2min chapter

The Bulletin cover image

Remembering Tim Keller

The Bulletin

CHAPTER

The Road to Character

Timothy Stanley: I'm a New Yorker, grew up in Greenwich Village and spent most of my life in New York. He treated it as a town where people were yearning and finding their yearnings unmet; so he was always respectful. And then finally, he had what the city was hungering for but didn't know it, says Stanley.

00:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, first some context on where he situated himself. I'm a New Yorker. I grew up in Greenwich Village in New York and spent most of my life in New York. I'm just reminded as you were talking, I wrote a book of several years ago called The Road to Character and I was talking about it on a TV show. An editor from a different publishing house, not mine, said, I really liked the way you talked about the book, but you used that word sin. I wouldn't use that word, that's a terrible word. I would use the word insensitive. I was like, all sin is not really insensitive. It's a little bigger concept. That was the world that Tim was in. I think he was such a hit in that world, in part because, and he had mentioned this in some interview I read, that you sort of have to, the worldly values are, can you prove yourself as a successful intellectual or as a successful litigator or as a successful person in your job? And Tim had the verbal skills and the intelligence to say, oh yes, this guy is credible as a litigator because he has certain professional skills. And that was permission then to listen to what he actually had to say. But I think also there are two other things. One, he never treated New York as this hostile Sodom and Gomorrah. He treated it as a town where people were yearning and finding their yearnings unmet. And so he was always respectful. He always saw each person made an image of God and treated them with that layer of respect. And then finally, he had what the city was hungering for but didn't know it, I would say that. And I say this to Christian colleges and Christian institutions all the time. You shouldn't feel that people are attacking you. You shouldn't feel that you're like a victim of society here. You have what the world wants, which is a spiritual language. As Russell pointed out in Christianity today, you have some practical wisdom about how to lead a good life. You have practical advice to give based on 2000 years of Christian thought and the example of Jesus. So Tim went in with an abundance mentality and said, I've just inherited so much and there are so many people with so many desires, I'm going to help out.

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