Empire State of Skepticism
Skeptics Welcome with Tim Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City
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The worms. That’s what I remember most on the night my faith was squirming.
What started with one soon became over two dozen. Writhing. Slithering. Wiggling beneath the moonlight. Up-and-down, left-to-right, they floppily stretched their stomachs to centimeter forward in the dirt— shortening and widening, twisting and turning — putting my P90X Ab Ripper X workouts to shame. In the freshly sprayed soil, they surfaced from the underground to munch on decayed roots, dying leaves, and my plans to order chips and guacamole for an appetizer.
“When are you going to give up this make-believe, fairytale Jesus bullshit,” Patrick said, snapping my attention from the lively garden bed.
“We’re not doing this tonight”, I replied. I was not taking the bait and in no mood to tackle yet another theological tug-of-war to match wits with my best friend. I just wanted to hang out and have fun at Madison’s best outdoor dining experience, a literal Biergarten of Eden if I’d ever seen it — complete with cinder brick flooring, ivy-leaf decor, and a twirling view of highrise apartments that towered over us.
He shook his head and looked away. I stared down at my beer. We weren’t seeing eye-to-eye.
Despite our friendship, that was always the rift between us. Faith and reason. God and science. Creation and Big Bang.
For a long time, I thought I could be a fisher for not men, but for my best friend. I hoped by winsomely and courageously displaying inspirational faith, it would be the lure to reel Patrick in and bring him back to everlasting safe shores. But somewhere along the way, I accepted his atheism for what it was. He debated for the sheer joy of debating, building a mental dam around his ever-evolving, Theory of Everything, scientism mind that had been fortified by an increasingly secular worldview. Nothing spiritual I could say would sway the constellations of his opinions, and everything-God-like would be struck down with electromagnetic force. After so long, I grew frustrated of trying. Thy will be done. If he wanted to find all the ways to deny the existence of God out of his life, then what could I possibly say to tip the isomeric shift in his thinking? If there was a will — then sure, I would be there for a way. But this wasn’t happening that night.
Still though. I stuck around. Patrick showed he genuinely cared for me. That’s more than can be said for the majority of Christians who’ve come and gone in my life faster than a Starbucks drive-thru. Opposites attract the old saying goes, and what I appreciated about our skirmishes was he forced me to think. In a twisted way, he cared enough to point out my spirituality was still infant-like in my 20's. I had no rhyme or reason why I believed. I just believed. He wanted to see me happy, and couldn’t understand my inherited logic for why I restricted myself to live according to Old Testament tablets, NIV translations, and 2,000-year-old sermons. Given how things had gone in my life, maybe he was right.
Moments later, we bumped into a group of his friends. They were all freethinkers, most ex-Christian, some even volunteered for the Freedom From Religion Foundation. We moved our table to theirs. Away from the worms. Now I would be the one squirming.
“Hey everyone, this is my friend Dave and he’s a Christian,” Patrick said to introduce me, with enough condensation to communicate he had one too many to drink.
You know how when you place a worm on a fishing hook and it pretzels around it, dangling helplessly? That’s how I felt. Cast as live bait in a conversation with stout atheists, I hit water and knew I was in too deep. I recoiled from the discussion, which aggressively turned into how religion wasn’t just wrong, but respect for religion was wrong. Atheist speakers like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens had laid suitable conditions to dig tunnels through the claims of Christianity, placing God’s Word on equal footing as nursery rhymes. It wasn’t just a feeding frenzy on my beliefs. They dragged me through muddy science, burying me with things that must be touched, seen, or measured as their claims on truth. They had no problem stomping their heels to crush my head’s rationale back into the ground.
With little wiggle room and being outnumbered 6-to-1, I felt spineless — an invertebrate in my convictions with no backbone to speak-up for why I believe. Introvertedly, I buried myself in my thoughts and looked up at the highrise apartments towering over the biergarten. That was the moment I realized we live in a progressively, postmodern Tower of Babble. We may have been speaking in English, but we weren’t speaking the same language.
The problem was much more profound — rooted deeper than any worm could crawl to. The whole notion of what’s right and what’s wrong is drying out. Atheism isn’t so much the problem as much as ex-Christians who have a distorted know-it-all concept of the Bible they remember. We live in a culture where the mission field is increasingly made-up of ex-Christians. Things are changing.
If I wanted my best friend to bite on Christianity, I realized the Bible — even in it’s timeless wisdom, was the wrong bait if I wanted to hook, line, and sinker a freethinker.
If there was any chance to net my best friend, I had to become a bookworm and do some digging myself.
While unearthing new spiritual content during 52-in-52, I received multiple requests to visit Manhattan to see Tim Keller preach. As my dating life paralleled with my spiritual side, word was Keller provided deep insights that was miles ahead of any other Christian relationship advice. As I was moving to the next stage of my courtship with Rachel, I decided to listen to several of Keller’s sermons on YouTube, even listening to his sermon on love for our very first church date.
Keller appealed to single young adults who wrestled with the same questions that many of us have, but also articulated the problems we face in an age of skepticism. Having been raised in a church where questions were shilly-shallied, my interest in his bravery to point out how the Bible wasn’t just intellectually credible, but had clear articulation of what it means to be a Christian and what that means in today’s progressive world was infinitely refreshing.
He wasn’t like other mega-pastors I’d experienced who enjoyed the southern comforts of the Christian cocktail in the Bible Belt — where even the cats and dogs were Charismatic. No — Keller had planted a church in the epicenter of New York City to welcome a melting pot of believers and skeptics alike. He would draw from esteemed Biblical scholars and secular academic resources, taking on heavy-hitting objections by explaining the Bible and it’s lessons with intellectual reasoning, wisdom, and even humor.
He wasn’t afraid to demonstrate his faith by appearing in Q&A sessions with some of New York’s most intense interrogators. One interview that stands out was his interrogation by Martin Bashir, who had recently annihilated another mega-pastor for his controversial views on heaven and hell, making him gulp so much, not since the fall of man had the world seen an Adam’s apple drop so low. Bashir was full court pressure on Keller, grilling him with life’s hardest questions. “With all this suffering, how could there be God?” “With the reprehensible behavior of Christians over the centuries, isn’t the Christian church the best proof against God?” “What am I supposed to make of Old Testament texts about murder, dealing with concubines, and this bizarre book of Revelation?”
Putting himself into the hot seat, Keller articulated a defense of the Christian faith that appealed to reason, removing obstacles to belief that many people face. Was his answers perfect? No. But instead of dodging, he stood up as an example for what he believed. During one talk, he retorted a question of his own that was aimed at skeptics —so simple, I couldn’t forget it.
“Why would you not want Christianity to be true?”
September 26, 2015 10:30am Classical Worship Service: Redeemer Presbyterian Church (East Side) at Hunter College of the City of New York, New York
Round 47 had brought me to the core of the Big Apple, a city where an empire state of mind has wormed itself inside the mainstream consciousness and been slowly munching on belief from the inside out.
For Redeemer Presbyterian Church, I was gambling to see Keller speak. Redeemer has no real estate for the church, it rents space between three locations (east, west, and downtown). But which would Keller be speaking at? I didn’t know. When it comes to megachurches, I found it can be difficult to find out if a well-known preacher is presiding at a specific service, particularly if there’s multiple locations. For one megachurch in Georgia, I called to ask where their celebrity pastor would be preaching, and the receptionist turned defensive and wouldn’t give me an iota of information. Then when I called another megachurch in southern California, they were more than willing to help, even transferring me to the pastor’s personal secretary to get confirmation. I figured for Keller, they wouldn’t give me a New York minute.
I drove into the City That Never Sleeps in the early morning, finding a rare parking space a few blocks from Central Park. Strolling through 69th Street, I came across Redeemer’s “R” logo plastered on the glass doors of Hunter College. After walking through some metal detectors, I arrived an hour early and asked the security guard manning the locked auditorium if I could take some pictures before the service started. Bad idea. This apparently tipped him off. He left his post and came back with one of NYPD’s Finest. I had raised suspicions, and had to explain the 52 Churches in 52 Weeks concept as to why I had arrived so early to the officer. After realizing I was no threat, I was escorted to the third floor for coffee. During our walk, the officer hinted that after 9/11, law enforcement is never too safe. Every floor had police presence on it, and for the crowd that Redeemer pulls in every week, security was of utmost importance.
An hour later, they opened the doors. Each service offers a different musical theme (contemporary, classical, and jazz). For this gathering, the auditorium was filled by sounds of a symphony of classical violins playing. Ushers were located at the very front, bringing service-goers to sit near the front if they wanted a bulletin. When I looked in the bulletin, I learned Tim Keller was not presiding at this service.
To say the least, I was pretty disappointed. I had come so far and not seen my preaching hero. I could have exited and tried to visit another location, but I realized that shouldn’t be the point. I had to shut up my mind and recenter myself that this was not about Keller, but on the message of Christianity.
Towards the middle of service, a younger pastor came out to give the sermon. He was dressed to the nines in a Men In Black suit and Bill Gates-rimmed glasses. He was polished in his public speaking, more-so than even his varnished shoes. The sermon was focused on the Bible’s finality, with Christ’s death as the final sacrifice to purify our sins. He continued that Christianity is different than all different religions. Other religions require good works to climb to God, finding favor through sacrifices and jumping through ethical hoops. Christianity, on the other hand, isn’t about working towards God. Rather it’s about a Holy God who comes to us.
The pastor transitioned into the implications of Adam & Eve, residing naked and not ashamed in the Garden of Eden. For a time after creation, they were perfectly comfortable with who they were. Yet the moment they turned from God by eating the fruit, sin wormed itself into the world. When they determined their own worth of what’s right and wrong, they hid — sewing together fig leaves to cover-up their spiritual nakedness.
He continued that in our contemporary mindset, we think there is a rational explanation for everything. In the modern secular world, we’ve kicked out God and yet we realize that something is working inside of us that tells us we are not accepted. Why do we feel so naked and ashamed? We see this in the tyranny of traditional values. The modern west is found on narrative that we have to express ourselves in an era of self-personalization. If you don’t succeed, you’re somehow an incomplete person. That’s why so many come to New York. Many desire to make on Wall Street, world of theater, or display art. There is a sense that the Big Apple will eat you up and spit you out if you don’t fulfill your dreams.
Despite leaving that day without seeing Keller, the young pastor in his place was fantastic. Looking back, it’s not so much about the destination as it is the journey, and I think one of the detriments to my faith in the past was on tedious church lessons filled with cliches and formulated answers. With finding Keller’s work and several other pastors during 52 Churches in 52 Weeks, I had recaptured the true power of the Gospel in its true potency. We use the mind for reason — cognitive understanding. While the Bible doesn’t contain scientific measurements, it does give insight into the meaning of life that can break down the obstacles to belief that many people have today. If someone can show me a science textbook that shows the meaning as to why we’re here, I’d be game to see it.
Nothing has changed with Patrick. The last time he was over at my place, he was picking at my apple tree. Looking back, I can see my faith much like sorting out the good apples from the bad. Christianity can awaken an appetite that you didn’t know you were really hungry for. He grabbed one of the apples, took a bite, and spit it out.
We looked inside and saw a wormtrail had wiggled inside. We didn’t touch any of the other apples.
Don’t let one bad apple ruin the batch.
