good evening and welcome to uncover I’m Hannah and I’m your host this evening um uncover is a week of talks put on by the Christian union which aim to explore some of the themes um of Christianity in lunchtimes at 1 pm we have Oz Guinness discussing some of life’s biggest questions and here in the evening we have Tim Keller speaking to us um on the life that Jesus offer uh today he’s going to speak on covering identity Tim uh leads a church in Manhattan in New York and he’s also written uh many books uh some of which have been bestsellers so we’re going to invite him up him up n and have a chat with him [Applause] um I use the mic here so Tim why are you I’m here good summary um yeah so we were chatting before and um I was mentioning how many students in Oxford live their lives in a uh Perpetual state of essay crisis they stay up all night the day before an essay is due and you’ve written loads of books you’re a you’re You Preach often so do you have any tips for how to stay out stay on top of things for us actually a a sermon I’m a little loud but I sound like the Phantom of the Opera here uh um a sermon is roughly analogous to a 20page essay so u in my job you have to produce one or two of those a week anyway for the rest of your life and so uh however the one bit of encouragement Hannah I give is is uh one of the reasons why you’re staying up all night is because it’s very hard to learn how to uh digest really digest without faking that you have read the book actually digest the essence of book that never distill it down uh process it summarize it reflect on it uh and produce an essay on on a particular topic several books uh mo more fewer and fewer people for various technological reasons actually know how to read more than just btes if you let what Oxford is making you do right now which may seem like Agony actually teach you to do it it’s a little bit like when you first get started in running at the very beginning you run two miles three miles and the very first time you extend yourself you just about feel like you’re going to die the next day and eventually you learn how to do it if you learn how to read and read well and and uh and read books and digest them quickly uh you will you will rule the world because fewer and fewer people are going to be able to do that right now Oxford and a number of other places like that are still forcing you to do that so let them force you to do it embrace it it’s not it’s uh it’s actually an extraordinarily good thing oh thank you very much we know Tim that is very well prepared for this so take away I hope so we’re going to talk about uh one of the five things we’ said this week we are going to be looking at one each night and there are five things that we’ve been talking about are things that human beings need they can’t live without meaning satisfaction Freedom identity and hope we said we cannot live without them and I’m arguing every night that Christianity is uh not only does it give you a tremendous explanation for why each of those five things is a need but arguably gives you supplies the need doesn’t just explain the need but supplies the need and gives you resources to meet that need arguably and I’m arguing uh in unparalleled ways uh and along the way people are asking and you may have are thinking well but how do you know Christianity is true the answer is there are ways of determining that Christianity is true what I’m trying to show you tonight and the other nights is that uh I want to show you that if you believed it was true look at this incredible resource you have for living life so that you are motivated to do the exploration you need to do I am not in a a comprehensive way saying here’s the entire case for Christianity but I want you to be in a position where you’re motiv ated because you say if it really is true that Christianity offers that sort of thing that if I believed it was true I would have that if that’s really available I at least I ought to at least it’s only sensible for me to explore whether it is true it would be foolish for me not to at least look at it the outcome I’m looking for from from you is not so much that you walk away being convinced as much as I I I’m trying to motivate you to walk away saying I need to explore this and we’ll talk about as we have every night we would like you to do other things come to discussion groups that’s the most important thing you could get from here just for not that necessarily this convinces me Christianity is true but this convinces me I would be a fool not to at least see whether it is or not identity identity I’ll show you in a second is a little different than the other five things uh what is identity identity has consists of at least two things it consists of a sense of self that’s durable uh your understanding of who you are and what you’re about can’t change every day can’t change in every situation there needs to be a core you there needs to be something you say uh an understanding of who you are and what makes you you something that’s durable a core that is true from day to day week to week year to year and from situation to situation but besides a sense of self identity also includes a sense of worth a sense of value a sense that uh you feel like you’re a significant and valuable person and unless you have that sense of self and that sense of worth you don’t have what’s really called an identity what’s a bit different about this one uh this need as opposed to the others identity formation is a process that every culture pushes on its members and it pushes it on its members so strongly that most of the members in the culture don’t even realize there is a process or that there’s some other process that’s available it’s just always self-evident this is how you get an identity this is how you get a sense of selfworth this is how you know you’re a good or a valuable person this is how you know you’re a significant person the culture pushes it on you so much that you really it’s invisible to you I’m going to try to make the process a little bit more visible tonight and then show you how Christianity is a way for you to break out of your cultural cultural categories because Christianity gives you an identity process that I will argue uh is more profoundly grounded it gives you an identity more profoundly grounded more joyful uh more coherent than any other process can give you um I’m going to as usual read a passage of the scripture and as usual I’m going to say I’m not going to be able to unpack this entire passage but rather I will read it to you and I will select several themes that bear on our topic this is John chapter 10 I’m going to read the very beginning of the chapter veres 1:3 and then a section in the middle of the chapter veres 11 to1 15 very truly I tell you Pharisees anyone who does not enter the Sheep pen by the gate but climbs in by some other way is a thief and a robber the one who enters by the gate is The Shepherd of the sheep the gatekeeper opens the gate for him the Sheep listen to his voice he calls his own Sheep by name and leads them out I am the Good Shepherd the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the Sheep The Hired Hand is not the shepherd and does not own the Sheep so when he sees the wolf coming he abandons the sheep and runs away then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it the man runs away because he’s a Hired Hand and cares nothing for the Sheep I am the Good Shepherd I know my sheep my sheep know me just as the father knows me and I know the father and I lay down my life for the Sheep okay here’s three things we learned from the passage that bears on our topic of identity and will reveal the unique kind of Christian identity that’s available to you through faith in Jesus Christ number one we’re sheep number two we’re named number three we’re redeemed first we’re sheep uh now one of the main biblical metaphors for human beings is sheep God’s a Shepherd the Lord is my shepherd and and we are sheep now if you hear the Lord is my shepherd does that make you feel warm and toasty inside I’m here to tell you that the the biblical metaphor that human beings are sheep is is a massive insult and it’s supposed to be so next time don’t feel toasty uh get mad or or get convicted because what it’s telling you is this sheep are and now why an American is telling British people this we you must know more about sheep than I do because there seems to be proportionately a whole lot more here but sheep are the most non- self-sufficient animal possible they are the most non self-sufficient uh they don’t seem evidently they can’t go find their own food they uh very often even when the food’s in front of them they sometimes eat the bad thing instead of the good thing if they’re far away from home they can’t find their way home they’re utterly helpless they are the most non self-sufficient animal possible and here we’re told that they need a shepherd and the shepherd names them now even though we’re going to get back to the idea of naming in a second stop right there and realize that modern Western culture absolutely rejects with horror this particular image because what we’re being told here is that we are non- self-sufficient and we need to be named name somebody from outside somebody outside of us has to assign us an identity somebody has to give us an identity because we’re not self-sufficient we’re not able to go create our own Identity or find our own identity somebody’s got to do that somebody’s got to name us and this is what modern Western culture absolutely rejects it rejects it um absolutely uh categorically ancient cultures and and as many of you know because you’re from there non-western cultures today they do assign you an identity ancient cultures identity formation works like this you are in a family you are in a people group and the family and the people group assign you a role and a set of responsibilities and duties that go with that role and your identity is wrapped up your sense of self-worth and significance and sense of self is wrapped up in that in doing those duties in fulfilling those roles and discharging those responsib ility so if you ask a person in ancient times if you ask a person today from Western a non-western culture who are you they will really say I’m a son or I’m a daughter I’m a father or I’m a mother I’ve got a role in the family I’ve got a role in the PE my people and my selfworth uh comes when the family bestows Honor on me because I am sublimating my individual interests for the good of the whole that’s how I know who I am that’s how I know I’m a good person and um by the way I mean in some nonwestern cultures some of you know for example that when uh when Koreans write their name they give their family name first and uh their personal name second and that’s actually a very good expression of uh identity formation in non-western cultures and a and and ancient cultures and what that identity formation is is you are your duties you are your role it is assigned to you modern Western culture is utterly different totally different in fact it’s the reverse probably nobody’s expressed this better than uh the great sociologist now late great sociologist American sociologist Robert Bella he and a team of people some years ago wrote a book called the habits of the heart and it was the first uh book to really uh even though it was on us culture he basically was identifying that after World War II the individualism of Western culture just began to accentuate and intensify and Robert Bella gave the name uh a name to it he called it expressive individualism and the way he understood how we do identity formation in the in the west is this he put it like this he said we do not discover who we are uh by supplementing our individual needs to the community or the family rather quote each person has a unique core feeling and intuition that must unfold and be expressed if individual identity is to be realized that’s what we believe that’s what the culture tells you that is no one can name you you must name yourself no one can assign you an identity you have to look inside look at your deepest desires find out who you really are and then Express that you you need to discover your authentic self and be that you mustn’t let your Society you mustn’t let uh your family uh in any way impose that on you that would be horrible in other words the Western uh process of identity formation is absolutely the opposite remember some years ago I saw you know the British actor Patrick Stewart and for many years he uh played uh uh Jean Luke Bard in uh Star Trek the Next Generation I no all my problems with cultural references I have no idea how familiar you are with it but you don’t need to be familiar with it there’s one place where uh just T this is so typical not brilliant just typical where he’s uh t talking about to some young man who wants to go into Starfleet Academy and maybe get into Starfleet and become a a captain and and so on and he looks at him and he says if you’re going to do this you need to don’t do this for your mother don’t do it because your mother wants you to do it don’t do it for me don’t you do it because you want to please me do it for yourself don’t get your identity from what people say about you get your identity because of what you say about you you need to affirm yourself you need to decide this is what I want to be and it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks that’s the heart of modern Western expressive individualism so here’s a summary of of the of the two basic ways that are out there today and and and are in front of us the traditional way of identity formation is you are your duties within the community and your self-worth depends on the honor that is bestowed upon you by your community then you know because youve made them proud that uh you’re a person of worth Western expressive individualism however says you are your dreams you are your desires your deepest desires and particularly you are your choices you are who you choose to be and your selfworth depends on the dignity that you bestow on yourself because you have realized your dreams and desires you know here’s two here’s two Immortal pieces of literature just to show you the difference you know the Battle of Malden right don’t you study that here in in Anglo-Saxon don’t you in Old English at one point near the end of the battle the Warriors see that they’re losing and even though they have a chance to run away and save their lives oh no no no you know they realize that they can bring great honor to their people by dying bravely so uh I think it’s brial shakes his Spear of Ashwood he calls to his soldiers and he says thought must be be harder Hearts be the Keener Minds be the greater as our strength lessons here lies our Prince all Hee I will not away but I myself beside my Lord so loved a man think to lie that’s uh that’s the way it used to be that’s how that’s how in fact many parts of the world that’s still the way identity is forign honor sacrifice don’t do what you want to do do what’s right for the group for the family for the people for the tribe and then here’s another Immortal piece of literature Climb Every Mountain Ford every stream follow every rainbow till you find your dream I didn’t sing I was careful and if you and you know where that comes from it comes from uh a song telling a woman leave the convent leave the community uh you know leave your vows go out and figure out who you are those are the two different approaches uh to Identity formation what’s the problem because you know I’m going to critique what’s the problem with the Western identity formation uh process before I say what’s wrong with it let me just say something uh I don’t say this is a an awful thing in fact I’m going to say that both the traditional and the Western approach to Identity formation are crushing maybe even equally crushing but I see the advantages to the Western view my grandfather was born in Italy my mother’s father was born in Italy in 1880 some of you are saying how old are you but anyway so guess but anyway um and uh he lived in a little town outside of Naples somewhere and uh his father was a potterer made made pottery and his grandfather his grandfather so he grew up and he started saying to his father I don’t want to do Pottery I want to do something else and his father said uh excuse me there’s only three things you can do you could go be a priest you go to the military or you could be a Potter that’s it why Dad well because our family makes Pottery nobody’s going to give you any other job that’s our place well what if I go to another town well they’re not going to hire you over there because you’re going to say you’re from that town you’re not from this town you can’t work over here and the stratification the uh uh uh when when you are your duties when you are your role what that meant was lots of people were locked in uh some terrible places in society there was no way out there was no Mobility at all and yet modern Western cultural modern Western cultures identity formation is every bit is crushing every bit is crushing first of all it’s incoherent you know why because if you look deep in your heart and say I have to find out who I really am okay fine how are you doing that well I’m looking at my deepest desires okay what are they they contradict you’re going to find yourself for example falling in love with somebody and and and having prepared for a career and you know what wait a minute I really want to be with this person and I really want this career and in order to be with this person my career is not going to do very well what are you going to do which one do you love more the fact is you love them both uh Francis Bufford in that book I mentioned before Unapologetic a very funny book says this talking to us as human beings he says you are a being whose wants make no sense okay good luck doing expressive individual good luck looking into your heart and figuring out who am I really you are a being who whose once make no sense don’t harmonize whose desires deep down are discordantly arranged so that you truly want to possess and you truly want not at the very same time you’re equipped you eventually realize for farce or even tragedy much more for Happy Endings it one of the problems is if you really are saying my feelings my deepest desires this is who I really am this is where I get my identity not only do they do they contradict many of your deepest desires but they change and part of having a sense of self is saying this is who I am through the good times and the bad times when I’m in my 20s my 30s yes there’s of course going to be some growth there has to be but if it’s just your desires they’re going to change all the time it’s really quite incoherent it actually is unworkable but the other thing I want to tell you about is it’s crushing yes of course it’s crushing some of you know if you’ve come from cultures in which your parents expectations and your family expectations and the social roles just seem to smother you well so does this too because what since you have to create your own identity you have to decide who you want to be and then achieve it that’s a crushing weight you’ve got to achieve it you’ve got to be brilliant you’ve got to be beautiful you’ve got to be attractive you got to be hip you’ve got to be uh uh successful it’s all up to you in a way that in traditional cultures that just wasn’t the case it’s crushing you know um some years ago in Vogue magazine uh Madonna was interviewed and she says this quote my drive in life is from the fear of being mediocre that’s always pushing me I push past one spell of it and I discover myself as a special human being but then then I feel I’m still mediocre and uninteresting unless I do something else because even though I’ve become somebody I still have to prove that I’m somebody my struggle has never ended and it probably never will or for example interesting uh in uh Arthur Miller’s great play after the fall there’s a place where a guy talks about his loss of faith in God and you would think well if a guy loses his faith in God or doesn’t believe in God anymore he’s free he’s free he can create his own reality he can he can decide nothing makes me feel guilty or ashamed anymore I decide what I want to do I decide what is right or wrong for me and I achieve that and nobody can make me feel guilty or you should be this you should be that I get to choose so I shouldn’t feel crushed ashamed guilty not true in fact it can actually get worse according to Arthur Miller if there’s no God this is what he says uh this is the the WR the author uh pardon me the the narrator in the in in the play here’s a man who talks about his loss of faith and he says this for years I looked at life like a case at law it was a series of proofs when you’re young you have to prove How brave you are or smart then eventually what a good lover you are later what a good husband or father you are finally you have to prove how wise or how powerful or whatever but underlying it all I now see I had an assumption that one moved on a path toward I don’t know toward being justified or condemned a verdict anyway anyway my disaster happened the day I looked up and realized that the bench was empty no judge in sight no God but then he says and all that remained was this endless argument with myself the litigation of existence before an empty bench which is another way of saying despair even when he decided there was no judge up there looking at how he was achieving how well he was doing he couldn’t stop what he’s really calling the endless pointless litigation of existence the constant arguments they don’t stop remember Harold Abrams he was the guy the only person who ever won an Olympic gold medal in slow motion Chariots of Fire okay sorry 80s 80s 80s you said did they have movies yet in 80s in Chariots of Fire Harold Abrams is running uh for a gold medal in the Olympics at least the way it’s depicted in the movie yeah I have no idea about the real Harold Abrams who was he was a real man obvious but in the movie he’s depicted and he never smiles and even when he gets the gold medal he doesn’t really enjoy it and one of the reasons is he says when that gun goes off it was a 100 yard dash he says when that gun goes off I have 10 seconds to justify my existence see the the endless litigation of existence I have to live up I have to live up I have to live up to standards I’ve got to achieve and when he gets the gold medal like Madonna I thought I would feel like somebody I still don’t quite feel like somebody even though the bench is empty even though there’s no God out there to to condemn me or to Acclaim me nevertheless I can’t stop it listen what you’re going to have to do if you let what what the culture of the West and especially a place like Oxford is going to push on you is in the name of Freedom which was last night they’re going to say say you have to decide who you want to be don’t let anybody tell you who you are you decide that you determine who you want to be and then you achieve that and then you know you’ve got dignity then you have self-worth and self- value I’m telling you it’s a trap because you will have to take some good thing like work or career it’s a good thing or romance or love it’s a good thing and you have to turn it into an identity Factor not just a good thing but your very significance and Security will be completely based in it and let me tell you what happens let me give you a quick example or two for example um some years let’s let’s talk about work for a minute a couple years ago uh there was just a a good essay in the New York Times by a guy named Benjamin nent who was a writer at the time and he wrote a um wrote an interesting essay about how difficult it was for him to get anything written though he was trying to be a novelist a short story writer I think here’s what he said said when good writing was my only goal in life I made the quality of my work the measure of my worth can I say that again I made the quality of my work the measure of my worth He took a good thing and turned into an identity Factor we had to that’s that’s what your culture tells you you or something like that and here’s what he said for this reason I wasn’t able to read my own writing well I couldn’t tell whether something I had just written was good or bad because I needed it to be good in order to feel sane I lost the ability to cheerfully interrogate how much I liked what I had written to see what was actually on the page rather than what I would have liked to have seen or what I feared to see and he went on and on to say when his when his identity was based in being a good writer he was a terrible writer so he proudly announces at the end of the article that he’s not in that anymore and actually is writing is going well because he got a girlfriend okay so let’s go to Ernest Becker who is the uh author of the pill of BR wining denial of death and Ernest Becker does he wrote this a long time ago 1970s but he was very preent he said people used to get their identity from God or from family or even the nation being a Citizen Patriot now we have to get our own IDE identity and here’s what he says sometimes people do it in love and romance and in a very important passage he says he calls this the Romantic solution quote the self- glorification the self- glorification we now need we don’t get it from God we don’t get it from family the self- glorification we now need to achieve in our innermost being we now look for in our love partner okay maybe not in work so in love and here’s what he says what is we want when we Elevate the love partner to this position we want to be rid of our faults of our feeling of nothingness we want to be justified we want to know our we we want to be rid of our faults we want to be justified we want to get rid of our feeling of nothingness we want to know our existence has not been in vain we want Redemption from our love partner nothing else and then he adds needless to say no human being can give you this because something similar to what happened to that writer happens if if if if you get your main sense of significance from someone who you adore loving you some love partner can you criticize that person even when they need it no because if they get angry at you you melt down remember what the writer said he says when when the quality of my work was the measure of my worth I I had to believe that this was was good because if it wasn’t good what I just written I wouldn’t go I he said I couldn’t be sayane why because his very identity was wrapped up in it it wasn’t just a good thing it was an ultimate thing it was his very identity his whole sense of self would be missing if he wasn’t a good writer if somebody say you’re not a good writer and so you’re in love with somebody and you’re doing more than just loving that person you’re actually getting your identity out of that person that this person likes me loves me how can you I how can you give that person criticism because their anger will just devastate you in fact how can you handle that person’s problems that that person has a problem and they start to get self-absorbed and then they’re not giving you the affirmation you want you can’t take it it’ll be a destructive relationship over and over again what you see is the Western understanding of identity formation is a crushing crushing burden so we come down to something we’re on the lip of the last point here the last two points quickly uh we’re on the lip of the last point we come down to an interesting quote by isach Dennison in Out of Africa and she has a very interesting place where she says pride is faith in the idea God had when he made us most people are not aware of any idea of God in the making of them and sometimes they make you doubt that there ever has been much of an idea or else it has been lost and who shall find it again they have to accept as success ESS what others warrant it to be so and to take their happiness and even their own selves at the quotation of the day she says if you don’t have God in your life here’s the irony you think you’re free to create your own self actually you are now what you’re going to have to take except as success because you’re defining Yourself by success what others warrant it to be and take your happiness even your own selves with the quotation of today what this means is actually you really aren’t creating yourself nobody can really affirm themselves nobody can just bless themselves nobody can just say I don’t care what anybody else says all it matters is I’m happy with myself you can’t do that it just doesn’t work you have to have a word from outside someone from outside has to name you there has to be somebody who you adore who adores you and that person can’t be human the praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards someone that you cannot but praise who praises and loves you that’s the essence of identity the trouble if that’s your parents they’re not perfect they’re human the trouble with a love partner the trouble of of of work it will just Crush you it’ll just drive you into the ground you really do need someone to name you but that person that person can’t be someone who changes someone who’s fickle someone who uh who actually you can lose because if you lose your successor or you lose your loved one then you you’ve lost yourself what do you need you need God to name you you know when it says interestingly here uh when it says the sheep have a shepherd and this Good Shepherd names the Sheep I remember some years ago uh uh when I was extraordinarily insecure in in where I was going what I was doing I was just a student I did want to go to the ministry I wasn’t sure I’d be uh good at it and I had met a man who was a great teacher and a person I admired very much and and I met him really just briefly in in in one location about two years later I showed up where he was giving a lecture and when he was done I walked up and I said um hi you wouldn’t remember me and he looked at me said oh yes and he named me somebody I admired somebody I emulated he named me he said hey let’s go sit down let’s get something to drink I want to find out how you’re doing and I remember thinking several years later uh that just uh just filled me up it just it stabilized me it it it it I lost a lot of my self-doubt I lost a lot of the pretent but then I said I can’t build my life on this guy and yet I said if if if a a single human being who I admire like that can change me like that what if I really believe that God loved me what if I really believe that God knew me what if I really believe that the god of the universe actually knew me by name but that’s what’s being promised here but how’s that possible here’s how it’s possible I am the great Shepherd I am the Good Shepherd because I lay down my life for my sheep I’m about to tell you something I’ve been thinking about this all all day in fact I was thinking about it last night and uh I’m going to give you some theology I’m not doing it to show off I’m certainly not doing it to I don’t know I’m doing it because the the The Greatest Secret of Christian identity an identity that will not Crush you an identity that’s not based on your performance an identity it’s not it’s not the sort of thing that you’re always going to be wondering whether or not you can uh live up to it uh it’s locked in what I’m about to say Jesus Christ says I name my sheep I lay down my life for them he dies for us on the cross Galatians chapter 3 verse 13 14 says this Christ became a curse for us taking the curse of the law so that in Christ Jesus we might receive the promised Blessing by faith here’s some theology curse first blessing there’s two ways to satisfy a law think of the law of the stop sign at least in America there’s a stop sign there’s two ways to satisfy that law you come to a full stop then you go on the law has no claim on you because you fulfilled it the other thing to do is you drift through the stop sign the policeman comes and writes you a ticket probably $95 or something like that and uh now that you’ve paid your fine the the law has no more uh claim on you in other words there’s the blessing of the law because I fulfilled it and I’m free to go then there’s the curse of the law but if I fulfill that by paying my penalty I’m free to go as well Jesus Christ comes to Earth from heaven and he loves God with all his heart soul strength and mind and he loves his neighbor as himself perfectly the only human being that ever lived a life of perfect love and what does he deserve the blessing he deserves the blessing of the law he deserves he he deserves acclamation he deserves the love of God he deserves whatever but then he goes to the cross and he takes the curse he earns the blessing of the law but then he takes the curse of the law so that we can receive the blessing by faith and what does that mean I’ll just give you a couple words but it means this the Bible says that if you believe in Jesus Christ if you say father accept me not because of anything I have done but because of what he has done God puts the curse that we deserve for disobeying what I’m going to say as a Christian minister for disobeying the law of God but I want you to know that you yourself know you may not believe in sin you may not believe in hell you may not believe in a Divine Law and yet you’ve got a sense of condemnation you can’t shake there’s a voice is there not there’s a voice that calls you a fraud calls you an impostor says you’re not you’re not living up you know that voice it’s a curse you’re not living up to your own standards whatever they are whether it’s love whether it’s uh Integrity whether it’s Justice I don’t care what it is you’re not living up to it Jesus Christ says I’ve taken the curse I’ve paid the penalty the thing that the voice says you deserve this no I’ve taken what you deserve so that when you believe in me then you can know that God looks at you in me that is to say I take your curse you get my blessing I take what you deserve so that you can have what I deserve and God sees you in me and he sees an absolute Beauty the eyes of the the the the eyes of the only person in the universe whose opinion matters looks at you and sees you as more precious than all the jewels that lie beneath the Earth that’s called justification by faith that means that in Christ you’re Justified that means you’re clothed in Jesus Christ honors and and rewards that he has earned and yet God sees you as an absolute Beauty that’s a lot of theology but I tell you the secret of a completely transformed life is in there for you do you know why because it’s the only way to get the only the Christianity offers you something that no culture offers no religion offers every other culture every other religion says do this do this and you will be accepted even Western culture do this do this and you’ll be accepted and Christianity says believe in Jesus Christ and what he’s done and you’re accepted and then see do good and you’re accepted be accepted and then you’re free to do good Christianity is radically different in its identity formation process and let me tell you something when you’re successful it won’t go to your head because you know you’re is just a sinner saved by grace and when you’re a failure it will not destroy you because the things you’re failing at are not the basis of your identity you fail in love you fail in in career you fail in school it’s not your identity anymore you’re impervious you’ve got a ballast you never had before how does it happen the Bible says that Jesus Christ this is Philippians chapter 2 Jesus Christ emptied himself of his glory and made himself of no reputation he was glorious and he became a nobody and on the cross he was beaten he was mocked he was crucified outside the gate Jesus Christ gave up his glory to become a nobody body so that you could have a name that will last forever um what we’re going to do now is we’re going to uh look at a a uh I don’t is a man or a woman pardon me a man who is going Oxford student and he is going to be giving you uh an account of his journey a spiritual journey and after that we’re going to come back and take questions you if you have questions about what I said and I don’t know why you wouldn’t please text them I would think you’d have to please text them in to that number and we’ll take at least as many questions as we have time for I’d always wondered if there was a God how could I be good enough for him if my de one his girls were the good at weigh the bad having gone to church as a child I was told to be loved fully by God how to live a good life but I couldn’t understand how I could deserve God’s love and that relationship with him how could I be if I didn’t live a perfect life my doubts eroded my faith until no longer I could believe and became agnostic University for me was an opportunity to express my freedom and Independence away from home God on the Christian claims very far from my mind however meeting Christians at m at my college maybe investigate Christianity again I started going to some Christian union events like the main event talks and discussion groups held afterwards and started to ask all the D anding questions from my past and there are a lot of questions how could God love me despite the far from perfect life that I’d lived how could I go to heaven If Heaven’s a place of perfection why would God send his son to die for me and yet to my surprise by confronting these questions I began to find satisfactory answers a new understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus enabled me to understand that I I was good enough for God not through my own actions but through Jesus’s sacrifice he lived a perfect life and took all my wrongdoings upon himself through his death on the cross and so I really can have new life in him through a newborn faith in Jesus Christ I have a new self identity understanding that we’re forgiven simply by believing in Jesus through his death and Resurrection is a very humbling fact it means I can never be good enough by myself I need Jesus so however well I do I stay humble but no matter how much I fail I know that because of him God still loves me it is a fulfilling and joyful fact which cannot be matched by any Earthly thing his love and kindness is never ending and completely undeserved it has changed me such that I don’t know where I’d be without him by my side so uh we’re going to have some questions now if we can have our first question on the screen please don’t know if I feel comfortable reading this um how old are you really Tim I am considerably younger than 67 I am 64 and a half that’s a lot I mean back when you were two and a half it was a lot okay what do you think about Islam lots of people as well as ex-christians are converting to it because it gives them identity um here we go one more time I realize by the way thanks for the question because I didn’t make this very very clear but each night I’ve had to say I do think that religion in general uh usually does a better job of giving you a a thick meaning we talked about that the first night um it gives you a a grounding in God so that uh yes uh a person who is religious in some other religion in any religion uh you don’t have I think the same pressure to turn good things like work and romantic love and uh or politics by the way into your identity which in which case you uh it it it leads to breakdown the way I’ve been talking about right there however at the very end I talked about something that I don’t think the other religions have got in the end religious identity not not Christianity but religious identity operates the same way as traditional identity with your parents and fathers and mothers and Western identity which is I have to achieve it it’s based on my performance and that’s the reason why I think in all religious identity traditional culture uh Western culture there’s that voice that accuses you all the time that voice that comes along and says you’re not living up you’re not as good you’re kind of a fake you’re kind of an impostor if people really knew because your identity is basically something you have to achieve and you never get a verdict in this life but Christianity in a sense gives you a verdict before you die it says you are forgiven you are accepted you have already died in Christ I’m sorry to use the theological term it means that you are as free from your sins as if you already paid for them because when you Unite with Jesus Christ by faith that’s the Christian idea you are accepted in him and there’s just I’m sorry there’s nothing not only in Islam but any the other religions that even comes close to that how would one’s sexuality factor in one’s identity okay now we’ll see what the next question is after this but let me suggest something to you um a thousand years ago uh if an Anglo-Saxon Warrior found two very strong feelings in their imagine an anglosaxon War has two very strong feelings in his heart one is aggression he just loves killing people bang he just loves crushing people’s skulls when he gets mad he just loves it and the other thing he experiences is same seex attraction so there a thousand years so what’s the Anglo-Saxon Warrior going to do with those two feelings he’s going to look at the aggression and say that’s me I identify with that that’s the real me okay today of course um well the other one he’s going to say that’s not me right the Anglo Saxon voice say that’s me kill people that’s not me loving someone with the same sex today we’re the reverse today you have those two feelings and if you feel the aggression you say that’s not me in fact I have to go to anger management uh classes and the other one we will say that’s me why why why choose that as your identity why not choose the aggression you see what I’m trying to show and this I I know what I’m saying is not popular here right here I know that you actually do not follow your feelings to discover your identity you pick and choose of your feelings and generally your culture tells you which feelings are okay which feelings are not don’t go by the culture as a Christian go by what God says there’s a place in 1 Corinthians 3 and 4 where uh Paul says this I don’t care what you think about me great he’s rejecting the traditional approach to Identity I don’t care what you think about then the second thing he says I don’t care what I think about me he says my conscience is clear that does not make me innocent wait a minute that’s not he’s rejecting the Western View too he says I’m not going by my feelings I’m not going by my own intuitions and I don’t I’m not going by your feelings or your intuitions you can’t make me uh feel something and I can’t even look at my own feelings instead that he says it’s God that judges me so where do I get my standards the one who sent his son to die for me and who loves me and has done all that for me in the Bible I think I’m finding out how to please him how to Delight him and so I get my identity not from my sexual identity or even from my sexual feelings or for my aggression I would never identify with aggression like the Anglo-Saxon Warrior I wouldn’t identify with same-sex attraction I would say my most fundamental identity is who I am in Jesus and who I am in Jesus makes me want to please the one who saved me and then I find out from him which of these things is right and which of these things is wrong and we all are doing that we’re all filtering our feelings never say this has got to be my identity because I feel that way we’re all filtering those feelings on the basis of moral judgments where do you get those moral judgments don’t get it from the culture get it from the get it from God that’s my counsel I don’t know what the next question is but it might it might be a follow on have you not just been playing on our insecurities that is to say is believe belie in God not just an excuse for when you do wrong uh yeah I understand why you say that when I press the voice thing uh you know France koffka wrote a a novel called the trial in which a man Joseph Kay right A man is uh arrested uh and he doesn’t know why he’s arrested and he and he spends I guess months years uh in house arrest and he and he never can find out what he’s arrested for and he keeps thinking is it this is it that and finally at the end of the novel uh one of his jailers stabs him to death and that’s how the novel ends and Kafka in one of his Diaries gives a hint as to what the novel is about he says if I remember correctly he says about us today modern people he says modern people find themselves feeling like Sinners independent of guilt they feel like sinners in independent of guilt and what he means is we can’t Define right and wrong anymore uh nobody can say what is right or wrong we’re the only culture in history that doesn’t have a consensus on right and wrong and yet in spite of the fact that that should free us we we still have that voice that tells us we’re fools we’re frauds we’re wrong we still have a sense of condemnation we can’t shake I don’t believe that’s just our insecurities I believe that that’s an intuition about our real state that we whether you believe in God or not I believe that you sense at a deep level that there’s a bench just like that guy in Arthur Miller’s after the fall that there is some kind of bench and even if I don’t believe in God rationally for some reason I still feel like I’ve got to live up and I’m still dealing with my shame and my guilt and a feeling like I’m not good that’s not just insecurities I think that’s actually an index of of of spiritual reality how exactly do you come to believe and how can Christianity help you find yourself and your identity um okay two stages number one uh I became a Christian in in uh at University actually through a Ministry uh very similar to uh uccf actually the kind of American counterpart of it and um when I did I uh at first I got a hold of the idea that my identity was found in Christ I realized even back then when I was 20 years old that uh this was very different than the traditional or modern Western even then I had some sense that there’s there was no and there was no religion like this that gave you an identity in Christ profoundly grounded so it was didn’t go up and down depending on how well I was doing it didn’t go up and down depending on how I whether I was succeeding or not and I felt liberated I said here I’m I’m ready to go then I got into the ministry and as my wife certainly knows uh every single time I would come home after preaching a sermon on Sunday and I would say uh how was it and if she said anything negative I would just be thrown into depression for three days and uh fortunately she uh being herself did not let that intimidate her into silence and uh partly because she didn’t just shut up and partly because she didn’t say well okay all right all right if you don’t want to hear from me I won’t say anything about it uh she was able to Bear my my upset and wrath and I came to realize that I had made my um uh I made my Ministry My Success my ability to be a good public speaker into my identity I said how did I do that I would say it took and it’s took I should not put it in the past tense now should I uh it is it I I found that I’ve increasingly liberated as I’ve taken what I believe and worked it into my heart through prayer so that I am increasingly free from that but but to work yourself into this identity is a lifelong process it’s a terrific process it’s really an adventure but honestly the identity you have in Christ in principle and spiritually can handle anything that comes to you any disappointment any failure you can get through it because what it the failure grounds you more in who you really are and enables you to face life in a way that I don’t think any else anything else can one more question I think would God not encourage us to Climb Every Mountain and forward every stream where’s the rainbow why would God stop before the rainbow yeah except don’t forget this um the the I was actually trying to use um The Sound of Music and that particular song as an example of how telling people to leave the community and leave behind your older commitments to to to go out and and figure out who you are and it’s a little bit like Elsa in Frozen right it’s a little bit it is again it’s the same basic theme which we talked about last night is it’s time to test the limits and break through no right no wrong no rules for me that resonates that’s all I’m trying to say the fact of the matter is I actually think that uh you can climb and you can forward and you can follow because failure and setbacks do not destroy you in the way that it would if your identity Factor was done in anything else so the answer is to this question is yes but what I meant in the in the uh the cultural reference was to show you the general cultural theme not that I don’t think God actually can call you to do some incredible things and actually the identity in Christ fortifies you for such uh great quests um that’s all the questions that we have time for today but um I think Tim’s happy to stay around and uh answer some questions at the end oh yes I’ll be down front and there’s also a bookstall out through the double doors if your question wasn’t answered check out some of them they might have some answers for you uh we’re just going to move to Tim now to offer some closing thoughts closing thought um The Voice the sense that you’re not right you’re not good enough the sense that you’re an impostor sometimes it can be actually pretty um acute it may not get to the place of Lady McBeth who who is hallucinating blood on her hands out out damn spot oh all the perfumes in Arabia cannot sweeten this little hand who knew the old man had much blood in them you know it the the uh L lady MC Beth has done something wrong and she can’t get the stain out and I want I’m here to tell you whether you believe in the Divine Law or not though I actually think that all human beings Inuit it it whether you believe in it or not whatever your standards are you also feel that you are stained you are not living up you will not live up if you do now it’s because your standards are too low if your standards rais a little bit you will you will feel the same voice uh but here’s who can get the stain out there’s a story it’s I think it’s a Scottish or maybe I think it’s a Scottish fairy tale called the Black Bull of Norway there’s there’s a number of versions of it like all ancient fairy tales but at the heart of it there’s this Prince and he has he went to battle and he killed someone uh that he regretted killing that he felt very bad about killing he felt deep sadness and regret and guilt over the over the person he killed and he came home and he took off his tunic and he found that he couldn’t get the blood stain out it’s a fairy tale symbolic and what he decided was he he he uh declared to the whole uh Kingdom that any young woman who could get the stain out of his tunic would be his true love and therefore would be his bride and his Queen and so all the young women around the the the kingdom would take this thing and try and try and of course they could never get the stain out and there’s a story about this uh older Evil Woman uh is in the story and she has a young daughter and they also have a slave girl or a servant girl very humble and who’s new to the kingdom and doesn’t know the story and one day one night she comes upstairs and she sees a lot of dirty laundry including this uh tunic with blood on it and so she does all the laundry not knowing at all the significance of it and stain comes right out the next morning the mother you know the woman who the head of the home comes down and sees it realizes what had happened grabs it and takes her daughter off to the prince and says my daughter has gotten the stain out and so the prince talks to this woman this young woman and doesn’t really feel like much of a connection and yet she said well if you got the stain out but the way the story goes and I won’t take any more time here eventually the prince discovers who really got the stain out and discovers his true love who can get the stain out of your tunic only your true love see Jesus Christ says I am big and I am great and I have given my life for you and if you believe in me I can get that stain out no matter what you have done it doesn’t matter whether you’re a hit man for the mafia I don’t care all I know in you you’ll be clean you’ll be cleansed if you believe this you realize the power of that you have to get him not some dispensed forgiveness not some experience you have to get him you have to come and say I receive him and the way to do that is to explore it’s not even if you’re moved tonight you need a lot more understanding than you have right now go to these courses that they’re offering these this discussion groups continue to come tomorrow to both O’s lunch meeting I’ll be here one more night and continue to explore uh the meaning and the power and the truth of Christianity thanks