The Reason for God

I'm currently reading this fascinating book by Tim Keller that I borrowed from my dad. Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. He is a renowned pastor in the PCA denomination and in Reformed Theological circles. I heard him speak about ten years ago when he was a guest preacher at our church. I've always remembered the sermon he gave which was on the parable of the two sons ( or the Prodigal son parable). Incidentally, Keller has also written a book entitled "The Prodigal God" which is based on this parable. I intend to read that book sometime soon. I've never forgotten that sermon in which he said that the main point of the parable was not about the prodigal son (as is most commonly thought), but about the older brother and how he represented the Pharisees and their hypocritical attitudes. Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more thoughts about this when I read that book. I also intend to go hear Keller preach again the next time I am in New York.

In "The Reason for God", Keller intelligently responds to many of the doubts that many people have about the Christian faith. One of the arguments he responds to is the idea that "all major religions are equally valid and basically teach the same thing". He says this is ironic because

"...the insistence that doctrines do not matter is really a doctrine itself. It holds a specific view of God, which is touted as superior and more enlightened than the beliefs of most major religions. So the proponents of this view do the very thing they forbid in others."

Ha! I love that.

He also speaks to the argument that religion would become less and less important as the world became more advanced. He argues against this by quoting statistics about how all the major religions are exploding in growth. So, essentially the opposite of this argument is true. What struck me in these statistics was again the numbers of Christians in other parts of the developing world and how they are far outnumbering the Christians in the United States and the western world. For instance, he says that there are more Presbyterians (not Christians in general) in Ghana than in the United States and Scotland combined. Also, there are six times more Anglicans in Nigeria than in the U.S. I have always had the mentality that the majority of Christians in the world were in our country. This is most definitely not the case.