Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Ei Forum: Creation and Creativity

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

When we talk about creativity, we mean artists of course. But we also actually mean entrepreneurs—whose creativity is as important to what they do as anything else. So thinking about creativity, what does Christianity have to say to it? The answer is a lot.  Your deeper beliefs about the meaning of life and the world actually does shape your work. The Bible says the world was created, has fallen, is being redeemed, and is going to be restored. How does that affect or shape our creativity?  The Christian understanding of creativity is that creativity is something you do 1) because you want to, 2) out of love, 3) in full knowledge of the risk and the cost, and 4) knowing that there will be satisfaction. This talk and Q&A was given by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 16, 2010. Series: Center for Faith and Work. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. Are you struggling to find meaning and purpose in your work? We spend much of our lives at our jobs, but our work can often be the area where we feel the most frustration and fut joy in our vocations. I'm tasked to talk to you about Christianity and creativity. I only have for about half my time here I'd like to share four theological thoughts about creativity. Artists maybe don't want to admit this, but actually entrepreneurs are creatives.

And entrepreneurs are that part of the business world in which creativity is as important to what you do as anything else you do. So entrepreneurship is about creativity. You know, even though I'm sure he wasn't thinking of entrepreneurs, one of the late Bobby Kennedy's, one of his most, maybe the most famous statement he ever made was, and it was quoted at his funeral, I remember, he says, there are those who look at things the way they are and ask why. I dream of

things. I dream of things that never were and ask why not. And that's the charter of an entrepreneur, the charter of a creative. But what does Christianity have to say to creativity a lot? One of the main foundations, planks in Center for Faith that Works platform is that everybody's work is being shaped by their faith. I know that in the modern world everybody says, no, no, no, you keep your beliefs about the universe, human nature, God, spiritual things. You keep those private and when it comes to your work, it should just be business. And we know that that's just not true, that people are kidding themselves, that your deeper beliefs about the meaning of life and what the world is like actually do shape your work.

And so I'd like to just get out and remind you of what the Bible says that the world is about. It's about creation, the world was created, fall, the world has fallen because of sin, it's broken. It's being redeemed through what Jesus Christ has done and is doing, and eventually it's going to be restored. And no other religion, no other view of the world says that. And if you take creation, fall, redemption, restoration and you ask what

does that have to say to creativity? How does that affect our creativity? How does it shape it? How does it inspire it? The answer is a lot and here are four ways. Okay? First of all, the Christian understanding of creativity is that creativity is something you do because you just want to. If you go to creation and you look at the creation narratives in Genesis 1, 2, and 3, and you compare them to every other account of why the world is here, you will see a stark difference, both ancient and modern, alternate accounts to the Bible. Here's a few. These are some ancient accounts. There's an African story

of a giant god who got sick and vomited out first the sun, then the stars, then vegetation, then human beings. So he got very sick and he vomited and as a result, you. And then there's a Chinese account of a primordial giant pangu, sorry my Mandarin's horrible, emerged from the ancient cosmic egg and when he died his body just became the world. His eyes were the sun and the moon, his blood became the ocean, his beard became the forest, and so on. You know, the Norse account is that there was this big battle between the gods and the giants, and the god Odin killed the great giant chief and then used his body to create the universe and to create human beings who

could serve the gods. The Anuma Elish, which is the sort of the Mesopotamian creation account, says almost the same thing. It's about the god Marduk, and he has a big battle with the goddess Tiamat, and then when he kills her, he produces the world out of her body. But what's important to see in all of these accounts is that even though the world gets created, it's never created because anybody wanted to. It's a product of violence. Creation happened because they had to. He vomited. He had a battle. And there's power and there's struggle. Power, struggle. PowerPoint, struggle against each other, and out of that comes the world. Now that's the ancient account. So if you come to the modern account, you

have, you know, Bertrand Russell who says this. He says, we know, and that means we modern people, we know that man is the product of causes which did not have any pre-vision of the end they were achieving. We are but the outcome of an accidental collocation of atoms. And we know that all the labors of the age, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, they are all destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system. And we know that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in complete ruin."

So now, you know what? That's basically the same narrative. That the world is here, but it was nobody's idea. Nobody made it because they wanted to. It's not the product of artistry. It's an accident, but of course it's not just an accident. It's the result of an accidental collocation, a collision. It's an accident. There's lava and there's the Big Bang and there's all kinds of stuff, but it's just power and it's violence and it's back and forth, but it's not because somebody wanted it to happen, it just happened.

Along comes the Bible. Gerhard von Rahn, the biblical scholar, says, unlike any other account of creation, the Jews did not believe that their God had any rivals. There are no other PowerPoints. There are no rivals. Nothing can make him vomit if he doesn't want to. Nothing can come at him and make him battle if he doesn't want to. And as a result, what the Bible shows is that you and I and the universe and the world

is the result of artistry. Intentional artistry or another way to put it, is deliberate entrepreneurship. God was an entrepreneur. He brought something out of nothing. He brought order out of chaos. And why did he do it? He did it not because he had to. He did it because he wanted to. He did it for the joy of doing it. Creativity, it was just a joy to do. It wasn't a means to an end. It was the end itself. And, you know, this, I think, is important because we're made in his image. And therefore, you don't really need a reason to create or to start something new. You don't really need a reason because God, well, we'll talk about what God's reason was,

but there's a sense in which God did not have to do it. He did it for the joy of doing it. And when you and I know we're made in the image of God, it shouldn't surprise us that for a lot of us, especially those who are gifted in this particular area, we do it because we're just reflecting our Creator. And that's the reason why you've got a place like this. This is from Exodus, and it's from chapter 31, I think it is, yeah, Exodus 31 verse 2 to verse 4, and this is the place where God is talking about creating

the tabernacle. The tabernacle, by the way, and this is the place where God is talking about creating the tabernacle. The tabernacle, by the way, and this is another subject and I won't even get into it, but the tabernacle was essentially a world. It was a world with God at the center. It was beautiful. The temple was the same way. It was a beautiful thing, but it was really God's way of saying, this is the universe the way it ought to be, with me at the center and everything beautiful and everything holy. And when the tabernacle was being built, the people who built it were given specific, were given a special anointing with the Holy Spirit, which is God's nature to bring that creativity into their lives. And this is what it says, Exodus 31. God says, See, I have called my name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Her,

of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom and in understanding and in knowledge and in all manner of workmanship to devise cunning works, to work in gold and in silver and in brass and in cutting of stones and to set them in carving of timber to work all in a manner of craftsmanship. To be a craftsman, to make something beautiful, to create artistry took more of the Holy Spirit. Isn't that interesting? Why? Because the Spirit is the nature of God and the substance of who God is.

And in a sense, God put more of his lifeblood, more of his DNA in these people, and he turned into creatives because God's creative. By the way, that's got to make a difference. Look, I know people say, look, I try to separate my faith from my work or what I believe from my work. But if you believe what Bertrand Russell says, that has to have an impact. St. Augustine's entire book, The City of God, is about the fact that there are two cities, he says, in the world. There's the city of God and the city of man or city of the earth. And he was actually, of course, comparing Christianity to the Greco-Roman world at the

time. And he was right about this. He says the Greco-Roman world, its account of how the world came about, is that the world came about basically through a power struggle. Because all the ancient pagan myths were the world is a result of a power struggle. And he says, therefore, if you believe that, that the world wasn't created by one God in peace and in love, as a work of art, just for the delight of it, if you think it was here because of a big power struggle, then you're going to

at some level believe that that's what life's really about. It's about getting power, it's about getting a leg up on other people, it's about winning the race, it's about competition. And therefore, when you are an entrepreneur, if that's in the back of your mind or even in the kind of hinter ground or if that's part of your kind of unconscious belief about the world, that it's here by accident, that it's really all a matter of power, that basically everything is a power struggle, why are you going to create? You're going to create just to be successful. You're going to create just to be successful.

You're going to create to make more money. You're going to create to get a name for yourself. You're going to create like the builders of the Tower of Babel created. They wanted to build the biggest skyscraper in history. That's entrepreneurship. Why? It says, Genesis 11, verse 4, let us make a name for

ourselves. And so if your world view is that the world is basically a power struggle and you try to create and that worldview is the only worldview you've got, you're going to be creating not because you want to, because you have to in order to compete, in order to get successful, in order to get a leg up. And it's going to be a drudgery. And you're not going to probably create in a way that helps people. So first of all, what the Bible says because the doctrine of creation is that if you create, if you're an entrepreneur you should do it, not because you have to, because you want to, because you know you made the image of God, because bringing order

out of chaos and something out of nothing is a good thing in itself. Okay, point one. Point two. Secondly, I'd like us to see that according to the Bible, if you are an entrepreneur, if you're creative, you should also create not just, yeah, because you want to, but why do you want to? To make space and to share goods. You shouldn't be doing it as a power play on your part. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, you ought to be doing it to make space and to share goods. If you understand what Christianity is about, how so? Well, we've already said that God just wanted to create, but we didn't go into why he wants to create. And here, listen, if I wasn't standing on the back of

theological and philosophical giants, I would not dare to even begin to speak to this. And somebody rightly might say, how the heck do you think you have the right to tell us what you think was in God's mind when you decided to create the world? But we got a little bit of an idea about it. And one person has written a book. It's a book that will live forever. it's one of those theological books that people will study to the end. And it's Jonathan Edwards' book, The End for Which God Created the World. It's a great book, partly because it's not just something he thought up out of his own head. In other words, the end for which, meaning why did

God create, that's what the book's about. Whole book. And he builds on Augustine. And Augustine is, and if you've been around Redeemer you've probably heard me talk about this, Augustine makes this great argument for why God has to be triune. Have you ever heard it? He says if God was not a Trinity, if God was just like the Muslims and the Jews and everybody else believes, that God is unipersonal, just one God, not Father, Son, Holy Spirit in the Godhead, but one God. He says then, you either have to believe that love really isn't important or else that God's imperfect. Because see, God would not have been able to have love, have a loving relationship until he created someone. In other words, in himself, God would

have been imperfect and would have needed in himself, God would have been imperfect and would have needed someone else. He would have had to create other beings in order to have a love relationship. So love wasn't intrinsic to God. So you either have to believe that love wasn't important, that he was perfect without love, that it's possible to be perfect without love, or you believe love is important, therefore he was imperfect, or you can believe in the Trinity. See. This is why they paid Augustine those big bucks. See, those big theological bucks. And what he said is, God, because he was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, had known from all eternity what it was like to love. Because the Father,

the Son, the Holy Spirit, and we do get this directly from John chapter 17 and some other places, John 5 as well, we're told that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit from all eternity have been glorifying each other, which means, what does that mean? It means they have been honoring each other, serving each other, deferring to each other, loving each other. Don Carson has written a book called The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God that is just a masterpiece though nobody ever knows it. Maybe, I guess unless a few other people think it's a masterpiece, maybe it's not, but I think it is. And in there

he says that the doctrine of the Trinity proves that there's an other orientation in the very being of God. That God, this sounds really weird, God is not self-centered. That's really weird, is it not? That God has known from all eternity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, each one is loving the others and glorifying and deferring and honoring. And so there's a kind of unself-centeredness in God. Now, now that you know that, now the question, and this is where Edwards comes in, the question

is why would God create? Why would a perfect being create? What would the motivation possibly be? And of course the answer is if God was unipersonal, then he could create because he wants worshipers, he wants servants, he wants people to love him and admire him and serve him, right? But God already has that. A triune God already has that. He already has all the love, all the honor, all the glory, all the joy that he possibly

could. And you know how much joy that is? Listen, if you want to understand what's going on in the Trinity, keep this in mind. I think it's fair to say that you could never be happier than when you're in this condition. When someone who you admire to the sky knows you to the bottom and loves you

and adores you and admires you. Put those three things together. If somebody knows you, see most of the time there's people who love us but they don't really know us. So there's a certain lack of value in that, though it's nice. And there are also people who know you very well, as a result they'll love you. And that's painful. But when someone knows you all the way down and still loves and admires you and is a person that you admire to the sky, there's nothing better than that. There

is nothing better than that. Why? Because you're made in the image of God and God's got that all the time. That's the reason why it's so great. It's great because you're made in the image of God and that shows us something about the inner being of God and God's got that all the time. That's the reason why it's so great. It's great because you're made in the image of God and that shows us something about the inner being of God. He's got that all the time. So why would a God who is perfectly happy want to create? And the answer is, we've already seen it. There's an other orientation in God.

And therefore, what Jonathan Edwards says, God wants a universe of beings to share what he has. He wants to create a universe of beings who enjoy him and love him, see, just as he enjoys and loves himself within himself, which means he wants to create a universe of beings who can share the same love, the same relationship, the same joy that he's got. And therefore he creates. He's making space in the universe to share his goods. It's estimated that most of us spend half of our waking hours at work. How does the wisdom of the Bible apply to our careers? In other words, how can our work connect with God's work? And how can our vocations be more missional? In his book, Every Good Endeavor, Tim Keller

draws from decades of teaching on vocation and calling to show you how to find true joy in your work as you serve God and others. The book offers surprising insights into how a Christian perspective on work can serve as the foundation for a thriving career and a balanced personal life. Every good endeavor is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share Christ's love with more people around the world. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. And that is the second point. Why? Because there are ways of doing entrepreneurship.

Because you have just, you just, you want to compete, you want to get with famous, you want to do, you know, you want status. Or you could also, this is what Richard Mao says, Christian entrepreneurship is you see a need that's unmet. You see a resource that's untapped. And you put the need with the resource because you know it's going to create new goods, it's going to create new jobs, it's going to create new wealth, it's going to create new value. And of course, it's very easy, if you forget the first point, to get that hijack and say, and it's going to create new value. And of course, it's very easy, if you forget the first point, to get that hijack and say, and it's going to make me a lot of

money. Or you could keep your Christian faith in gear here and say, but basically what I want to do is I see that I'm going to be expanding the amount of goods in the world. And therefore, see, the second point is God did it just because he wanted to, that's why he created, why did he create? Because he wanted to, but why did he want to? Out of love. You should create, because you made the image of God, but why should you want to do any particular entrepreneurship?

It should be out of love. You should say this is gonna add value to people's lives, this is gonna enhance add value to people's lives, this is going to enhance the common good, this is going to create wealth for people who need it, it's going to create value for customers, it's going to create value for shareholders, it's going to enhance life. I would just keep this in mind. You could be a secular person and still say that's what I want to do, entrepreneurship. We call it social entrepreneurship, right?

But Christians have got to have an extra kind of extra high octane in their motivation when you know that this is how you got here. God made space in the world for you to share his goods, his image. We have rationality, we have personality, we have creativity, we have relationships because God has given us his image. Three, we should do, I think what the gospel, what Christianity shows us here, the Bible shows us, is that entrepreneurship should be done because you want to, not because you have to. Secondly, out of love. Thirdly, in full knowledge of the risk and the cost.

Now, you can see the risk and the cost from the very beginning because in Genesis 3, immediately, as soon as Adam and Eve sin, God says, now thorns will come up along with the plants. You know, God put us in this world and we're supposed to cultivate, and that's work. But now because of sin, thorns come up. Now think of it this way. God made the world filled with human beings made in his image, therefore human beings with free will. And so God made the world knowing what it was going to cost him, knowing what we were going to do,

knowing that he was going to have to, that the sun was going to have to come into the world and experience what he experienced. And we, because we're entrepreneurs in a broken world in which thorns come up, we also know that even though we have the joy of the vision and we have the joy of the vision and we have our motivation of love because of what we know we can do for the world through what we're doing, through our entrepreneurship. But thirdly, you've got to go into it with your eyes open knowing because it's a broken world, there's going to be a great risk. There's going to be a great cost. You don't know how much it's going to be, but you do know that God, the ultimate entrepreneur,

leveraged his resources to create, to open up a space for us, to share us his goods, but he knew it was going to come at an enormous price and cost. See how this is all coming together? God creates because he wants to. He creates out of love. And he creates though, he knows it's going to be an enormous cost, an enormous risk. And you can't be a real Christian entrepreneur, I don't think, unless you're doing it for the joy of it, not just because you have to.

You're doing it for the love of it, not just to make yourself a nice nest egg for the future. And you have to do it without any kind of romanticism about the cost and the price of it, the insecurity of it, the difficulty of it. You got to keep in mind how this all comes together. Richard Mao has, I heard a president of Fuller Seminary was doing some teaching in China, I think it was, some years ago and speaking to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. And he said this, this is my notes from that talk. He says, God created through a radical act.

He already had all the glory and power and love and community that you could possibly want, but he decided he wanted to grow it. He wanted to create a universe of beings who could participate and share in his own goodness and joy and love. And so he gave us life and he made the world, even though he knew he was doing it at great risk and cost to himself.

He knew that a universe of beings with free will, he knew what we were going to do, and in order to share, to make space, to do this entrepreneurial venture, it was going to cost him radically and dearly. And in spite of that, he invested himself in it. Why? Because he knew that in the end, the investment was going to turn out to be greater. I mean, the dividends, the end result was going to turn out to be greater. I mean, the dividends, the end result was going to be even greater than the investment. That's hard to believe. But the fact is that the very, very end of Jesus' whole, the description of Jesus'

atonement in Isaiah 53, we're told that the results of his suffering he will see and be satisfied. And that's astounding. Consider he will see and be satisfied. And that's astounding. Consider the investment. Consider what happened. God becoming human, God emptying himself of his glory, you know, God going to hell essentially, the excruciating pain. For Jesus, when it's all over, to look back and say, the salvation of these people, this

new humanity, my brothers and sisters that I've bought through my blood, it was worth it, means that the dividends were greater than the investment, and the investment was infinite, so the dividends, you know, new heavens and new earth. And so then Richard Mao put it like this. He says, so God is an entrepreneur, investment banker, a venture capitalist. He leverages resources at great cost to himself. He made space in the universe for us. So, if you see a human need not being met, you see a talent that can meet that need. If you invest your resources at risk cost to yourself so that the talent can meet that need and you create new space in the world,

new value in the world, new goods to be shared, better quality of life, human community flourishing, then what you've done is not just godly, but godlike. His adventure capitalism can be, entrepreneurial work can be not just godly, but godlike. And by the way, he told me after, I mean, he actually told me after the talk, almost all these businessmen came up and said, could you please speak to my pastor? Because my pastor has no idea that what I'm doing is of any good at all. Here's one last thought. God didn't just do one great act of entrepreneurship, did he?

Which is creating the world. We're also told in 2 Corinthians 5, 17 that if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation, which means the cross actually is a second act of entrepreneurship. It's the new creation. It's the creation. It was an enormous investment in order to create the new creation. It's the creation. It was an enormous investment. It was in order to create the new humanity. And it's pretty remarkable to see that God was willing to do it again. But that is the second act. And as a result, because of that, we can know that there will be satisfaction. I guess that's my fourth point. Let me just

end it like this. I think that's my fourth point. Let me just end it like this. I think that from the Christian point of view, there probably, if you got into your entrepreneurial venture, not for power, but out of love, not just because you had to, but because you wanted to, because you saw an opportunity, because you got a vision, you thought about the good you could do. I really think that if you, if that's the case, then in the end, even if the risk and

the cost was so great that essentially it doesn't work, essentially you can't keep going, essentially you have to close up shop. I think a Christian can always be satisfied. Like Jesus, he looks back on his investment and says the results of his suffering he sees and he is satisfied. I do think that you can always see the good that you did as long as you did it for the motives that were relatively pure. Nobody's motives are perfectly pure, but relatively pure.

And especially you can know that you're part of what God is doing, which is creating a new humanity. And you are part of that. So you're part of his entrepreneurship even now, when you try to be creative out of the motivation you have in the gospel. So those are some thoughts. It's, you know, I don't know how inspirational that was, but it's some ideas. I mean, this is just a kind of a talk rather than a sermon. But let's, let's I can't imagine some of that was kind of scrapy,

you might say, and sketchy. So I'm supposed to take questions for a while, so let's do that. Is there anything I just said that would raise a question, or you want me to clarify some more, or do you want me to elaborate at some point. I mean, how God actually looks inefficient. Yeah, well, no, that's right. Okay, God, as an entrepreneur, that's right. The new humanity is his second great entrepreneurial initiative. The first one was with the world. The second one is creating a new humanity, salvation. And the brother there is right that it's not particularly efficient. And somebody actually – you could really do a pretty good sermon on the fact that God continually chooses – and if you go all

the way back into Genesis, he always chooses usually not the older son, even though law of primogeniture, the oldest son always had the money. He chooses David out of the group. He's the youngest and the weakest. He's constantly doing that. He chooses Israel. It doesn't seem like the center of the world in fact at all. It's a backwater and that kind of thing.

On the other hand, I don't know how to put this exactly in a way. It's not going to sound pretty crass. God is very concerned about His brand. His brand is weakness, salvation by grace. And so the best way for Him to get that point across is to constantly choose. He says, God chooses the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. He chooses, you know, the world to shame the wise. He chooses even the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are that no man may boast in his presence. That's 1 Corinthians 1. And so God is, in some ways, He's on message. Like a good entrepreneur, on message. This is what we're about. And we're true to this principle whether or not it seems like it's the most efficient. On

the other hand, it's the most effective. It has been very effective, by the way. It is the biggest, weirdly enough, it is the biggest, if you really want to look at it that way, it's not only the biggest religion in the world, but the only one that's really universal. It's the only one that's not basically completely connected to one demographic, you know, if you think about it. And I wonder about this. See, Hinduism is still basically rooted in India. Buddhism migrated a little bit, but it's still basically Asian. Islam is still basically Arab and Middle Eastern. Christianity is just big everywhere. I mean, frankly, almost everywhere except a certain part of the world at this point. But by and

large it's huge in Africa, huge in Asia, huge in Latin America. It was huge in Europe. It's still got a legacy there. And so there's something about God's using the weak to shame the strong that has made it more flexible and also more appealing because it's a message of grace to the masses of the world. So you could actually say that it wasn't efficient, on the other hand it was. So good question though, very good question. At the beginning you said that we have a different set of assumptions than social entrepreneurs. I wonder if you could flesh out a little bit how do our different assumptions about human

nature and the structure of reality manifest themselves as distinct from social entrepreneurs who care about some of the same issues? Yeah, that's a good question. We live in a post-Christian society, not a pre-Christian society. In a pre-Christian society, humanitarianism made no sense. Christians came up with the idea of hospitals. Christians came up with the idea of caring for the poor. I mean, it

was the Anglo-Saxons, the Pagan just thought Christianity would never work because it was just you've got to be strong, you've got to get people scared of you. So, post-Christians, the secular people, in fact, Richard Rorty, who's now dead, but he's a brilliant postmodern philosopher, admits that humanitarianism, social entrepreneurship, the very idea of human rights, that every human being has dignity, all came from Christianity. It did not grow out of any other soil. He says, hopefully, see, he says, along with Christianity comes what he considers the intolerance of believing you're right. So he says, the problem is, now, we've got to somehow keep the humanitarianism going without the Christian truth.

And he thinks, I think we can do it. He says, if you ask people, why should we care about the poor, that's a very bad way to go, because you see, if you're a secular person, you've got no good answer. You know, the strong eat the weak. He knows it. So you know, there's a fascinating article in which he said, what you've got to do in a secular world now is tell people sad, sentimental stories, because that gets their feelings up. But he says, if you're a secular person, you've got no good reason to believe in human

rights or humanitarianism, but we don't want to go there. So I would just say the secular social entrepreneur is living off Christian capital and probably could do a lot of good in the world, and we should be very, very careful to make common cause with all the folks that are trying to do what we, for our Christian reasons, want to do too. You want to feed the hungry. You want to dig wells where there's no good water in Africa. They want to. Rorty is right in saying if you press them why, why is it so important to you? They don't have a good answer. They're just moved

by their at a visceral level. I think in the long run, Christian belief has got to make you, it's a tortoise hair thing. I actually do think what it does is it keeps you in the race a lot longer. I think it probably keeps you, it's a more thorough and strong motivation, but we're not the only people out there trying to do good. Though even the people, as Rorty says,

who are trying to do good, are kind of doing it off of Christian capital. That's a couple of ideas about the differences. So the differences aren't that great at the superficial level. Many of them will have very much the same kind of emotional motivation and want to do the very same thing you're trying to do.

Yeah. You touched on the idea of Christian struggle in the work and also on the idea of ultimate lack of success. Right. So, you know, we're modeling a God who's ultimately very successful and all that he does. How do we as entrepreneurs deal with our own failures? I'll tell you what, this will be the last question because it's so good. I'm just sure it can't be, you can't get any better after this one.

Now, here's a really important question. I was trying to say, though I don't know I said it, I probably didn't give it enough time or treatment. There's a verse in 1 Corinthians 15, the very, very last verse, where it says, you must know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. This is one of the differences I was just trying to allude to. With a social entrepreneur, a person who's trying to do good but doesn't have a world view, doesn't even believe in God, if you fail, you've just failed. And I know it's sappy, but it's totally true.

The little, I've seen so many places in my little church in Virginia, I go to see my older people and they have this, you know, on a doily or something, it says, only one life so soon it's passed, but only what's done for Christ will last. And the whole idea was, if you've done something, you've tried to do good. You've tried to do it in Christ's name. You said, Lord, because you've given me so many goods, I'm going to try to do this for people.

And it doesn't economically work. See, a Christian can sit down and say, this is not in vain. God's going to use it. I've already done some good. I've created some ideas. I don't know. But all I know is that God sees it and it's going to be good. See, that's one of the, that's an incredibly

powerful shock absorber. It's a theological shock absorber. If you've ever been in a car in which the shock absorbers are going bad, you know that every little pothole will pretty much knock your teeth out. And I feel like when you're out there trying to be a social entrepreneur without the kind of shock absorber of knowing that, that God is working in it, I don't know how you make it. But I also want you to consider all the failure that God used.

I mean, there's all these people like Joseph. I mean, Moses, almost every person that God used as a deliverer went through long periods of time in which everything was going wrong. And yet, looking back, God used the failure. Again, that's a theological shock absorber that you don't have. So, there's a sense in which, if your motives are largely right, forget nobody's got perfect motives, largely right in doing what you're doing, whether you economically succeed or not, or the world thinks you succeeded or not, you can know that this is not in vain.

And that's really important. So that's a very big part, I think, the theology that helps you as an entrepreneur take the risk, knowing that in the end, you can sit down, I was trying to say at the very end, you can sit down, look at the results, and be satisfied knowing you did it, and God sees it, and he knows what you tried to do and that He's going to use it somehow.

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership allows us to reach people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelinlife.com slash partner. That website again is gospelinlife.com slash partner. Today's talk was recorded in 2010.

The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.