Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Secret of Our Discontent (Open Forum)

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

This talk was given by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 6, 1994. Series: Redeemer Open Forums. Today's episode 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 and Life. Have you ever gotten something you desperately wanted, only to discover it didn't satisfy you as deeply as you thought it would? We often assume that if we could just achieve a big goal, find the right relationship, or reach the next level of success, we'd finally be at peace. But our discontentment runs deeper than we realize. Today on the podcast, Tim Keller shows how our longing for something more points to a deeper truth.

We were created for a lasting contentment that can only be found in Jesus Christ. What we've been trying to get you to think about tonight is what some people call the secret of our discontent. The Paul Simon song, Richard Corey, is actually, some of you remember that song from the old album, but that was a rewrite of an older poem. I went and dug the poem up.

Now, it's the same story, but the poem is obviously different, as you can tell as I read it, it's not an easy thing to sing. It's the same story. Whenever Richard Corey went downtown, we people on the pavement looked at him. He was a gentleman from sold a crown, clean, favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, and he was always human when he talked. But still he fluttered pulses when he said, Good morning, and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich, yes, richer than a king. and admirably schooled in every grace.

In fine, we thought that he was everything to make us wish that we were in his place. And so on we worked and waited for the light and went without the meat and cursed the bread. And Richard Corey, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head. Now, there's a lot of stories about people like Richard Corey. and what I'd like you to consider tonight is Richard Corey's people that have hit the top

and who remain discontent because they tend to be private people, because they're hard people to get to know, even if Barbara Walters goes and has an interview with them, you still don't really know them. And as a result, we don't realize the things that they know how deep our discontent is. Horace, an old Roman poet, wrote in the first century, said, No one lives contented. Wallace Stevens, who wrote just about 10 years ago, said, but in contentment, I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss. In other words, he says, even when I'm content, I'm not really content.

So from the old timers to the new timers, there's a problem, and that is, it seems like no matter what we have, we seem to be able to stay discontent. Now, I would like to consider that with you. I would like you to look at your own heart. I would like to propose to you, not only that you underestimate the magnitude of your own unhappiness.

I know all the counselors have been telling you you overestimated, and, you know, look on the bright side, and there's a silver lining. I don't mean just the professional counselors, but all the amateur counselors. They say, oh, come on. You know, I was something happy, I didn't have, have shoes and I saw somebody without feet, which is great unless you're somebody without feet,

and then what do you say to him? I saw somebody without legs. What about the people without legs? I mean, you know, there's a lot of amateur counselors that over the years say, don't overestimate how unhappy you are. I proposed tonight that one of the most important clues to the meaning of the universe and the only way to real happiness is for you to admit how unhappy you are. I would like to look at the problem of discontentment. I would like to look at the fact that people who get an awful lot still, it doesn't seem to be able to put out the discontentment. And I would like to suggest a four-step approach to the problem of being unhappy. Four steps.

If you follow those four steps, I think you'll find it takes you a lot further than where you think you'll go. It's not just going to give you a little better way of dealing with life, but it actually will show you the clue to the meaning of life. itself. Four steps. First step, you must stop denying the magnitude of your unhappiness. I already said that, but let me start it over. The first step to really understanding the meaning of life is to start by to stop denying just how unhappy you really are. Now, Richard Corey is a great example, a fictional example, obviously, of something that we hear about. We're coming constantly hearing about people that have hit the top, people that have everything that we want, see, that's how the poem goes. It says, he was rich, yes, richer than a king and admirably schooled

in every way. We thought he was everything to make us wish we were in his place, see? And you see, these folks that get plenty, they get a whole lot. They know something that we don't know. Cynthia Heimel, who writes tongue-in-cheek column in the village voice, about four years ago, she had a column in there that just amazed me. I clipped it out. I've never seen anybody put it better than she did. You read this, and you begin to start to break through the denial. What Cynthia Heimel says is she knew some people who had become very famous. She knew them when they were working at Macy's and working as bouncers at movie. theaters, and then they became big. She mentions some of the names. I won't mention them here.

She mentions these people. She says, I knew people who were fairly happy, and then they became celebrities. Then they hit the top. And she notes in her column that they have become cranky, they've become unstable, they've become erratic, they've become manic, they've become deeply troubled. And then she says, why, and here's her theory. That giant thing they were striving for. That fame thing that was going to make everything okay, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and ha-ha happiness had happened, and nothing had changed. They were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable. Now get this, she says, I guess when God wants to play a really rotten practical joke on you,

he grants your deepest wish and then giggles merrily as you want to kill yourself. Now here, Henrik Ipsen put it another way, the great Norwegian playwright. He said, when you take away the life's lie of somebody, they lose all their happiness. What's the life's lie?

As long as you have something you think will fill up the emptiness that we all sense. We all sense an emptiness. We all find ourselves getting unhappy. As long as you believe there's something out there

that will fulfill you. You live in a kind of denial of the magnitude of that emptiness. If you say, if only I was married, if only I was married to the right person, see, a lot of people, because you're married and you're not happy in your marriage, you sit and say, I'm very empty, but the reason I'm empty is because I have married the wrong person. You may be trying to get your career to really take off, and it's stalled, and you say, yeah, I'm unhappy, but the reason I'm unhappy is because my career has stalled. If only I got up here, then I'd be okay. Henry Gibson calls those the life's lies. Now, there's only one thing that takes them away, and very few people actually experience this. St. Paul in the New Testament in the book of

Philippians wrote, I have learned the secret of being content, no matter what the circumstances, whether in plenty or in want. Now, I think Paul was on to something. He realizes that it's plenty and want, but especially plenty, that destroys the delusion of how deeply unhappy you are. Because it's only, as Cynthia Himal says,

it's only when you get to the top. It's only when you hit the lottery. It's only when you get the thing that you think will fill you up, that you finally lose the delusion of how unhappy you are. Because if you've got a hole in your heart and you drive in 20 Mac trucks filled with fame,

with money, with all the things you want, there's very few people that have hit the top, very few Richard Corey's, very few people that have gotten up there. But when you get there and truckload after truckload after truckload, of all the things you thought would satisfy you, drive into your heart and they vanish. And that's still not enough.

it starts to hit you. What's wrong with me, you say? I must want something incredibly big. I must want something of unbelievable depth. You see, because most of us don't live in either plenty or want. Most of us have not had total disasters in our lives, but on the other hand, we haven't hit the lottery either. We live much longer in the delusion

that these things will make us happy, that our emptiness is finite, but it's only the people who have hit the top. It's only the Richard Corrie's that finally see that our emptiness is infinite in size, that the whole in our life will take all the mac trucks of gold, all the mac trucks of fame, all the mac trucks of fortune and beauty that you can possibly drive in there. That's what makes you want to go home and put a bullet in your head. The first step for you to deal with your unhappiness is to stop denying its magnitude. It's huge.

The worst thing, listen, I hope that nobody in this room has to find it out in the dramatic way that Cynthia Himmel's friends found it. Or in the dramatic way of Richard Corey, I hope that it dawns on you slowly. Frankly, it's not plenty which you can take. Want is better. You know, when you find out that the things that you've been really looking for for many years just don't seem to come through, and you start to ask yourself, was it worth it? Were they really, really able to satisfy me? Sometimes want is a better way to do it.

But I'll tell you something. One way or the other, you'll never make progress in life until you are willing to see and stop denying the size of your discontent. First step. Second step. That's the first step. The second step is you have to start facing the nature. or the character of your discontent.

Now, I've already hinted at it. See, the first step is to stop denying how unhappy you are. Stop denying it. All the amateur counselors say, oh, kind of, look on the bright side of things. You don't want to let people know how discontent you are, and you don't even want to let yourself know how discontent you are, and because you don't live in plenty or want, you keep the delusion up for a lot longer that basically I'm not that unhappy,

just that, just that, just that, and I would be all right. Oh, no. Please take it for me. Please don't be Richard Corey. Listen to the songs about Richard Corrie's. See, don't be celebrities. Look at what it's happening. I know people say, oh yeah, she committed suicide, though she had millions.

Ha, ha, ha. I guess riches can't buy happiness, but I'd rather be rich and unhappy than poor and unhappy. And you lose, you miss the point. You miss the point. You're trying to get out from under what that teaches you. Don't let it happen to you. Learn from what you see. So stop denying.

The second stage, start to face the character of your discontent. Now, here's what I mean. Start to face the nature of your discontent. What I mean by that, and I've already begun to sort of hint at it, the size of a whole within us is infinite. Remember, I said Wallace Stevens, who is a modern poet, says, even in contentment, I still feel the need of an imperishable bliss. Now, that's really wild, and that's profound.

What he's saying is, when I experience a perishable bliss, when I'm experiencing something that makes me happy, a dagger goes into my heart because I know that it will be over. How in the world, he says, can I enjoy this when I realize it's temporary? And I begin to realize that the perishable blisses are actually pointing to and arousing in me a desire for an imperishable bliss. that the things that aroused the desire can't actually fulfill the desire

because there's a desire under the desire the desire for the finite is actually a desire for the infinite. Now, you don't have to be religious to understand this and to admit it. There's a guy named Ernest Becker who died in the mid-70s. He was a sociologist and anthropologist

and his most famous book is called The Denial of Death. But in the last book he wrote, and it was published right after he died called Escape from Evil. He puts his thesis together this way, and I'll read you how he puts it in one line, but let me give you a summary of it. He came to understand that what makes a human being different than other organisms is that human beings want eternity out of time,

that they want the imperishable out of the perishable, and as a result, they're making a mess of their own lives, they're destroying each other. He says, for example, in the very beginning of this book, Escape from Evil, he comes out and says, what is it that makes a human being different than other human beings? And he says this, quote, we want to know that our lives count. But in order for anything to have meaning to a human being, the effects of our lives must remain alive in eternity in some way. Now, here's what he means. Now, I want you to realize this man is not, and a Christian, he's not a believer, he's not a theist.

He says, look at the human life. What we most want is we want to believe that we will last. Why are human beings afraid of death? Because we want to last. Human beings want meaning in life, but the fact that when we die, everything perishes, destroys our happiness. Because we can't actually believe

that life, as meaning, if we believe once we die, no matter how we live, everything is going to perish. Well, woven into our slogans, songs, and social media feeds are the stories that our culture tells us about life's biggest questions, like, what gives my life meaning? Can I have a happy and fulfilling life? And why is there so much suffering in the world? We don't really choose these stories, but our culture is telling them to us every day. So what are these stories our culture tells us about who we are? And do they actually deliver what they promise? Tim Kim Keller and his son Michael Keller explore this in a brand new book, The Stories We Live

By. Tim began this book before his death, compiling hundreds of pages of notes and collaborating with Michael before giving it to him to complete. In it, they explore some of our culture's most prominent narratives about topics like identity, freedom, happiness, and progress, unmasking how these narratives shape our lives. They examine why these stories resonate with us so deeply, and yet how these narratives ultimately aren't able to help us through the hardships and sufferings of life. The stories we live by offers a challenge to skeptics and to Christians alike to examine the underlying narratives that drive our lives

and an invitation to discover a story that's big enough to make sense of the beauty and the brokenness of the world. When you give to Gospel and Life during the month of September, we'll send you this new book, The Stories We Live By, as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give, because the gospel truly changes everything.

Ernest Becker believed that when you die, you rot, and when the sun dies, everything rots, which means there is no difference, ultimately between how you live, whether it's being compassionate or being violent. Ultimately, there's no difference. There's no such thing as a difference between right and wrong. Because ultimately how you live makes no difference because everybody's going to die and then the whole universe is going to die and nobody will be around to remember anything. Nothing lasts. Becker said, human beings cannot live with that. Human beings must act as if there's right and wrong, even though there's not. Human beings must act as if things we do have meaning, even though they don't.

Human beings live in denial of their mortality and they live in denial of the real, absolute nature of the universe. And so he says, the reason we're so miserable, get this, he says, the main argument of my book is how our impossible hopes and desires heap up evil in the world. Ernest Becker, not a believer, not a theist, knows the nature of our discontent. We want to live on. We need to live on. We need to transcend death. We need to be in touch with the eternity.

As soon as you try to tell people, when you die you rot, you better start living as the universe really is. People will not be able to do it. That's the nature of our discontent. Now, other people have talked about it besides Becker. C.S. Lewis puts it this way. He talks about the desire and the desire. See, Becker says the same thing.

Under your desire for music, under your desire for music, under your desire for sex, under your desire for food even, under your desire for everything, is a deeper desire, a desire for eternity. And Lewis puts it this way. Sometimes, as you hear music or you relish a landscape, you feel what Keats called the journey homeward toward habitual self. You know what I mean. For a few minutes, you have the illusion of actually belonging to it, getting into the music, putting on the beauty of the mountains or the sea. And then we wake to find we are mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but it has

welcomed us in. It has not welcomed us in. Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside is no mere neurotic

fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. We longed to be acknowledged by reality. We longed to meet with some response in the infinite to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and the reality, that is our inconsolable secret. See what he's saying? He says, if you know your own heart, why does music send you to the skies? It's getting you in touch with something behind the music. Why does the sea, why does the ocean just

fill you with a kind of longing and peace? Because it's getting you in touch with something behind the beauty. It puts it this way. When you stand before a landscape, which seems to embody what you've been looking for all your life. In your hobbies, it's the secret attraction, often on the verge of breaking through, through the scent of cut wood in the workshop, or the clap, clap of water against the boatside. If you've never had it, we've never had it. But if it would ever become manifest, you would say, here at last is the thing I was made for. It's the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work while we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

What is Lewis talking about? What is Becker talking about? Lewis is saying, when you first fall in love, you say, this is it. This is it. It's going to fill me up, and it doesn't. When you first break into your chosen field, when you first buy your summer house, when you first, you say, finally, I'm realizing my dreams, and it's not it. The finite things have aroused a desire that they can't.

then fulfill. Understand the nature of your discontent. The non-Christian Ernest Becker, the Christian C.S. Lewis, Pascal said it, Plato said it, Gertes said it. They talked about diatoma and seen Zeus blissful long. They're all talking about the same thing. You have an eternity-shaped hole in you. And very few people have yet to see it. Admit the nature of it. admit the fact that there's a door out there that we feel that we're on the outside of. We need to get into the beauty. We need to get into God. That's the second step. First step, stop denying the magnitude of your discontent. The second step, start facing the nature or character of your discontent. Third step, start questioning the origin of your

discontent. See, the problem with Ernest Becker, he admits they'd human beings want something out of life that's greater than life. Want something out of the world that's greater than the world. Want something out of the finite world that's greater than the finite world. But Becker never asks the question. He never questions the origin of that desire. Becker never says, why would human beings have such a powerful desire so totally out of kilter with the universe?

Where did it come from? Where did it come from? You see, if you don't answer that question, you will know, know how to deal with your discontent. So see, there's only four ways to deal with your discontent. Four ways. And most people, unless they question the origin of their desire, only have three options. And any one of those three options are inadequate. Only the fourth one's adequate. And it only happens when you start to ask yourself, wait a minute. Why do I feel like this? Let me show you those four options, but very quickly. When you begin to realize that the things that you have

are not filling up that hole. There's only four things you can do. Number one, you can blame the things. You can blame the spouse. You can blame the career. You can blame the boss. You can blame your figure. You can blame your looks.

And the first thing you can do is you can blame them. Now, that's the shallow response. That's the response to the people who haven't even gotten out of denial. They haven't even done the first step. And this is a typical New Yorker. And that's the reason why you're so afraid to commit. That's the reason why you're sitting loose

to any relationship, to any institution, to any friendship, because the minute you find out that this is not the one, out you go. So what you do is you discard your friendships and you discard your spouses and you discard your institutions and you go to the plastic surge and you do all these things because you say, if only, you blame the things, but it's a dead end. I think we've seen that. Number two, you can blame yourself. Now, you know, in New York, this is very typical. You can say, I'm not happy because I haven't achieved. And the reason it's easy in New York is because everybody around you is sending out little press releases. They're looking.

Did you see the editorial page in New York Times this morning? Down at the bottom of the editorial page, it says that fashion is the real New York religion. In other words, it's the goal of the New Yorker to look tremendously great and not to look like you're trying to look tremendously great. But because so many people do look tremendously great, when you see them, they're sending little bulletins out saying, I am together. They're not letting you know how empty their lives are. They're not letting you know how disappointing their lives are.

And so it's very natural that what you could do, if you feel a discontent, is you can look around at everybody and say, they've found the secret, and I haven't. And so you start to beat yourself up. You start to knock yourself. You start to say, there's something wrong with me. I haven't been able to achieve my goals, and off you go. The counseling, and the counseling might help. But actually, Ernest Becker himself points out something about that.

He says, you better learn the limits of counseling. He says, all the psychoanalysis in the world, and he was into this, by the way, all the psychoanalysis in the world does not allow a person to find out who he is, why he's on earth, why he has to die, and how he can make his life a triumph. Psychology can't tell you this. Science can't tell you this. And it's when psychology pretends to do this. When it seeks to offer a full explanation of human unhappiness, it is a fraud.

And it creates an impasse from which you cannot escape. You know what he's saying. Science can describe how you are. It can't tell you the meaning of life. These are religious things. It can't tell you who you are, what you were built for, what your purpose in life should be. As soon as it does that under the guise of psychology, it's doing religion. We are secular people, and we don't want to think that our unhappiness

is due to a lack of religion, Ernst Becker says it is. For you to blame yourself, say, I must be inadequate, and think you're going to deal with your discontent strictly through counseling. He says it's an impasse. The third thing you can do, you can blame the things and just keep discarding them. You can blame yourself and just feel inadequate. You can blame the universe. And what you can say is, this usually happens when you're about 42.

You can say, you know what, I've been going along, and I've been finding a whole lot of things that haven't satisfied me, and now I realize I've been stupid. The world isn't going to satisfy me. These things aren't going to satisfy me. Now, this is more advanced, I must say. But here's what you do. Because you found that when you gave yourself to things that you thought would satisfy you and they aroused desires that they couldn't fulfill, you decided to stop trusting. anything. You hated what you smelled, so you cut your nose off. You hated having your heart broken, so you turned it into concrete. You said, these things aren't going to make me happy,

so nothing will make me happy, and you're destroying your own humanity. You're not going to trust a religious preacher type getting up and telling you that you can find the secret to happiness. You have been running after that for years, and you've given up totally, you've given up totally, and you're hurting your own humanity. You're taking your heart, You don't want to be broken again, so you make it impenetrable, unbreakable, irredeemable. That's not the way. The fourth way is this. Question.

Where did these feelings come from? This desire for eternity. Inate desires all have a real satisfaction. When you're hungry, there's such a thing as food. You have love, and there's such a thing as friendship. There's no such thing as an innate natural desire that does not have a satisfaction somewhere. Now, somebody says, wait a minute, wait a minute. Just because I want to have the power to fly doesn't mean the power to fly exists.

That's not an innate desire. I'll tell you what an innate desire is. An innate desire is a desire that when you don't fulfill it, there is a deep and dire condition of deprivation that you can't escape. if you don't hug babies they die babies need love there's such a thing as love if you don't feed people they die people get hungry there's such a thing as hunger and when as Ernst becker says people die without god and they die without eternity what does that mean what does that tell you about the universe. As Lewis puts it, creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exist. A baby feels hunger? There's such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim. There's such a thing

as water. You feel sexual desire? There's such a thing as sex. And if I find in myself desires that no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is I was made for another world. probably earthly pleasures were not designed to fulfill it but to arouse it. Question the origin of your discontent, and it'll lead you to the fact of God. Now, what's the fourth thing? I'm jumping, of course, but this is, tonight I can't make all the arguments, but I'll just jump. Stop denying the magnitude of your discontent. Number one, start facing the character of your discontent. Number two. Question the origin of your discontent, number three, and come to Jesus for the healing

of your discontent. And you know why? You know that great sketch we had over there written by T.S. Eliot? He was, by the way, a poet he doesn't go to Redeemer. He was, he's dead now. And probably a little too famous for Redeemer, I would think. But, you know, he got at the idea that one of the reasons why we're discontent, one of the reasons why C.S. Lewis says that we feel cut off from this thing is because of a sense of sin. See, Paul said,

I have found the secret of being content in plenty and in want, no matter what, but the secret was Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ, Christians say, get rid of that guilt. Jesus Christ, you don't come to God in general for healing, says Paul.

you come to God through Jesus Christ in particular. Because that sense that we're cut off because we're guilty is not a neurotic fantasy, says Lewis, but the true index of our true condition. And so he finishes, by the way, that out. And he says, I have learned a secret of being content, whatever the circumstances.

Lewis comes back and he says, we long to be acknowledged to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us in reality, That's our inconsolable secret. For glory means acceptance by God, response, acknowledgement, welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we've been knocking all our lives can't open at last. We can be called in. We can be welcomed.

We can be received. Jesus says, I'm the door. Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. Admit the size. Understand the character. question the origin, and open the door. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you are encouraged by today's teaching,

you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller anytime, visit gospelandlife.com. Today's talk was recorded in 1994. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.