My Complicated Feelings about Tim Keller

It was his focus on the eternal issues of life — of issues of meaning — that really hooked me. Nowhere else was anybody I knew talking about these things in the way that Tim was. He illustrated his points through philosophy, art, pop culture and yes, the Bible. But it was a Bible I had never been introduced to, despite attending church and Sunday school every weekend of my childhood. He brought it alive and showed how it was actually relevant to my life.

So why are my feelings complicated?

Ultimately, evangelicalism ended up being quite harmful to me and to many people I care about, and I can’t imagine I would ever have signed up for it but for Tim’s expert apologetics.

When I say I signed up for Tim Keller’s brand of evangelicalism, I mean I signed up for what I heard from the pulpit, which never included teaching about homosexuality or abortion being a sin or men being the head of the family. But as I became more involved in the church, I learned that these were in fact core teachings. It was more through peer pressure than any sermons that I started to conform to teachings that left me feeling unsettled and confused.