Wisdom for sceptics when Christianity seems implausible
Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Sceptical, by Tim Keller
Mark Stephens recommends Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Sceptical by Tim Keller as an Eternity Summer Read.
Tim Keller is an answers man. In 2009, he wrote The Reason for God, one of the best contemporary books for answering tough questions about Christianity.
Books like that are so important to share with our enquiring friends. But in a secular age, many people feel Christianity is so implausible that it’s not even worth asking questions. How do you engage people who think religion is a relic of a past that is slowly fading away?
Making Sense of God speaks to the underlying assumptions in the minds and the hearts of our neighbours. It’s true that many in our culture no longer identify with a religion. But that doesn’t mean the absence of faith. There are core beliefs that people embrace as foundational and unquestionable. Understanding the “faith” of secular people enables us to speak intelligently and winsomely.
This is a book you could give to a sceptical friend, even one who isn’t asking questions.
For example, it is simply assumed that my personal freedom is the key to human flourishing. It is presuppositional that I should follow my desires. And now it is standard to believe that I don’t need God to be moral, and indeed, people who are religious might be more likely to be immoral.
We might find such claims unfair and inappropriate. But unless we acknowledge that this is the story in people’s heads, then our proclamation of the gospel can fall on deaf ears. In other words, people won’t investigate the credibility of Christianity if they do not think Christianity is even plausible. What good is it to ask someone to look at the evidence, if you already think Christian faith is fundamentally crazy?
This is a book you could give to a sceptical friend, even one who isn’t asking questions. It speaks their language and articulates their own beliefs back to them.
And it might just eventually open up the conversation you really want to be having, the one where your friend asks: tell me why you believe in Jesus?
Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Sceptical by Tim Keller is available from Koorong for $15.99. It is published by Hodder & Stoughton.
