Hello everyone, Michael Keller here (the son that's helped run Dad's social media since we started in 2013). Thank you so much for all the beautiful memories, stories, and tributes written over the past two weeks about Dad. The original vision for creating these social media 1/3

Here are seven Habits of social media best REJECTED: 1) The worst possible way to read a post is the right way. 2) If I can impute bad motives to you I don’t have to deal with your argument. 3) If you cite person X at all you must answer for everything person X ever did or said. 4) I only engage tweets that support my narrative of you. Other tweets, videos, articles, or books by you I can ignore as if you never said any of them. 5) I can attribute opinions to you that I suspect you would not own. 6) There are only three categories for tweets: a) those on my side b) those on the other evil side, c) wrongfully trying to compromise in the middle. There are no other kinds. 7) The best way to influence the culture and speak truth to power is through social media and not through books or scholarship or face to face relationships or building institutions.

I believe these seven habits make social media extremely problematic.

Love is at some level counting the other person's needs and interests as more important than your own needs or interests. Otherwise you are just mutually using each other. Confronting wrongdoing is part of love because it is unloving to let someone sin against you.

Our culture rightly longs for justice.

The gospel asks a deeper question: What do we do when we're the ones in need of mercy?

At the cross, God's justice and His grace meet. The gospel offers not only justice, but the hope of redemption.

—Michael Keller
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From John Newton's letter: "Of all people who engage in controversy, we, who are called Calvinists, are most expressly bound by our own principles to the exercise of gentleness and moderation." Read the letter and see how he arrives at that conclusion. buff.ly/3ewJzIi

Humility, patience, and tolerance are ways of speaking about faith, hope, and love. See intro to buff.ly/3sJgq4Y. "Tolerance" is here defined to be treating someone as made in God's image even as you disagree strongly. See Calvin's classic statements on this.

I've worked w/conservatives and liberals in hands-on efforts to help poor families. The imbalances--conservatives over-stress personal irresponsibility and liberals over-stress structural causes--I've seen. These aren't 'straw men'. "There are more things in heaven and earth..." Here's a great approach to one major social problem that escapes the ideologies of conservatism or progressivism. buff.ly/3mG6eX6. It's an academic book but highly recommended.

Christianity is not simply a story to believe.

It is a story to inhabit.

The invitation of the gospel is not merely to agree with truths about Jesus, but to place ourselves within His story and be transformed by His Spirit.

The Stories We Live By — available now.

—Michael IBEIiwf

This is a thick book and a bit dense, but one of the foundational books on biblical authority. buff.ly/3EitIaI

Many argue 'forgiveness culture' helps abusers escape accountability. Desmond Tutu argued that without forgiveness abusers hold us in thrall, that it was possible to pursue both forgiveness and justice at once. He rejected the Nuremberg Trial model for Truth and Reconciliation.

When I've done public dialogue with Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim clerics, we start with the premise that religions make sharply different claims about reality and should be listened to when they do so. We can make common cause too--but only after we accept the differences.

Misc: (1) Jesus' last recorded words are in Revelation (cf. Acts 9). Jesus' dying words are interesting to compare to other dying words. (2) I have great respect for Buddhism, though Hinduism is a more formidable rival for Christianity philosophically. CSL thought so too.

buff.ly/3eyiAMs. See esp articles by O'Connor and Collins. Many impose a framework of sameness or equality on religions instead of letting them speak in their own voices. Religions make sharply different claims about reality and should be listened to when they do so.

What the heart most wants, the mind finds reasonable, the will finds doable, and the emotions find desirable.

We’ve been looking at the ways in which an experience of the grace of God creates a new interior character of the heart.

At the end of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul tells us that the secret, the key, to developing that interior supernaturally changed heart is to look to the future—to something that’s going to happen in the future.

If we’re going to understand this, we need to look at this whole passage and what it shows us about 1) the problem, 2) the remedy, and 3) how to use the remedy.

Listen to @timkellernyc's "Love and the Future of God" here: pod.fo/e/6e8ca4

Put your little story about what people have done to you into the big story of what Jesus did for you, and you’ll have the power you need to forgive rather than be twisted by anger and to seek justice rather than revenge.

The gospel isn't about reinventing yourself.

It's about being made new.

—Michael Keller
buff.ly/YZqG3N7

We can't live without depending on some trustworthy authority, yet to allow the authoritarian in our lives is deadly.

Buddha’s Final Words: Strive unceasingly.

Jesus’ Final Words: It is finished.

Classic Packer book on biblical authority and what it means to believe in the fundamental of the Bible. buff.ly/32eJ4QF

Trust the Bible wholly because (a) Jesus wholly trusted it and you trust and love him, and because (b) you can only question the Bible's teaching by using some other standard of truth you are not questioning at the time.

If you dont accept the Bible as the ultimate standard of truth you will do so using some other standard of truth which itself is-at the deepest level, something you accept on faith (that you cant prove). (See Plantinga, Wolterstorff & Bavinck)

If you have a small view of your sin, God's grace will seem small to you. (You will think you don't really need it.) If you have a small view of God's grace, even a glimpse of your flaws can bring despair. (You will think them too much to bear.)

Four books that will shape your belief in the authority and inerrancy of the Bible. buff.ly/32r1ahW. buff.ly/3yUBbeN buff.ly/3yQRI3F. Finally see buff.ly/3Fqwegg