AD Asks a Question About Tim Keller

AD Robles

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Okay, so the the question today is this, and I do want you to answer in the comments section, if that's something that you're inclined to do.

00:08

The question is, are they doing it on purpose? Like, in other words, are they lying to us?

00:14

Are they being weasels on purpose, and they've got an ulterior motive to this? Or are they just stupid?

00:27

And what I mean by stupid is, in a technical sense, not making fun of them, but actually ignorant, they just don't get it.

00:34

Even though they should get it by now, they don't, they just can't understand it. They can't wrap their minds around it.

00:40

Whether it's low IQ, whether it's just, you know, not caring, I'm not saying anything, I just, they just don't get it.

00:47

Right. And what I mean by not getting it is like, let's say when you were a kid, right? When you're a kid, and you find out that there are people poorer than you, right?

00:55

Like, there are families that have less stuff than your family does, right? When you find that out for the first time, you don't understand it.

01:03

It's like, you're a kid, you have no concept as far as, you know, why people have the things they have, you know, daddy goes to work, you know that, but don't all daddies go to work?

01:13

Like, don't all daddies have enough money to provide the things and you don't get it. It's like, it's very difficult to understand when you're a kid.

01:21

But then as you grow up, you understand some of the reasons for this. And the Bible talks about reasons for this all the time.

01:28

The Bible talks about laziness, creating poverty. The Bible talks about, you know, oppression, creating poverty, and other kinds of things.

01:37

And so, you know, when you grow up, you get it, right? And if you if you go through your entire life, and you don't have some kind of developmental disability, you know, eventually, it shouldn't surprise you why people are poor, right?

01:49

Like, eventually, you should figure it out. So what I'm saying is, are they doing it on purpose?

01:55

Or do they just not know against all odds, somehow, they just are insulated from it, they don't get it.

02:01

And an example of this is this Timothy Keller thread that I saw on Twitter the other day.

02:07

And when I read it, I just I honestly couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe how ridiculous it was.

02:14

And I have my opinion on Tim Keller. And of course, you know, when I say, Are they doing it on purpose?

02:20

Obviously, the answer is different for each person. You know, I think Tim Keller is doing it on purpose. I think he's being a weasel on purpose.

02:27

I think he's lying is what I'm saying. I think Tim Keller, in this thread is misrepresenting the truth on purpose.

02:35

He's lying. And I've got theories as to why, of course, I don't know, because I don't know what's going on in his head.

02:42

But I just refuse to believe that Tim Keller doesn't get it. Right?

02:47

He doesn't understand what's going on. I think he knows exactly what's going on. I think he knows exactly what he's doing.

02:54

I think he knows the exact rhetorical trick he's using, and he's using it to trick you.

03:00

Maybe he thinks he has good motives. Maybe he thinks he has a good reason for it. And that kind of allows it to be okay for him to lie.

03:10

But I actually don't think that either. I think he knows he's doing wrong. I think he knows why he's doing wrong.

03:15

And I don't think he has good motivations. Now, I don't know that. So that's my opinion. That's what

03:21

I think. You don't have to agree with me. And of course, at the end of the day, I don't really know. But that's what

03:26

I think because this thread is unbelievable. I saw a lot of people commenting on it, and most people recognized right away what was going on.

03:36

He's got this, it's the third way. Christians aren't Democrat or Republican.

03:42

And we get it. Right? We get it. We understand. But I think that there are some people that are tricked by this rhetoric.

03:50

Right? I really do think so. And so that's why I'm going to go into this, and I'm a reasonable

03:57

Latino. I'm always a reasonable Latino, at least in my opinion. All right.

04:03

So let's go into this thread, and we're going to chat about it really briefly. Here's what Tim Keller says.

04:11

Thread on how Christianity does not fit neatly into current political ideologies.

04:18

The early church was marked by a deep concern for the poor and racial equality.

04:24

At the very same time, it taught that sex was only for within a mutually self -giving lifelong covenant of marriage.

04:33

So he quotes a few Bible verses here. We don't need to go into the Bible verses right now, because the reality is every

04:40

Christian recognizes that the scriptures require believers, people that are faithful followers of the

04:48

Lord Jesus Christ, people that love God, and because they love God, they love their neighbors. Every Christian on the planet recognizes these two things, a deep concern for the poor, and at the same time, sexual purity.

05:02

Right? We get it. We understand. Everybody knows this. So you can't really argue with the beginning of his thread.

05:10

Now, this is rhetorical trickery going on here, and quite frankly, this is how

05:16

Tim Keller writes. His genius of his writing is this. He starts off with a very obvious, you know, base level, you know, no

05:26

Christian could disagree with it statement, right? And it's elementary school level. Like, if your child graduates from elementary school and doesn't understand these two things about Christianity, you have failed, right?

05:39

So Tim Keller's genius is to give you an elementary level truth, and then he baits and switches it.

05:47

He baits and switches it, and he does it sometimes more skillfully, sometimes more, you know, fumbly.

05:54

Fumbly, is that a word? I don't know. Sometimes more ham -fisted, but that's his scam.

06:00

Like, his basic scam is to tell you the truth and then instantly lie to you, and he does it in different kinds of ways.

06:08

So let's continue with the Tim Keller thread. He says this. To our modern ears, this sounds like a contradictory mishmash of liberalism and conservatism.

06:21

So the lie has begun right here. So what he's saying is basic elementary school

06:28

Christianity that probably my six -year -old, if you asked him about this, he would get it. He would understand, yes, we have to care for the poor, and yes, you know, men and women come together,

06:38

God makes them one flesh and out pop babies, because he doesn't know the details there obviously yet, but he understands that, that if he wants to have a family, he's going to have to find a wife.

06:48

In fact, he's thought about this many times, and praise God, he wants to have a family one day. So there you go.

06:55

So basic level Christianity, Tim Keller saying to our modern ears, this sounds like a contradictory mishmash of liberalism and conservatism.

07:07

This is a lie. This is a lie. Let's continue. He says today, the

07:14

Church is being fragmented by progressives and conservatives who want to only serve one of these commitments and discard the other.

07:24

So what he's saying is that the Church of Jesus Christ is being infiltrated, it's being split apart by a group of people called progressives and a group of people called conservatives.

07:36

The conservatives want to maintain sexual purity, and that's all they want to do. And the progressives want to maintain a care for the poor, and that's all they want to do.

07:47

This is a lie as well. And this is a skillful lie, because on the one hand, we've got political parties that do emphasize certain things over the others, right?

07:59

And let's just face it, the Republican Party emphasizes kind of a certain kind of morality, and the progressives emphasize a certain kind of morality.

08:12

But if you read this lie from Tim Keller, what you would think is that conservatives, they don't care about the poor, right?

08:21

Because of what they're trying to, split up the Church, they don't care about the poor, they only care about sexual purity.

08:29

And the progressives, they care deeply about the poor, but they don't care at all about sexual purity.

08:37

And there's some truth to these kind of claims here, but the reality of reality,

08:45

I guess that's the only thing you can say, it's very different, right? It's very different. And the problem with what

08:51

Tim Keller is doing here is he's lying, he's lying directly, but he's also lying by omission.

08:57

Because the Bible is very, very detailed about, especially about caring for the poor, but also about sexual purity and what that means.

09:10

It gives you very detailed descriptions on what justice looks like in both of these circumstances, very detailed.

09:17

And one of the things that it happens to say, this comes from God, and we know all authority comes from God, is that we're required to care for the poor ourselves, right?

09:28

With our own incomes, with our own money, and the government's job is one of retribution, right?

09:37

One of revenge. In fact, the Bible says that the civil governing authority is a revenger of God, an avenger of God.

09:45

It executes justice upon the evildoer. And so the Bible is very, very clear for whose responsibility it is to care for the poor.

09:54

And it's the people of God's responsibility to care for the poor. This is illustrated in a meme that's very popular, and I think very effective.

10:03

It's the meme of the Good Samaritan. And so you see the Good Samaritan going to take care of the person who fell among robbers.

10:10

He's there, he's bleeding, he's hurt. And the Good Samaritan says, wait here, I'm going to go write some laws so that everyone can chip in a little bit and save you.

10:20

And it's absurd, because the story of the Good Samaritan is that the man, out of his own money, you know, decided to take care of this man, and he was a

10:30

Samaritan, and it's a great story and all of that. And that's the biblical model for charity.

10:36

And the Scripture is very clear about this. The amount of verses that address this very thing are so humongous that I can only come to the conclusion that Tim Keller is purposely lying by omission.

10:52

Because these conservatives, if you look at the statistics, conservatives who apparently don't care about the poor are some of the most generous people to the poor with their own private finances imaginable.

11:06

I am against all welfare, right? I am against all welfare, right? That does not mean that I don't give to the poor of my own money regularly.

11:15

I want to cancel all welfare, but I still give to the poor. So does

11:21

Tim Keller not get it that we can have a belief about what the Scripture says about the government's job, and yet not, that does not mean that we don't care for the poor?

11:33

Does he not get it? Does he not understand? No, I think he gets it perfectly fine. But he still wants to set up a false dichotomy where the progressives are good on some things, they care for the poor.

11:44

The conservatives are good on other things, they care about sexual purity. And so, you know, we have room for conservatives and progressives in the church.

11:54

And the reality is, we do not have room for conservatives and progressives in the church. Because progressives, even if their policies desire to give money to the poor, you know, redistribute wealth, whatever it is, it's still an evil policy, because it uses the civil governing authority for an inappropriate, completely unproductive means of giving to the poor.

12:17

In fact, the way that the government gives to the poor actually hurts the poor in the long run. Now, that doesn't mean that doesn't help the poor in the short term.

12:25

Of course, if the government is going to give a poor person a loaf of bread that they didn't have the loaf of bread before, sure, in the short term, it helps the fact that they've got a loaf of bread now.

12:35

But what it does is it creates wards of the state. And it also creates a situation where when the poor consider who their help comes from, the first thing they think of is the state that feeds them, clothes them, and all of these kinds of things.

12:50

And so it's no wonder that state worship has increased, not only in the church, but also outside of the church.

12:56

Because when you consider where the help comes from, and by the way, conservatives are in on this too, because conservatives agree with the welfare state.

13:05

They just don't agree with it as much as the progressives. And that's the other lie that Tim Keller is telling you here.

13:10

Because the truth is that conservatives also love the poor the same way the progressives do.

13:17

They just aren't quite as open handed with the government's money. And when I say the government's money,

13:23

I mean the money that they pickpocket from you. They're not quite as open handed with other people's money as the progressives.

13:30

And so what Tim Keller is trying to do is say, yeah, sure, you know, conservatives are for welfare at a massive scale, completely unbiblical in every way, but because they're not for it as much as the progressives, then they actually don't care about the poor.

13:45

There's layers of lies here that Tim Keller is putting into this thread to sort of—essentially the goal of this, in my opinion, is he's lying to you intentionally.

13:55

Again, I think he's lying to you intentionally. He's a snake. And he's doing it to create room for progressives in the church.

14:04

That's why he's doing it, in my opinion. I don't know that, but that's my opinion. And it's quite evil.

14:10

It's quite evil because there are no redeeming qualities for the policies of progressives.

14:15

I'm not talking about progressive individuals, because they might have some redeeming qualities. I'm talking about the policy platform of the

14:22

Democratic Party. If you look at it top to bottom, it is evil top to bottom.

14:28

I defy you to give me one redeeming quality that actually comports with the biblical view of what the civil governing authority is.

14:35

Let me give you another example. I know many people, and this is the thing. So I've said many times that I do not want to go to war with Russia.

14:45

I don't think we should come to the aid of the Ukrainians militarily. I don't think we should be doing the sanctions against the

14:52

Russian people. I do not support the Russian invasion, and of course they should stop immediately.

14:57

But I don't want to go to war. Now, because I've said that, there's a certain percentage of this audience that will say, why don't you care about the

15:06

Ukrainian people? And I think that if you adopt Tim Keller's strategy here, and that's a lie, if you adopt his strategy here, that makes sense.

15:16

Because I didn't do the things that everybody's doing to support the Ukrainian military defense of their country.

15:23

I don't want American troops there. I don't want to do the economic sanctions. I don't want to do providing them with weapons.

15:29

I think Doug Wilson is wrong about that. Doug Wilson said that we should provide them with weapons so that they can mount a stout defense.

15:36

I am all for Ukrainians mounting a stout defense. I don't want to give them weapons, right? I think he's wrong about that.

15:43

So here's the reality, though. I know tons of people that agree with me. They want the

15:48

United States to not participate in this war in any of these ways. And yet these very same people

15:55

I know have given thousands and thousands of their own dollars to support

16:00

Ukrainian refugees and the churches that are supporting Ukrainian refugees. And somehow they can do that while not saying the exact narrative that everyone wants.

16:12

They want to sanction Russia. They shouldn't be able to do any business. Russian citizens should suffer for this.

16:19

We should go to war. Somehow we can do both things. And the question I'm asking you is, does

16:25

Tim Keller not get that? Or is he lying to you? I don't fly the Ukrainian flag.

16:31

Yet somehow I can still give my own money to churches that are supporting Ukrainian refugees.

16:37

So does Tim Keller understand that that's a possibility? You can actually do things according to scripture.

16:43

You can actually go to war or not according to scripture. You can actually engage in economic sanctions or not according to scripture.

16:50

You can actually do these things and still care for the people that are suffering most in this situation.

16:57

Is that in your realm of possibilities, Tim Keller? Or you just don't know.

17:05

You just don't get it. Like what I just said, it doesn't compute. I still must hate Ukrainians, even if I give money to Ukrainians because I'm not flying the

17:14

Ukrainian flag on Facebook. Like maybe he just doesn't know. That's the best case scenario that somehow he's an old man and he's earned his white hairs and he's been given wisdom in many, many areas.

17:29

But for some reason, this area he's completely ignorant in, even though he shouldn't be.

17:35

He doesn't understand how you can care for the poor outside of supporting government programs for the poor.

17:41

Does he not get it? Because that's moral. He's morally culpable for that as well, because that's such an obvious thing that he should be able to get.

17:49

In fact, because the Bible is so clear about the role of the government, you would think that someone who has dedicated his life to understanding the

17:56

Bible and teaching the Bible would have come across a these verses from time to time. So he's morally culpable either way.

18:03

This doesn't absolve him from it. But the best case scenario is this. He doesn't get it.

18:09

For whatever reason, Tim Keller doesn't understand a very basic idea, that it's okay for you to not support going to war with Russia on behalf of Ukraine, but still care about Ukrainians with actual tangible results and things of that nature.

18:27

By the way, if you are interested in supporting Ukrainian refugees, the CREC church has a church planting program and an aid giving program throughout the area, right?

18:39

So not only Ukraine, but also Poland and some of the surrounding countries. It's called the Joint Eastern European Project, JEEP for short.

18:47

I'll put the link to that in the description here. I know my church is giving to that effort, and I know a lot of individuals who are giving to that effort as well.

18:55

It's the kind of thing where you can be sure your money's not going to get into the hands of the government officials, because I know a lot of you don't want that.

19:02

You don't think that the Ukrainian government is trustworthy, and I agree. But here's the thing, and I'm going to wrap up with this.

19:11

So Tim Keller, this is not the end of the thread, but this is the last tweet I want to read.

19:17

He says this, to the church, the sex ethic and the justice ethic are whole cloth. Sexual immorality and injustice go hand in hand because the unifying principle that unites them is

19:28

Jesus, who had ultimate power and privilege, but sacrificed it in order to love us and save us.

19:34

Now, there's a lot of subversive kind of lying going on here as well, but at the end of the day, he's right.

19:41

God cares about the poor. He calls it justice. Let's just put that aside for a moment, because I think that's an intentionally confusing way to put this forward.

19:51

But let's just put it aside for a second. The church should care about the poor and sexuality because of Jesus Christ, who commanded things about both.

20:00

He's exactly right about that. But what he's exactly wrong about is this idea that Jesus didn't actually give us details on how to handle this.

20:10

He didn't tell us how to do this with government and things like that, and he most certainly did.

20:15

And one of the roles a pastor ought to have is not only to make disciples by baptizing them in the name of the

20:21

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but also to teach everything Christ commanded.

20:27

And one of those things that Christ commanded is exactly what the civil governing authority is for and what exactly it's not for.

20:34

And what it exactly is not for is welfare programs and poverty programs and things of that nature.

20:41

That's what the church is for. That's what individuals are for, according to many, many teachings straight from the mouth of Jesus as he walked the earth, but also through the law that he gave to Moses on Sinai, which of course was a covenant with the people of Israel.

20:56

But the general equity of that law, not only do we apply, but the only reason we apply is because that's what

21:02

Jesus taught us to do in the New Testament. I hope you found this podcast helpful.