Sunday's Cool: So You Didn't Agree With Tim Keller On Everything

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I spoke with Tim Keller a few times when I worked at Relevant. Last we spoke was about a year after he received the cancer diagnosis that eventually took his life. As I shared elsewhere, I found him to be very kind. I was sad to hear he’d passed away.

I also disagreed with him on a lot of issues, which feels like a caveat one has to add to almost any acknowledgment of someone’s death. “We didn’t see eye to eye on everything, but …”. “She wasn’t perfect, nevertheless…”. That sort of thing. 

This is part of the anxiety about mourning in front of a global, digital audience. You want to express your feelings, but you want to make sure people know where you stand on important issues too. In Keller’s case, this can be a little complicated, because you may also be someone who was directly impacted (positively and/or negatively) by his teaching. It all raises the question of what it means to mourn with those who mourn, especially since so many people are mourning so many different things.  

By the time Keller passed away, he was the main boss battle for a few different ideological cohorts. After spending most of his life as a champion of evangelicalism, he explicitly broke with the term as it became annexed by the Republican Party. A lot of the (formerly) Young Restless Reformed guys who grew up on Keller’s books had come to see him as an outdated pushover who compromised with culture too much for the sake of “winsomeness.” Meanwhile, a lot of progressive Christians took issue with his complementarianism and his opposition to same-sex relationships.

I’m going to focus on the latter group, because it’s where I’m at. Anti-LGBTQ theology and complementarianism have done a lot of harm. Obviously, Keller was not exactly the frontline of fundamentalism on these issues, and I know his more open-minded, temperate energy was the first step for a lot of people’s journeys away from hardline conservative positions. As Katelyn put it over at the Beaty Beat, he “combined the intellectual engagement of C.S. Lewis with the evangelistic zeal of Billy Graham. He was a quintessential evangelical — theologically conservative but socially engaged, clear in his convictions but gentle in his tone, and pragmatic in embracing media tools to reach people with the gospel.” I appreciate a lot of his erudite teaching, and celebrate his unquenchable curiosity and, of course, his generous heart. 

But he wasn’t exactly inclusive. 

So, I disagreed with Keller on that stuff, and I highlight these specific disagreements because they’re more than just disagreements. These beliefs have negatively affected the lives and wellbeing of actual human people I love and care about. And I’m being sincere when I say that I would be distressed if anything I say here communicated anything but unwavering support for those people. And I should say that I understand if some people feel the need to express the ways they’ve been hurt or dismissed by theological ideas taught by Keller, and those feelings are very valid.

But I do think it’s not only possible but important to be able to express unequivocal condolences and admiration for the recently deceased, even when that person had some profound issues that caused harm. 

First of all, I think doing so is a progressive ideal! The notion that every single person is more than whatever they got wrong is a pretty important brick in the foundation. The occasion of someone’s death is probably the best possible time to honor them as a person, first and foremost. 

Second, I think that this is a Christian ideal. God says that our love for each other is how people will know we are disciples, and I think that love requires an attitude of grace. And even if I think Keller had some doctrinal positions that impeded Christian love towards some groups, that doesn’t absolve me of my own responsibility to love. Part of my way of showing such love is mourning with those who mourn, which includes Keller’s family and loved ones who won’t exactly be helped by using the occasion of his passing to rehash the things I think he was wrong about.

But another part of my responsibility to love is to stand in solidarity with those who’ve been negatively impacted by some of those ideas. This is very important. I’d argue that it’s far too important to relegate to a parenthetical qualifier on a post about someone who just died. And I hope that we can all live lives so obviously devoted to justice for the marginalized that our bonafides can’t be seriously called into question for posting an expression of sympathy for the passing of a public figure. Admittedly, many of us have a long way to go on this.

And if the question is “how is it possible to support LGBTQ people and people who held theology that oppresses them at the same time?” then my answer is that we’re human beings! We’re capable of all sorts of things! We live in the liminal space of tension and contradiction and despair and hope and love and violence every single day. This is the human experience, and the attempt to flatten it to a simple narrative is as doomed as the attempt to flatten people to a simple caricature. You can weep with those who weep without sacrificing moral clarity. It may be the only way to really do so. Micah 6:8 calls us to do justice and love mercy, and we would do well to recognize that these commands often exist in direct contradiction. Doing both at the same time is no mean feat. Fortunately, all things are possible through Him who loved us. 

But I hope we can also be understanding and gracious with those who have complicated or hurt feelings about some of the things that Keller taught during his life. Women who feel a call to ministry or gay kids who don’t know how to come out to their conservative parents may be less inclined to praise Keller’s legacy. Those feelings are legitimate. I don’t think these people need to be shamed for feeling that way, anymore than I think anyone needs to be shamed for expressing unequivocal sympathy. 

The only people who should feel ashamed is anyone trying to oversimplify the human condition, and a world in which two things are very true: we are all going to die and we all hold ideas that history will eventually (rightly or wrongly) judge as bad. We can ignore both of those things, but the closer we can hold onto them, the better we can adjust our attitudes towards the problems of others, and the readier we’ll be to confront death when the time comes. 

And if anyone was ready to confront death, it was Tim Keller. When we talked, he told me that he believed in the literal, bodily resurrection because “the thing that makes life meaningful to human beings is love,” and if death really is the end of life, then it is also the end of love. That was a thought he couldn’t bear. 

“If I know there’s love on the other side of death, I can face it,” he said. “If I know there’s infinitely greater love, then I can really face it.”

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• I really appreciated this remembrance from Robin Wootton, a gifted writer who also had some serious disagreements with Keller. Those disagreements led to some correspondence with him and then what sounds like a lovely penpal friendship that lasted up to his death. 

• In non-Keller news, this Washington Post piece on one pregnant mother’s experience with Florida’s new abortion law was so horrible I couldn’t make it through without crying.

• Dave Weigal’s interview with Nebraska State Senator Megan Hunt — the woman who spent the better part of the last few months filibustering for her trans son — is a fascinating look at the rarest kind of politician: someone who just doesn’t seem interested in playing any games or using the party script. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an elected official answer questions with so little regard for how it’ll go over with the establishment.