Status Updates From Encounters with Jesus: Unex...

Ch2’s Q: What is wrong with the world the way it is?
Keller’s answer (summarized): We’re all looking for answers, for fulfillment, for things to build our lives on. However, we all struggle with looking for these answers in places that give us none and end up making us feel worse about ourselves and the world around us.

“Jesus is the only savior who will satisfy you, and if you fail him will forgive you.”

Seeing what he did and why he did it will turn our hearts away from the things that enslave us and toward him in worship. That is the gospel, and it is the same for skeptics, believers, insiders, outcasts, and everyone in between.

It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied. It is because he died that we can be born again. And he did it gladly.

She found the living water because Jesus Christ said, “I thirst.”

If you build your life on your career, or your spouse, or your money, or your morality, and it fails, there is no hope for you. Do you know why? Because every other savior but Jesus Christ is not really a savior.
If your career fails, it won't forgive you. It can only punish you with self-loathing and shame. Jesus is the only savior who if you gain him will satisfy you, and if you fail him will forgive you.

And if there is a God, you owe him literally everything. If there is a God, you owe him far more than a morally decent life. He deserves to be at the center of your life.

Sin is looking to something else besides God for your salvation.

You don't earn or contribute anything to being born. It is a free gift of life. And so it is with the new birth. Salvation is by grace-there are no moral efforts that can carn or merit it. You must be born again.

“Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god... to worship... is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.” -David Foster Wallace

I think…most of us aren't able to recognize our soul thirst for what it is. As long as you think there is a pretty good chance that you will achieve some of your dreams, as long as you think you have a shot at success, you experience your inner emptiness as "drive" and your anxiety as "hope." And so you can remain almost completely oblivious to how deep your thirst actually is.

But the metaphor of the living water means even more than that. Jesus is not just telling us that what he has to offer is lifesaving-he's also revealing that it satisfies from the inside.
He says, "My water, if you get it, will become in you a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

He begins by saying, "If you knew who I was, you would ask me for living water; and if you drink that water you will never thirst again.”
…
So what is Jesus saying to this outcast? He's saying this:
"I've got something for you that is as basic and necessary to you spiritually as water is to you physically. Something without which you are absolutely lost."

But the author is leading us to ask: As different as the Insider [in John 3] and the Outcast [in John 4] are, what do they have in common? Because if these two people have something in common, then we all have something in common.

Ch 1 Q:
Where should we look for answers to the big questions of life? Where shouldn’t we look for answers?
Keller’s Answer (summarized):
Jesus will be “infinitely more” as our answer. He was the ‘Logos’/order of nature/meaning of life in the beginning and is to this day. We should not look to philosophical reasoning or tether-less morality, but seek out the “why” behind the “what.”

Though most spiritual seekers start their search afraid of disappointment, Jesus says that he will always be infinitely more than anyone is looking for. He will always exceed our expectations; he will be more than we can ask or imagine.

…if you’re a skeptical about Christianity, I would like you to realize you have a balance to strike. First, to remain skeptical forever is intellectually and morally self-defeating. On the other hand, surrendering to the first idea that you hope will solve your deep emotional needs will not answer any questions for you in the end…Christianity is not a consumer good. You should turn to it only if it is true.

How can you say that someone is a good person or a bad person unless you know what they are designed for, what their purpose is?

[Alasdairr MacIntyre] argues that you can never determine whether something is good or bad unless you know its telos…If I try to hammer a nail with my watch, and it breaks, should I complain that it is a “bad watch”? Of course not, it wasn’t made to hammer nails…The same principle should apply to humanity.

Auden realized that unless there was a God, he had no right to tell anybody else that his feelings or ideas were more valid than their feelings or ideas.

“The English intellectuals who now cry to Heaven against the evil incarnated in Hitler have no Heaven to cry to…since life is a changing process the attempt to find human space for keeping a promise leads to the inevitable conclusion that I can break it whenever I feel it convenient. Either we serve the Unconditional or some Hitlerian monster will supply an iron convention to do evil by.” —W.H. Auden

…if you concede the source of many of your convictions, why embrace one part of the Christian teaching without accepting the other part that explains it and makes it coherent?

The very genius of Christianity is that it’s not about “Here’s what you have to do to find God.” Christianity is about God coming to earth in the form of Jesus Christ, dying on the cross, to find you…All the other revolutionary ideas about caring for the weak and needy, living for love and service instead of power and success, loving even your enemies sacrificially—all flow from the gospel itself…