The Stories We Live By

[00:00:03] [SPEAKER_00] Welcome to Gospel in Life. In this special episode, we'll hear from Tim Keller's son, Michael Keller, about a brand new book releasing this month titled The Stories We Live By. Though Dr. Keller didn't get to finish this book, he had compiled hundreds of pages of notes and begun to form this work before eventually handing it off to his son Michael to finish.

[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_00] The Stories We Live By is a book that will help you examine the stories our culture tells us, which are deeply shaping us whether we are aware of it or not, and to evaluate these stories through the lens of the ultimate story of the gospel. Today, we're airing a special episode in which Michael Keller introduces the book. This episode consists of excerpts from Session 1 of a group study that has also been created to complement the new book.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_00] The Stories We Live By group study releases November 3rd, but can be pre-ordered from bookstores today. Now here's Michael to share more about this new book.

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_01] Every day we are surrounded by stories, not just the ones we choose, but the ones chosen for us. They live in the ads we scroll past without thinking, the shows we binge late at night, the headlines we carry with us long after we've closed the app.

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_01] They quietly shape how we define success, what we believe is normal, who we admire, how we measure our worth. Some of these stories inspire us, others limit us. Most of them slip in unnoticed, repeated so often they begin to feel like truth. Culture is always telling us who we're supposed to be, what we want, how to live a good life.

[00:01:56] [SPEAKER_01] And over time, these messages don't just surround us. They can become the lens through which we see the world and ourselves. So the question isn't whether culture is telling us stories. The real question is, which ones do we believe? And what stories do we choose to live by?

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_01] My father died on a Friday morning. Three nights before, on what would end up being the last night that he could speak, our family decided dad should not be left alone in the serenity of a hospital. So I stayed the night with him. The hospital chair designed to convert into a bed just transformed into a more uncomfortable chair, pretending to be a bed. I didn't need it. Dad stayed awake most of the time because of the pain.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_01] That night, he didn't want to talk about his career. He didn't want to talk about his books. All he wanted to talk about was his family and to pray. He would say, Michael, let's pray the Lord's Prayer together. Father, let's say the Apostles' Creed. Read with me some of the Psalms. At other times, he would say, I'm ready to see Jesus. I can't wait to see Jesus. Send me home.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_01] And home he went three days later. During the months that followed, I struggled with the loss of grief. Well-meaning people offered me comfort from our culture. They would say, he's in a better place. He'll always be with you in spirit. Time heals all wounds. They meant well. But each phrase was so thin. They didn't just fail to help me. They actually made things worse.

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_01] Why? Because those phrases are not just throwaway platitudes. They're stories. They're many narratives that carry hidden assumptions about who we are and how life works. And they failed me precisely when I needed them most. Then it hit me. Dad's last night in the hospital. He wasn't reciting the Lord's Prayer or the Apostles' Creed at the end of his life just to distract himself.

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_01] He was placing himself into the stories that he lived by. When he was saying, our Father, he wasn't thinking about just anybody. He was thinking about the true Father, the Heavenly Father who is collectively ours. Those prayers and creeds weren't just religious exercises. They were the very stories that animated his life. And now, they anchored his death.

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_01] I asked myself, what are the stories that I'm living by? Not just the ones that I say I believe, but what about the ones that really animate my life? If our culture's stories about death ring hollow in my pain, how might they be failing others in their pain? What about all the other stories that our culture tells us? About identity. About happiness. About happiness. About how to live a good life.

[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_01] Could it be that the very stories meant to guide us towards fulfillment are actually leading us to despair and loneliness? My father, Timothy Keller, who co-authored this book that this series is based on, and whom simply I'm just going to call Dad, he used to say, you are the stories you believe.

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_01] His point was that stories shape us because they subtly transmit beliefs and assumptions in easily absorbed forms. See, most humans, we don't sit around asking the big questions of life. Who am I? What am I here for? What's going wrong with the world? What's going to put things right? How do we even know what's true? What's going to do? We don't think that way. We don't have to.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_01] Because our culture has answered them for us in the stories that we sit in every single day. And we've absorbed them without even knowing it. We call these belief-transmitting stories cultural narratives. They're in the advertisements that we read every day. They're in the promises of happiness to buy this product.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_01] And they're in the social media platforms that encourage us to curate this identity that we want others to see. They're in the songs that we listen to. They're in the movies that we watch. They're even in casual conversations that we have. These stories are caught more than they're taught. We don't learn them in a classroom. We absorb them like a pair of glasses that we've worn for so long we've forgotten they're actually even on our face.

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_01] We look through them. We look through them to see everything else out in the world. They shape everything we see. J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, had a middle son named Michael, who as a boy had a reoccurring nightmare. He was terrified of a large, sinister, owl-like figure that they called Alamu. This creature would perch on high furniture in his room and glare at him. It terrified this little boy.

[00:07:43] [SPEAKER_01] What did Tolkien do? Did he scold his son? Did he say, don't be silly. Owls aren't scary. No. He didn't dismiss the story his son was living in. Instead, Tolkien asked his son to describe this animal. He took the fear seriously. And then Tolkien drew a picture. He drew Alamu exactly as Michael had described. Perched high, looking down in sinister. But then he changed the ending.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_01] He paired the owl with bright, cartoonish, non-threatening colors. He turned the monster into a character in a new story. He didn't dismiss the narrative. He entered it and he redrew it. Notice what Tolkien did not do. He didn't ignore his son's fear. That would have left Michael alone with a monster. He didn't mock the fear. That would have shamed his son for having an imagination.

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_01] And he didn't just argue with his son, explaining why owls are actually harmless. That would have missed the point entirely. You can't logic someone out of a story that they're living in. Instead, Tolkien entered his son's story. He took the fear seriously enough to actually draw it. He took the time to do it. And only then, from inside the story, did he redraw it. He gave his son a new ending.

[00:09:09] [SPEAKER_01] That's exactly what the gospel does for us. Think about it. God doesn't ignore our broken stories, the fear, the striving, the longing, the need for an identity and meaning. He doesn't mock them. He doesn't just argue with us from outside, trying to logic us out of narratives that we've absorbed since childhood. Instead, God entered our story. That's what the incarnation is.

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_01] God's stepping into the human narrative, taking our fears, our longings so seriously that he inhabits them. Jesus didn't come to dismiss our desire for identity, freedom, happiness, or meaning. He came to redraw them, to take what we have been searching for, and to show us what we really longed for all along. The gospel doesn't erase our stories. It completes them.

[00:10:03] [SPEAKER_01] It takes the monster that's been glaring down at us, the fear, the insignificance, the dread of being unloved, the terror of a meaningless existence, and redraws it. Not by pretending that the fears aren't real, but by giving us an ending that we couldn't have written ourselves. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus often says, You have heard it said, but I say unto you. I love that because you know why?

[00:10:29] [SPEAKER_01] He didn't simply dismiss the cultural teachings of the day. He engaged them. You have heard it said. He affirmed what was good, but then critiqued what was incomplete, and then He offered something better, something that completed what those teachings were reaching for. That's our approach as well. For each narrative, we're going to ask, what genuine need is actually being addressed right now? Why is it so compelling to the world?

[00:10:59] [SPEAKER_01] And where does it fall short? And ultimately, how might there be a deeper story that actually delivers what these stories can only promise? Through my own grief, I can now see that there is a story big enough to make sense of both the beauty and the brokenness of life. That there actually is a story out there that offers real hope in the face of suffering.

[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_01] A story that doesn't just manage our longings, but actually fulfills them. My father knew this story. And because he knew it, he could face the end of his life, not with a platitude, but with a person. He knew that he was going home and he had an identity that was received and not achieved. A freedom that's not found in the absence of constraints, but in the presence of someone better.

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_01] A happiness that doesn't depend on circumstances. A happiness that lasts.

[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_01] A happiness that lasts.

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_01] Whether you're skeptical of Christianity and curious of its claims, do they hold up? Or whether you're a believer who senses that maybe you've absorbed more of these cultural stories than you actually realized. This exploration is for you. We're going to examine each narrative carefully. We'll be honest about their appeal and we'll be rigorous about their failures. And I think we'll discover whether there's actually a story that can bear the weight of our actual lives.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_01] The soaring joys and the gut-wrenching losses. The beauty that takes our breath away and the suffering that brings us to our knees. Because if the stories that we live by fail, when they fail us when we need them most, then there may be few tasks more vital than finding the one that doesn't. Let's dive in.

[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_00] Thanks for listening. This month, as thanks for your gift to Gospel and Life, we'll send you a copy of The Stories We Live By. To request your copy, visit gospelandlife.com slash give. Again, that's gospelandlife.com slash give. Because the gospel changes everything. the same topic. Thanks for listening. been watching. Bye! Bye! Bye!

[00:13:43] Bye!