.

Sorry, this is a little bit rambly, right? I'm just getting back in the swing of things. The Bible consistently talks about where you have to worry, where you have to have your guard up, right?

Is when people have smooth words, when people have buttery words, when people use flattery.

Those are the things that when you've got someone coming in and they've got a false message, right?

They're giving you something that is not quite right, but they're smooth talking it to you, right?

That's what you have to watch out for. Those are the people that are very dangerous because they trick guys like Josh Howerton here.

They trick them. It's like Tim Keller is a troll and he lies online a lot.

Like Josh, don't you think we should maybe like, maybe question the sincerity of Tim Keller as a person because he certainly seems to lie as if it's his language.

And it's like, well, no, because he's not quarrelsome. He's just, he's obviously in the love of Christ. But I'm saying like, the

Bible constantly warns about these people. They're smooth talkers. And when

I said that at the conference, I got a ton of amens. And in fact, I was thinking primarily about this

Psalm, Psalm 55. Now the ESV, I'm sorry, the Christian Standard Bible summarizes this

Psalm as a Psalm about the betrayal of a friend, right? And David is praying to God.

And this is a song about, it's just like, this guy was on my side, he was my friend and he's betrayed me.

It's not an enemy fighting me. It's one of my friends. At least I thought he was my friend. Listen to what this says.

He says, now it is not an enemy who insults me. Otherwise I could bear it. David's like,

I get why pagans fight me. I get it. I get they insult me. They insult my intelligence.

You know, they're rising up against me. I understand why an enemy does that. I don't get why a friend's doing it.

I mean, Tim Keller taught me so much. I don't understand why he's doing this.

He says, and then he starts praying imprecatory things about these people, about his friend that was his friend, but, you know, turned on him.

He says, my friend acts violently against those at peace with him. You know, it's like,

I was just hanging out and it's like, all of a sudden they're like, white supremacy, whiteness, you guys are racist.

I was just sitting, I didn't do anything different. But all of a sudden they're attacking me as if I'm the worst person in the world.

And sometimes it's like with me, it's like, I'm not even white, but I'm getting these things. I'm a white supremacist Hispanic, apparently.

It's like, I wasn't doing anything different. I was preaching the same gospel, the same law that I've always preached.

And all of a sudden now I'm whiteness personified, which is the devil. He violates his covenant.

Listen to this. This is the part I was thinking about. His buttery words are smooth, but there's war in his heart.

His words, they're softer than oil, but they are drawn swords.

You see, when someone is attacking the faith and constantly attacking the church, and I'm not talking about the leaders in the church who are wrong.

Because see, that's the thing. Like, it'd be one thing if guys like Timothy Keller would get on there and they'd name names and they were like, you know, that Owen Strawn, you know, he's an enemy and here's how

I know because he's teaching this, he's doing that, he's this and that. And, you know, and okay, maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong, but at least you see what he's up to.

He's specifically attacking a specific person for specific reasons. And all of us can go and check that out, right?

That's not what Tim Keller does. That's not what Matt Chandler does. That's not what Russell Moore does.

That's not what Ray Ortlund does. You can go down the list of every big even name that you know, that's not what they do.

They attack the body itself. Nameless, faceless, the people in the pews, the people that are precious to God, they make up the body of Christ.

And they say, you know what? The worst thing in our nation today when it comes to race relations, the most partial people in our nation right now, it's not the pagans, it's not the people out there.

No, it's us. We are the biggest force for evil in the church. And of course, when they say us, they mean you.

Because they don't take their own responsibility for that. They're the ones doing the work, right? They're putting in work.

They figured this out. It's white evangelicals. How many times have you heard that phrase?

White evangelicals are this, and it's always bad. White evangelicals are this. White evangelicals are that. They're conspiracy theorists. They don't care about grandma.

They hate black people. And it's like, they just relentlessly attack the church. But they do it often.

They do it with buttery words, with smooth talking. And then when you call them out, they freaking lie to you as if you're an idiot.

Like this guy is like, we know what you were writing about, and you're here denying it.

And we know you're lying. Why are you so comfortable lying every week or so? You see, but the thing is like, there are gaggles of men like Josh that are like, well, but you know, he's obviously in the love of Christ because look, look at how he sounds, and he's so intellectual, and he's very mild -mannered.

But clearly AD, he doesn't have any love in his heart because he's full of wrath, full of quarrelsomeness, full of justice.

It's like, okay, all right. I mean, I don't really know what to do with that. But my point is that, and I think this is why

I got a ton of amens when I talked about the smooth talkers, the buttery words, that the Bible warns about those false teachers.

It doesn't warn about people being too aggressive with their false teaching, because the reality is that these kinds of guys, the buttery smooth talkers, will fool a certain percentage of believers because they have this idea of love that's like, it's this squishy feeling, and it's just like when you walk away from them, you feel so warm and all of that.

And the opposite of that is when you walk away from someone and maybe your heart's racing a little bit, and maybe your heart is pumping.

And honestly, like Joel at the conference when this man stood up to make a spectacle of himself and all of that, he,

I stood up afterwards and I just said, hey man, it's time to sit down and get out of here or something like that, right?

And then Josh was like, well, no, let me respond to him. And I would imagine his heart was pumping and he just rebuked this guy with scripture after scripture and truth after truth.

And eventually this guy had to leave. But I would imagine his heart was pumping, his blood pressure rose.

And I can imagine that like the people in the audience were like super uncomfortable at the time, but that confrontation was full of love and not only love, but also grace.

And the thing is like, but in our minds, so often we're taught that the definition of love is something that we feel, right?

And so if we feel like in the moment that things are like, we just feel like we have like stress a little bit, like it's a confrontation, so our heart's pumping, our blood pressure's up and stuff like that, like that must not be love.

The Bible has to constantly warn against that because that's not the case at all. The Bible constantly warns about people that kind of lull you into a sense of warmness and feelings and stuff like that as they lie to your face.

His words are softer than oil, Tim Keller, but they're drawn swords. His words are smooth as butter,

Matt Chandler, Russell Moore, but there's war in his heart. Don't fall for it, guys.

Eventually you gotta stop taking these middle fingers right to the face. And I'm not saying, I'm not telling you what to do.

Like there's a few different ways you could approach it. If I was in the street, right? And somebody put a middle finger right in my face,

I hope I just walk away, but I'd probably just slap it out of the sky. Get out of here with that.

So like there's different ways to approach this, but the thing is like, don't accept this from people anymore.

Don't accept this. And honestly, don't feel your way to deciding what being in the love of Christ is.

God is very helpful in the sense that he tells us exactly what it means to abide in the love of Christ.

It is doing what he says. And habitual lying to 500 ,000 people is not abiding in the love of Christ.

Being vague on purpose so that you can go back and weasel your way out of what you've definitively said is not abiding in the love of Christ.

Muddying the waters that should be quite clear because you're a pastor and God has been clear in his word on how it is to love the poor and things like that.

So going in those clear waters and then spreading a bunch of mud in it so that people will potentially vote

Democrat like you want them to is not abiding in the love of Christ. Tim Keller, his actions on Twitter, I don't know him personally, obviously, but his actions on Twitter are not demonstrations of how to abide in the love of Christ.

They simply aren't. So if someone's giving you a bunch of public middle fingers, maybe they're a nice guy in person and all of that, but don't accept it anymore.

Yeah, they're a nice guy in person in their personal life, but every day they get on in the public square, they put the middle finger up.

Forget those people. Enough of that. You don't have to accept it. And I'm picking on Tim Keller here, but the reality is there's so many evangelical leaders that do this.

You don't have to put up with it. You don't have to accept it. You can call it out, or you can just walk away. And I think both of those are just so nesty.

They're beyond necessary at this point. In any case, I hope you found this video helpful. God bless.