IDENTITY

'Have you ever thought about the fact that you do not notice your body until there is something wrong with it? When we are walking around, we are not usually thinking how fantastic our toes are feeling. Or how brilliantly our elbows are working today. We would only think like that if there had previously been something wrong with them. That is because the parts of our body only draw attention to themselves if there is something wrong with them. 

The ego often hurts. That [is] because it has something incredibly wrong with it. It is always drawing attention to itself to itself - it does so every single day. It is always making us think about how we look and how we are treated. People sometimes say their feelings are hurt. But our feelings  can't be hurt! It is the ego that hurts - my sense of self, my identity. Our feelings are fine! It is my ego that hurts. 

Walking around does not hurt my toes unless there is already something wrong with them. My ego would not hurt unless there was something terribly wrong with it. Think about it. It is very hard to get through a whole day without feeling snubbed or ignored or feeling stupid or getting down on ourselves. That is because there is something wrong with my ego. There is something wrong with my identity. There is something wrong with my sense of myself. It is never happy. It is always drawing attention to itself.'

Timothy Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness: The Path to True Christian Joy, p.16.

SINGLENESS

'The Christian perspective on singleness is almost unique. Unlike traditional societies, Christianity sees singleness as good beacuse the kingdom of God provides the most lasting possible legacy and heirs. Unlike sex-and-romance-saturated Western society, Christians see singleness as good because our union with Christ can fulfill our deepest longings.'

Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.201.

SINGLENESS

'...single people cannot live their lives as singles without a balanced, informed view of marriage. If they do not have that, they will either over-desire or under-desire marriage, and either of those ways of thinking will distort their lives.'

Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.192.

GRACE

'Without an experience of God's grace, people who feel they have succeeded in life feel confident but are not humble before others who are wrongdoers. People who feel they have largely failed in life are humble but not confident and joyful.'

Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.166.

MARRIAGE

'Marriage does not so much bring you into confrontation with your spouse as confront you with yourself. Marriage shows you a realistic, unflattering picture of who you are and then takes you by the scruff of the neck and forces you to pay attention to it.'

Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.140.

FRIENDSHIP

'Friendship is a deep oneness that develops as two people, speaking the truth in love to each other, journey together to the same horizon. Spiritual friendship is the greatest journey of all, because the horizon is so high and far, yet sure - it is nothing less than "the day of Jesus Christ" and what we will be like when we finally see him face-to-face.'

Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.116.

FRIENDSHIP

'...the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breadth of kindness blow the rest away.'

Dinah Craik in Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.112.

FRIENDSHIP

'There are two features of real friendship - constancy and transparency. Real friends always let you in, and they never let you down.'

Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.112.

LOVE

'Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbour, act as if you did. As soon as you do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.'

CS Lewis in Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.100.

LOVE

'When over the years someone has seen you at your worst, and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly, it is a consummate experience. To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.'

Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.95.

MARRIAGE

'Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is more infinitely interesting than any romance, however passionate.'

WH Auden in Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.90.

THE HOLY SPIRIT

'The Holy Spirit's ministry is to take truths about Jesus and make them clear to our minds and real to our hearts - so real that they console and empower and change us at our very center.'

Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.51.

MARRIAGE

'Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become "whole" and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that it we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.

We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem is...learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.' 

Stanley Haurwas in Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.37.

LOVE

'Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.'

CS Lewis in Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.36.

MARRIAGE

'Both men and women today want a marriage in which they can receive emotional and sexual satisfaction from someone who will simply let them "be themselves." They want a spouse who is fun, intellectually stimulating, sexually atrractive, with many common interests, and who, on top of it all, is supportive of their personal goals and of the way they are living now.

And if your desire is for a spouse who will not demand a lot of change from you, then you are also looking for a spouse who is almost completely pulled together, some very "low maintenance" without much in the way of personal problems. You are looking for someone who will not require or demand significant change. You are searching, therefore, for an ideal person - happy, healthy, interesting, content with life. Never before in history has there been a society filled with people so idealistic in what they are seeking in a spouse.'
Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God, p.32.

JESUS

'Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfil you completely, and if you fail him, will forgive you eternally.'

Timothy Keller in Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Everyday Church, p.137.

DEATH

'The Bible doesn't say, "Don't fear death because it's natural." The Bible says, "Don't fear death because it's been defeated."'

Timothy Keller, 'Rubbing Hope into the Reality of Death' in Nancy Guthrie (Ed.), O Love That Will Not Let Me Go, p.92.

HEAVEN

'Our future is not that we will live in an ethereal, immaterial world. You're not going to float around in the kingdom of God. You're going to eat; you're going to love. You're going to sing because you'll have vocal chords! In realms and degrees of joy, satisfaction, and power that you cannot now imagine, you're going to eat and drink with Son of Man. On that day we are going to see each other and say, "I always knew you could be like this. I saw glimpses of it, flashes of it, and now, look at you!" You're going to to get the life you always wanted.'

Timothy Keller, 'Rubbing Hope into the Reality of Death' in Nancy Guthrie (Ed.), O Love That Will Not Let Me Go, p.91.

LOVE

'Nobody who knows you completely can love you completely. There are people who think you're great because they don't really know you. There is nobody on the face of earth who could know you to the bottom and love you to the skies. But we want that.

When someone likes you but doesn't know you, it's not that satisfying. And when someone knows you and doesn't like you, that certainly isn't satisfying. What we want is to be utterly known and utterly loved.

And on that day, at the coming of the Lord, we'll finally get what we've longed for - from him and one another. We'll be utterly known and utterly loved. Yes, the future is a world of love, the kind of love you want, a personal love.' 

Timothy Keller, 'Rubbing Hope into the Reality of Death' in Nancy Guthrie (Ed.), O Love That Will Not Let Me Go, p.89.

THE GOSPEL & HAPPY ENDINGS

'If we disbelieve the gospel, we may weep for joy at the happy ending of some other inspiring story, but the enchantment will quickly fade, because our minds will tell us "life is not really like that." But if we believe the gospel, then our hearts slowly heal as we face the darkest times because we know that, because of Jesus, life is like that.' Timothy Keller, King's Cross, p.229.