The Stories Culture Tells Us

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Speaker 1
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Michael Keller
Welcome to our session here on understanding the stories that secular culture tells us I’m glad that you are here and our time is limited, so I’m going to try to jump straight in. What I want to do is I’m going to do a little more of an abbreviated presentation to you, because I think that there’s a value to kind of walk through and hear some questions. Apparently, I was told that the reception of the mic is limited, so if you just sort of raise your hand when we get to that time, and I’ll try to call on you, and I’ll try to repeat for the recording. I think those questions can be heard and said, and I think it’ll be good for all of us, but I think it’s a helpful way to kind of dialog, but also work through some of these stories. So today, my presentation is about the stories that are around us. The reason why Christianity, for a lot of people, is not something that they want, the reason why there’s people are not knocking down our doors to talk to us and ask us about what Christianity is really about and people are indifferent, is because people have stories. Their imagination has already been filled with what we’ll call cultural narratives, or stories we can’t actually get to presenting the faith, the story of Christianity, and every willing to admit and actually understand and become fluent with the stories that are actually already around us all the time. What that means, then is that people, when I say their stories, I don’t believe some point in our life has to answer fundamental questions about our nature. What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to do life? Why do I do what I do? What’s wrong with the world? What’s going to put it right? Those questions everyone has to answer. But guess what? Almost all of us in this room, we haven’t sat down over a cup of coffee and actually ask those questions, because most of us don’t need to ask that question, because our culture has already answered them for us, or your faith, your view, which contains stories in them, has already given you those answers. So we just need to admit that every culture does that already, and most of us haven’t actually needed to do to think that out, because stories are mostly caught than taught, and that what I mean by that is that these things are sort of embedded in all the our social media and our in our movies, in our art, and I think that we unknowingly have absorbed them, and we’re going to put the gospel into our culture for the next generation. What I think that we need to do is we need to become a little more fluent of understanding what these cultural narratives are around us, and so that’s what our task is, is to retell the stories better than those who actually hold them to them, and then show how they’re actually incomplete. They’re not enough, and yet, how Christianity tells a better and truer story. A lot of this material is actually stuff my father produced. My name is Michael Keller. My dad’s Tim Keller. I’m a pastor in New York City at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Lincoln Square. I started it eight years ago, and before he died, we were going to write a book together on cultural narratives, and we’re still going to write a book together, but using his material, and I’m going to try to put it together. And we’re going to walk through what are the stories, what do they have right? What do they have wrong? And how does Christianity actually complete it? And so this is actually part of the work where I’ve pulled together a lot of his unpublished stuff on this topic. He got a lot of these ideas from cultural philosophers like Charles Taylor and Robert Bella and others. And I think we need to do this, because again, when Christians present to non Christians, we often think that people are blank slates, as if they are just willing, like receptive, to whatever we’re going to say. And that’s just not true. They already have stories that are motivating and helpful for them. But I think also, if you’re a Christian in this room, I think you have to realize that we might have unknowingly co opted and owned some of these stories for ourselves that are actually incomplete, and we’ve either hold them congruently with our Christian faith, or we’ve actually embedded them inside, thinking that they’re the same thing. So I think we have to become, we have to be inoculated from them so that the gospel actually becomes more powerful, more beautiful, more wonderful to us. And again, I’m not pretending like I’ve made up this stuff. This is stuff I’m trying to pull together from my father, and I’m trying to get it out there into the world for for all of us. And once I give you the book that we’re writing, sounds weird to say that because but his work is still alive. Is going to have about seven narratives. But tonight, today, since we don’t have we have a limited amount of time, I’m gonna give you about four. All right, first one, the cultural narrative of identity. There’s a narrative out there that, and the key phrase is this, that you need to be true to yourself. You hear this phrase all the time, but it’s embedded in our in. So many ads like Nike, just do it. You need a you do you be who you want to be. There’s an identity narrative that basically says this at the point of life, the reason why you should do what it means to be you is you need to look on the inside, find out who you really are, and then express it out to the world. There’s an assumption in that, because other cultures, traditional cultures, have, you know, would say that the problem is, you look on the inside. There’s all these opinions, you know, you need to align yourself with the fact that’s out in the world that’s been switched in the past 50 years. What happens now in the world out there is everybody else’s opinion. Fact is on the inside. Look on the inside, find out who you are, and then tell people who that are, which is essentially an elevation of individualism to the level of ultimacy in our lives. But though our world, our current, our current culture says, Hey, everything out there is crazy, but as long as you’re true to yourself, you’ll be okay. And by the way, there’s a Christianized, baptized version of that that we do, and there’s actually a truth about it, that actually there is something called identity. There is something that we do have an identity in Christ. But let’s look at the secular version of this. Where do we see it? Well, Disney is my favorite place to go for this story. If you go to the amazing straight to DVD classic Cinderella, two dreams come true. That’s irony for those not in New York, there’s a song in there called Follow your heart. Here’s the lyric ready. Who’s to say the rules must stay the same forevermore. Whoever made them had to change the rules that came before. So make your own way. Show the beauty within when you follow your heart, there is no heart. You can’t win. Follow your heart. You say, that’s a straight to DVD classic. What that’s not really culturally relevant. Give me something more. Well, the first song in Moana, which was a not just straight to DVD. The song goes like this. In Moana, remember, you may hear a voice inside, and if you’re that voice starts to whisper, to follow the farthest star, Moana, that voice inside is who you are. That’s the cultural narrative, story of identity that we we hold on to. And there are many problems with let me just give you a couple. Number one, it’s inconsistent and incoherent. What do I mean if you’re told to look on the inside and find out who you really are, which version of you is you?

Michael Keller
What I mean by that is this. Michael Keller is a man who loves peanut butter brownies. This is true. I’m also a person who wants to be fit and work out sometimes, sometimes there’s peanut butter brownie, Mike, and sometimes there’s work out and be healthy Mike, which Mike is the real Mike? Our culture would say there is a true version, there is an ultimate version of the real Mike. But I would argue there’s a lot of different aspects of who Michael Keller is, and there’s a lot of aspects who you are. So are we? Is inside, is identity, like a pool ball, where it’s like one hard one solid rock, or you more like an onion, where there’s just different layers and a lot of different aspects. At the very least, we can say it’s in it’s inconsistent. Because when you say, look on the inside, which version of you is the real you, I think there’s, there’s a there’s a lot of problems when it comes to that. Second problem is this. I think modern identity is dishonest about how we actually create them and how we see ourselves. And the best example I can give is actually from my father, who had this example that he’s used before, but I think it’s too good not to use. He gives this example like this. He says, imagine 1000 years ago, there’s a vike Vikings and Vikings. The nature of being a Viking in this culture is your job to be a Viking is to raid and to pillage other cultures and other tribes and other people groups. And so you go up and down, I don’t know if it’s Scandinavia or wherever, you go to some England and take over those places. If you have this anger and this rage and this desire to raid and pillage other people, Viking culture would say, yes, that’s who you are. But if you also are somebody who is same sex attracted this 1000 years ago, and you actually are same sex attracted in this culture, what does your Viking culture tell you? Your culture would tell you, no, no, no, that’s not who you are. You’re betrothed to Olga or, you know, I don’t know Hans. I don’t even know what names are the right ones, but that’s not who you are. Fast forward 1000 years. Go to today if you have a desire to kind of RAID and do violence and hurt other tribes and people groups and races. What does our culture say? Our culture says that’s not who you are. You need anger management, you need counseling. You need some help. But if you say, I’m same sex attracted, our culture says, or many people in our culture say, yeah, that’s who you are. So here’s the problem, same exact feelings. Yeah, in both set of people, and you read your feelings, though, through a cultural grid of whatever you’re in right now to say that who you are. So the idea of just look on the inside, that’s actually not true. You look on the inside, but you’re reading your feelings, how you see yourself through a grid that’s already been given to you. And my question to you all is, do you read should you read your your your your feelings, your identity, through a grid that’s going to change every 100 years. The culture that is around has a different moral grid. Or do you read your moral grid through the, you know, the Bible, the or some more stable moral framework? That’s the question. Either way, I think we can point out that there’s a dishonesty to this cult, this narrative, because it actually assumes that this is actually who you are. So let’s move on. Number two, that’s identity, freedom, the narrative of freedom. Here’s how it goes. You the goal to be human, the reason why you exist is to be free from all constraints, as long as you don’t harm other people. In other words, there’s a view out there, and you see this in so many stories. You see this in statements everywhere. I just want to be free. I just want to do myself. You know, I just want to be able to I don’t want this restriction on me. And the view is you, in our culture is you should be allowed to do what you want, wherever you want, with whomever you want, with your body, as long as you don’t harm somebody else. There’s a lot of different ways to parse that, but let me give you some of the problems with this. Number one, the first problem is definition, I would argue, is that it doesn’t allow you to actually have love. What do I mean by that? Love at some is a lot of things, but love at the most basic level is at least a commitment to someone or something else that goes beyond your usury of that thing. So parental love is, I’m at least committed to that to a child. You know, romantic love, familiar, any kind of love at some level. When it says in John 316, God so loved the world. Love is not I’ve fallen into love and out of love. So God’s kind of fell into love, but he could fall out of love that He gave His only son. No love. Biblical love is at least a commitment over time. But if you’re free, if I want to be free from all constraints, then you actually, then can’t have love. Why you see this in jilted lover statements all the time. They’re like, Hey, I love you, but you know that means being bound. I don’t want to be bound, so maybe I don’t love you. And I think what people have wrestled with this, we see this tension a lot, I think a lot of folks that there’s a lot of reasons for loneliness and heartache, but maybe one of the problems that we’re the tension that we live in is we want to be free, but we also want to be known, but you can’t be known unless you’re actually committed to somebody else. And you can’t do that unless there’s some commitment to each other. And you can’t have that if you have actually freedom, because here’s how our culture defines freedom, freedom is always from it’s from something else. What we don’t realize is actually freedom is that’s only half the equation. Freedom is not just from something. It’s actually also to something. What I mean by that is, is that you don’t just get if you want the freedom of being able to be a good musician, great at the piano or the violin. How do you do that? You practice. That’s right, but you have to practice for hours and hours and hours. By definition, you’re actually losing some freedoms, the freedom of free time, the freedom of doing something else to get the freedom of being actually good at music. In other words, freedom is never just away from something, it’s always towards something too, and our culture doesn’t understand that. Second problem, it’s not just makes it unable for us to have love. Second problem is there’s no way for us not to do or whose definition of harm? How about let’s put it that way. The whole point, the way our culture talks about freedom, say, yeah, you can have freedom as long as you do no harm. But whose definition? As soon as you kind of poke at it and talk about it, you don’t realize that you’re actually smuggling, in some view, some moral norm or value. So hey, I believe that freedom is that I should be free from taxes so that I can live my own life, because I believe government oppresses people, and so I would do no harm. But there’s a whole other group of people that believe that more taxes leads to more government, which leads to more freedom, because it lets you know more people have stuff different view. Who’s who view gets, gets to work. Some views out there say, Hey, I think we should make it easier for people to get in and out of divorce. So we have our we have our we have certain divorce laws because we want more freedom for that for the adults, but we have to What about the kids? Though, there’s less freedom for the kids, because all the statistics show that when you have divorce, kids are worse off. So whose definition of harm do you get to use it just it just shows it doesn’t actually work. All right. Third narrative, half. Happiness. The third major secular narrative is you need to, in the end, do what feels right, and you need to hold on what work. You need to then go after your own happiness and not let anybody else get in the way of it. This end, this ends up holding on to personal pleasure and fulfillment. There’s assumption here, which is that this world, we can’t be sure there’s a world past this world. So we have to get pleasure and happiness now. And since this world is only material things, we have to actually do it through the material world. How did we get here? We got here because, well, this world is if it’s only material then, then we have to have it. And therefore the highest goal is to get it. And when I say material things, I mean experiences, I mean stuff and whatnot. Well, here’s what’s wrong with this narrative. First is this, if this world is all that there is and happiness is just material things, can you actually get happiness in that way? Jonathan Haidt has this book called The happiness hypothesis, and he says, Here’s the problem with this definition of happiness. Just give it time. Suffering takes all things away at some point, either you spend your whole life saying, I need to get this for happiness, money, wealth, a relationship, a person, and you either never get it, which makes you unhappy, or you get it and it eventually gets taken away. Think of time. Think of death. Think of suffering or you get it. It doesn’t get taken away, but it doesn’t end up being as good as you thought it would be for your own happiness, no matter what, when you have this particular definition, it doesn’t work. Look, read any biography, there’s a brad pick biography. There’s Michael Jordan. Any biography, they’ll all tell you, I made it. It’s everything I always wanted, and it’s not enough.

Michael Keller
It didn’t bring me what I thought it would bring me, which actually, I think what’s interesting is we understand that, but then there’s still that move in our hearts of saying, Yeah, but I still got to get I still got to go, and we need to acknowledge it and see it and recognize it in our own lives and the lives of others, because we have to be able to speak to that and tell a better story. The second problem with this narrative is this, if this really is true, that means you need to have billions of people going for their own happiness and not the happiness of others, and not like anybody else, get in the way of it. You know, that’s called, it’s called a dog eat dog world. It’s called, you know, I have to get for me and mines. I have to actually take, I can’t give it’s gonna it leads to a worse world. It leads to more hardship and more heartache. All right. Fourth one last, last cultural nerve for now is the cultural narrative of power. Secular culture basically says this, that all production, all ideas, all thought, all words. At the end of the day, it’s a power move. This comes from Nietzsche in his book The will of power, he says the world itself is the will of power and nothing else, and you yourself are the will to power and nothing else. And so this view says this, all religious claims, all moral claims, all claims to beauty. It’s just one group, group of people who are trying to grab power over another group. And then you have, you have just these power plays. And so the goal of life is to disempower the powerful who have the power over you, and get that power from them to replace them. That’s the goal of life. And in these power brokers that are trying to hold things away from you, you have to, you have to take it from them. There’s a lot of problems with this view. I’ll give you a couple. First one is this, if all things boil down to power, it’s all about power. Then even the idea that all things are about power is about power. So why should I listen to it? If truth is just relative, then the idea that truth is relative, that truth is relative too. So why do I need to listen to it? In other words, in its inherent nature, it’s inconsistent. The minute, if somebody does who doesn’t have power, is able to unseat the powerful. That means actually, they were the ones that had power all along. Why don’t they give up their power? What makes us assume that the power less when they become the powerful, will they be any better with with wielding that power? If you look at history, the answer is no. So in other words, there’s an inconsistency of this understanding, and it sort of eats itself from the very beginning. The second problem is this, if everything’s about power, there is no way forward. You know why your move to say, I’m sorry, please forgive me any kind of reconciliation. It’s just a power move. You’re just trying to hold on to your own power. You can’t actually do it. You’re stuck. We’re stuck. And so you have incessant fighting that’s going to go nowhere, and it’s just one group over the other, and it falls apart. So I ran through those in 19 minutes. There’s a lot more, but I’m just trying to give you a taste and show you stories that there’s actually a lot of good in them. You. Let me tell you why. You need an identity, you need freedom, you need happiness. You need power. It does matter. You need that too, but they’re incomplete, because the way our culture wields them they end up, the way we hold them, actually breaks us and hurts us and does more damage, and yet, these are the stories we swim in, and different people in culture hold some of these more than other ones, but they actually also don’t. They don’t quite fit together, right? The Freedom narrative, hey, I don’t want anybody to tell me what to do completely flies against the power narrative. Say, well, that’s just a power move. You can’t do that. They don’t work, but they still exist. They co exist in this space. And so what do we do with all these things? Let me give you a couple of suggestions, and then I take questions. Number one, we need to inoculate ourselves and others. Christians, I have a 14 and 12 year old, and when I watch not just movies, when I watch even ads, which they’re now coming up in stream. You know, you used to have no ads since, when you used to stream things, it was so exciting. They’re back. The ads are back, and you can try to mute them. Sometimes, the tricky ones, they won’t play if they mute it anyway. But when I watch these things with my daughters, I’ll kind of sometimes when they were younger. Now I have to do at the end. Now they’ll, I’ll say, Hey girls, what’s this saying? And they kind of roll their eyes, or like, it says, you know, you need to follow your heart. And like, what’s wrong with that? And they’re like, Well, you shouldn’t always follow your heart, because sometimes your heart goes the wrong way. And they’re not happy with with with the fact that I do that, but I’m very happy because they are identifying the narrative and because they we need to see it. We need to see it in the coke ads and in the Nike ads, in the things that we see. Because the promise is, if you just get this, then you’ll be happy. That’s the happiest interview. Or if you just get the freedom to do what you want, wherever you want, with whomever you want, then you’ll be you’re good. And we just show how they don’t actually work, but we just start with ourselves as the first thing. Second thing is this, we need to enter into these stories. I only gave you four, but as you can I think there needs to be almost a sympathy and humility when we come across people who are clearly following these things out in their lives. And you could probably think of maybe it’s you, but maybe it’s you, but maybe it’s somebody, a loved one, that are living out these narratives. They’re trying to make it. They’re trying to succeed, whatever it is. And we need to say, Okay, we I see where they’re coming from. And like Paul, we need to enter into it. Paul, what did he do? And when he got to Mars Hill, he looked around at the culture. He saw what the stories were. He saw when the stories where multiple gods. He saw a God that had an unnamed it was an unnamed God. And He say, hey, let’s talk about this. And he held it up and said, Hey, I get it this good. You identified a God that you don’t quite know. I’m here to tell you who that person actually is. So he goes into the culture. He affirms something about and says, Hey, I get it. He critiques the bad part about it, and he points it off into Jesus, the true and better story. I think we need to do the same thing from claim the good news to see that, because I believe all of our what’s interesting about Western cultural stories, a lot of them actually have Judeo Christian backgrounds and bases. I think actually they started or we got them from Christianity, and yet we’ve now scrubbed them from key elements, and that’s why they’re broken. And we must complete our story into the better one. I’ll give you one quick story. My father died a couple years ago, but I was with him on the last night that he was cognizant, and on that night we were in the hospital, we stayed up all night. He was in so much pain, that’s why he was cognizant. And all he wanted to do was pray and recite the Apostles Creed, which I thought, okay, that’s kind that’s nice. And so we would pray and we would recite these things. And I thought he was doing it because, just to help distract him from the pain. It was only months later that I had this epiphany, as I was looking over his this material, there are stories contained in the Apostles Creed. There are stories contained inside the Lord’s prayer Our Father. How beautiful is it that we are actually our community? There’s there. We are a group of people on this together. Father, I have a true and better father. I have one who actually loves me and cares for me, and that I’m going to go to soon, who art in heaven. That there’s a reality beyond this one. There are many pictures and stories that are already contained in a lot of the materials and things that we say. And what my dad was doing, I realized, is he was preparing himself. He was putting his own story into the bigger story of Christianity. And he took great solace in that, and great hope in that. I think we need to be able to we go to our friends, our neighbors and ourselves and say, Man, we are so desperate for an identity. What identity is better than I. Identity of a son or daughter of the Most High God, there’s nothing more affirming and nothing more secure than that. Because now I don’t decide, am I, you know, am I peanut butter brownie? You know, son of son of somebody, or Yeah, that’s great. You can be peanut butter brownie and work out. Michael, and it doesn’t matter. And somebody can yell at you and say, I hate that you’re peanut butter and Brownie. Mike, okay, I’m still a son or daughter of the Most High God. Your identity is not shaken. Your identity is secure. How about freedom? You want freedom? It’s not just freedom away, but when you realize that you’re bound to Christ. This is why Paul, in the Bible constantly talks about you being a servant of the Lord and being slaves to Christ. The reason why is when you’re bound to him, then you’re actually free to actually love and serve everybody else. You want happiness. There’s no greater happiness found than in Jesus. You want power. What I love about Jesus and power is he doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t say there’s no power. He also doesn’t say, I’m going to grab it all for myself. What does he do? He gives it away. John 13, right in NIV, it says, as he’s contemplating all how all things have been given to him, All power. It says, in the NIV, it says, Then, therefore, he gets up, goes down and washes his disciples feet. He serves. He takes his power and gives it away. Imagine if everybody in the room, no matter how much power you have, you have a little power or more power, we were all giving it away and serving it and stewarding in the right way. That’s the answer to power. So there’s a true and better story that we can actually find and we need to enter into. And I think we have. And so I think that’s the next set of years. I don’t know stories will change, but I think these are the stories that are around us. I think we need to become cognizant of them, because when

Michael Keller
we’re not, we end up being blind to them. There are arguments I’m part of. I did my thm in apologetics, we can argue people all we want, and we can win in presuppositional apologetics and logical things, and people look at you and it’s happened to me, and they go, that’s nice for you. Cool. You can’t argue anybody in the kingdom of heaven. Think that was CS Lewis, right? But what you can do is you can say, You know what? There is a there is a better picture. There’s a better story that actually fits your experiences that is offered out there that actually, that you can have, that completes your story. Doesn’t How cool would it be if, and I think this is what Christianity does. It doesn’t get rid of our cultural narratives. It completes them and fix them, puts them back the way they’re supposed to be. So I think that’s the opportunity for us. But we have to start with ourselves, with it, inoculate ourselves and others, and then we need to figure out and spend time on telling what a better story might be of the gospel out in the world. We have precisely 17 minutes to take some questions, and I’m going to call on you. I saw your hand first second and then more, but say your say your question, I’ll try to restate it, so don’t say it so don’t say it too long, because I’m not going to remember it all. But go for it. Go for it.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I was thinking a lot about, very easy to add, his mentality about,

Unknown Speaker
like, oh, how the world kind of things, right? But what’s interesting about that?

Michael Keller
Yes, yeah, yeah. So the question is, how do we become more aware? Paul tends to talk to and critique and actually encourage and implore Christians to be careful about not having their own hearts captive to there’s powers and principalities, but there’s also these cultural narratives, these stories, how do we actually help protect ourselves? I mean, I started with first identifying them and then, but I think we actually have to go further. Once you identify them, some other things that you can do is actually ask yourself, what part of the story moves me? Why does it move me? You almost have to move not just from the idea of it, but to the emotional power of it. It reminds me of John Owen right in his if you ever read mortification of sin, this idea of like you need to kill sin before it kills you, one of the things you need to do is find whatever that the attractiveness of it is, and find out why it’s so attractive to you, and then come up with counter stories about why that actually doesn’t work in the moment. You can do that from something as simple as pornography, or you could do it as like so something, when I say simple, I mean concrete to something more wide we’re. Arranging like the secular view of happiness. But you kind of almost have your, I think you’re absolutely right. We have to kind of take the idea enter and then not just find out what it is and know and identify it. We have to find out its emotional power in our particular life and figure out why. I think that’s what Paul’s get. Yeah, what stories have we stopped telling? Right? Yeah, that’s helpful. So question was, you talked about stories that we tell, but what stories might we have stopped telling that contributed to virtue and and meaning? That’s great, and I’m glad you asked this question, because we have to state something clearly. These are the stories our culture tells. The stories that were told in other cultures are fallen in a different way. They all have see. This is what this is hard to hold together. But if Genesis one is true that all things were created good, it really said All things but Genesis three, all things are fallen and broken, and we still live in that state of brokenness, then we we have to hold together these twin concepts that I think often, there are many powers and principalities in our culture that want us to say something’s all good or all bad, but biblically, things are good but fallen. And actually, you could argue a lot of things out there are good. Pornography is sexuality, that’s good, but fallen. I one time had a student when I said this, and they’re like, Well, how about murder? You can’t get that one. I said actually, murder is authority and agency, that’s good, but fallen, where I get to say, how if you get to live or die? And they’re like, dang it. But it’s an interesting idea, like what the things that we identify as bad. What’s the aspect that might have been in, you know, in the pre fall Eden space, because we know that we’re told biblically, that’s where it was. So there, I do agree that in the past, there were stories that were being told that were more virtuous, and so conservatives are right where there are things that we need to go back to that were good, that we need to hold on to, and that we shouldn’t just get rid of. But not everything in the past was actually good, because there’s a lot of bad back there as well, and it’s a different type of bad. And to be really clear, people are like, Well, are you saying they’re all equally? No, I’m not saying there’s not, there’s not equal. You know, good and bad there’s there are some things that are worse than others, murder is worse, but this is why people get stuck biblically. When Jesus says, I tell you, if you even think of the idea of murder, you’ve sinned. But we’d all agree murder, actual murder, is bad. So how do you hold those things together? I think we can say everything’s good, but fallen some things are more good or less good. In the past. We there are, there are aspects of those things I can’t name off that my head, but there are things that go into the into other cultures, into in the past we can hold on to. And there’s also things that we can say, hey, that aspect of it was not good. And so how do we fix that and work on that great, great question. A couple somebody in the back or hand right there. Go for it, right, right? So good question is, what is the shelf life of cultural narratives, and what are the stories that are coming? First of all, that’s those are great questions. And what I didn’t say earlier, I’m talking about broad Western American cultural narratives. There are so many other ones. There’s local ones. There’s an Indianapolis cultural narrative, or multiple ones that are specific here, that are not in New York. And there’s layers. Now, if good before you guys get the heart palpitations like I have to understand all them. No, you don’t, because, guess what? You’re saved by grace. You don’t have to know them all. You really don’t. I think to be careful when you say, Well, I don’t have to know anything, because I’m just saved by grace. No, the Lord wants you to be curious about yourself and the world and others, and there’s a space for that. But no, you’re not actually going to save anyone else by identifying all their cultural narratives, and you’re not going to save yourself, because you’re always saved by grace. I think that needs to be stated. I’m glad you asked that question. I think different cultures have different types of power and that hold our collective imaginations. This is who is it? I think it’s Thomas Chalmers that talks about the only way that you’re going to move the heart. It’s the explosive power of a new affection that something that’s going to be true and lovely and beautiful to you can only be replaced by something more better that you think is actually more true, more beautiful, more lovely. So if you have an idol, if you have a if you’re that you’re falling after, how do you replace that is something better and more true and more beautiful. And we would argue the gospel is there’s nothing better. So it depends on how long any particular narrative can hold weight. And I think it just depends when it comes, depending on the is it local? Is it national? Is it whatnot? The ones that are coming, things are speeding up because technology speeding up. I. Don’t know what that means. I do think that they’re they’re moving faster. I also I think some of the reasons why in a lot of churches, you’re seeing a new increase of interest in the Christian story is people are going, Hey, these other stories aren’t working for me as well. A lot of articles being written, hey, people are coming back to the church. But if you look closely, people are coming back to religion because synagogues are up. A lot of other places are. I mean, people are just interested of saying, I need to find something different. So I think there’s an opportunity of saying, Okay, people are looking for better stories. How good are we at actually depicting that? And part of that is actually understanding what the needs and fears are of the people in any particular culture, and that’s what’s coming. I don’t know if I’m perfect at that, and I think that’s reason why we should say, be, say being curious. I think we have time for a couple more questions right here.

Michael Keller
Yeah, yep. So there’s a morality story that, like, basically, the story of morality is, how do I put it? That truth is relative, but you need to do justice the way I want it. And if I don’t, I’m going to cancel you that there’s a story out there. It’s really fascinating. Basically says, Hey, you do you? There’s no such thing as a as truth, which is actually really more. This is a moral story, but you see it happen online, online all the time, but if you don’t do it my way, you’re out there’s there’s no forgiveness, no love there. And that’s another that’s the one of those stories. Another one is on science, which basically says that we can only know what science tells us. The which is interesting, because science can tell us what is it. Can’t tell us what ought it. Can tell us that something, you know, something that is repeatable in a petri dish, it doesn’t tell us how functional. But we have this view culturally, that if we just scientifically find something just the right way, we’ll be able to identify it. Yeah, you can identify it, but doesn’t mean we know if we should do it or not. You know, this is, if you watch the movie Oppenheimer, some of the part of that movie was like, Yeah, you can build the atom bomb, but should you? And then there was this whole moral question of, well, we don’t, somebody else will, so maybe we should do it first. And all those kind of questions that I think are still circling around for us. So there’s morality, science and I Oh, history, progress. There’s this view that things are getting better, that you know, don’t worry, be on the right side of history. If you actually look at past couple presidencies and look at that phrase, be on the right side of history, whether you’re Republican or Democrat, they were all using that phrase, but always, almost always, wielded for their side of the platform. And there’s this view that says, hey, you know, don’t worry. It’s if you just do the right we’re going in the right direction. Problem with that, of course, is there’s a lot of things that are getting worse in culture. There are things getting better, there are things getting worse, and how do we hold those things together? And what I find it fascinating is civilization has always seen history as cyclical. The only time it moved from from point A to point B was when Christianity showed up and said, No, there’s a direction. Our Western culture has adopted that, but scrubbed away where it rooted itself in. So it’s a good I actually progress is a good story. I think we are, you know, there is a, there is a, you know, God’s Kingdom is coming. There’s also a lot of brokenness and hurt in reality. But what are you rooted into? I think it’s incomplete, unless you you find this right place. Those are, again, those are the seven that I found in my father’s notes. But there’s a, again, there’s a lot more. They actually he had a sub one sex and sexuality that basically, there’s an there’s a it was actually underneath identity. I don’t know how to wield it yet, but basically it, there’s a thing about, like, getting to do what you want, wherever you want, with your body. And then there’s a meaning that’s found in that. I think that’s one of those. I’m seeing a lot less culturally excitement about that one, and it’s but it’s interesting to see what’s what’s changing in that it’s good over here.

Michael Keller
Yeah, great question. It’s kind of I used to work with college students for nine years, and it reminds me a lot of like, hey, I want to tell my roommate that they need to clean up the room, but I’m worried that they’re going to yell at me if I do. And I always used to say, Do you have the depth of relationship where you can tell them something that’s hard, but there’s a trust that they know that even if they disagree with you, that they know that you love them. I think in our world, we actually assume that we have the built that trust to be able to have that conversation. I think a lot of times we we don’t. So in an individual conversation, when you’re saying, I just want to know more about you. I want to hear more like where you’re coming from, and tell me about your story, there has to be an assumed trust that you’re going to wield that story and be kind with it, and yet, doesn’t mean you’re not going to say something about it and say, well, that’s interesting. Oh, that’s kind of inconsistent. What does that look like? How do you get there? And the hope would be there’s an. For relational trust that they say, Well, what about for you? Like, what? Why do you don’t do it that way? And then can kind of, you know, depict that and kind of weigh these different stories. But I think that’s it’s a lot harder to do it on a, you know, just send it out into the nether world through and I think that’s why a lot of critique and heartache actually happens, is because we make assumptions that people will understand where we’re coming from when they’re not there. There’s another hand right over there too. Say

Michael Keller
it one more time. Oh, wow, yeah. So the question is, is, what cultural narrative is the church most guilty of maybe attaching itself to this cultural narrative? I, to some degree, I’ve actually thought about this, that, some degree, a lot of them, almost all of them. But like, I think different church traditions attach to different ones. There’s a, you know, the prosperity gospel, is it? There’s a tradition that says God wants you to be happy now. And I’m like, you know, Jesus was the one who loved God the most. He did not have a happy life, you know? So I think that depending on this a great question to ask, because you almost kind of, because what you’re asking beneath that question is, what’s the cultural blinder that I don’t even recognize is actually that bad, because I’m just sort of in it, and I’m soaking up that Kool Aid. Didn’t even know it. So you kind of have to identify and look over those narratives of freedom, of happiness, of identity. Again, I’m trying to be really careful here. This is a hard concept, because you’re like, Michael, just tell me, is it all good or all bad. I’m like, I’m sorry. Genesis one, Genesis three. These are incomplete. So it’s something we can enter. It’s actually helpful, because you can enter into it and say, there’s some aspects of this. It’s actually good, including our church tradition. There’s also a brokenness of it. The beauty of that, if in an ideal world, if we all actually had that framework, that means we could hold as true and good a lot of our traditions, and say we love this. This is really great, but we’re humble enough to know that we don’t have all of it, which then lets us be able to interact with people who might disagree with us and not take great offense about it, because we like we’re not we you know, I’m a Presbyterian. I hold my view. I think I’m right. I tell all my Baptist friends, I’m more Baptist than you, because I baptize not just adults, but babies. They they don’t think is as funny, but I, I do, but I think, I think we were reading covenant right, but we could be get we could have it wrong. That’s why my gospel collision, because I can be with people I don’t necessarily agree with everything about, but hope they don’t either. But that’s we can still learn and grow from each other. And I think there’s a level of space, because I think we’re right, but we might not, because, again, you’re not saved by by having the perfect right doctrine. You’re saved by grace. So I love that question about which, which, and I don’t want to answer, because I up here, I’m going to be like, this one’s the Baptist problem. This one’s the Anglican problem. This one’s, I don’t know, quite and I think they actually all are around depending on your tradition. I think I have time for one more question front and center,

Michael Keller
Yeah, question is, some of the political stories and narratives come with some heat that’s that’s an understatement, and how do you manage and navigate those? I would start with, I’m not gonna repeat myself. I would start with relationship like, you have to have the an ideal world. Back in the day, a lot of Democrats Republicans went to the same bars, and they they, they were able to, and actually, there’s studies on this. They actually literally did. Now we literally moved to different parts of the country to find people who hold our, literally, our political view. So it makes it a lot harder because we’re not talking to each other. But I think it starts with, it’s like any relationship you have to have deep emotional wealth and deep humility. And I think the gospel gives us that space, because the deep emotional wealth is you are loved enough that the Son of God is willing to die for you, deep humility that he had to die for you. If you can hold those two things together, that means you aren’t so great that you’re going to ever get a big head about it, but you’re going to be you’re never so fallen, so so marred that you don’t realize that there’s a goodness of God that is in you. I love Dr Piper’s talk, and yet, what’s amazing about our fallenness is that if we’re made in God’s image, and God is is full beauty and love, and there’s still an aspect of divine love and beauty that’s actually inside of us right now that is so beautiful and wonderful we don’t even understand and see that lets us then say, I want to know more about that, aspect of God in others, because there are other images of God. I want to know more about my Democrat or my Republican or my independent, because I want to be curious about that, because there’s something about that I’m probably missing that they see that I don’t see. So it brings curiosity to you, but then there has to be some level of humility of it, since I don’t have it all together, you know, I still it may be very clear I’m not saying you can’t think you. Right? I do believe you have to, like, do your assessment and say, I think this is the best way forward for me, for the government, for my not saying that. But I think you don’t have to be a jerk about it. And I think that’s one of the struggle things that we have a struggle with. And I think the way that you can is applying the gospel, first for your life and then out into the world. We are precisely at 45 minutes. I’m gonna just close some word of prayer that’s heavenly. Father, thank You for the men and women here. Some of these concepts can be really heady and big and can be little daunting in one way. Father, these are stories. These aren’t these are all around us all the time. I just pray that we become students of of of what’s around us. Father, with a curiosity, whatever capacity that we have, because a we want to be in wonder of of how you made us and and how you built us and the beauty of it. But also not be so gullible or are so naive that there’s not some deep sin and fallenness. If there’s fallenness in individuals, there’s fallenness in the cultures that are created by individuals help us to be cognizant of that and able to handle it, and then know that we’re saved by grace, so we’re not afraid that we have to just parse everything right? But hopefully get to know these things to then apply and love and serve those around us, including those who don’t know who you are, help us to be but eyes that you the way that you see us, help us to see others in the same view. Thank you for your word. We pray things in your name.