Kathy Keller (Co-author of The Meaning of Marriage)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes. But first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back.

Guarantee on this book.

I'm so confident you're gonna love this book that if I'm wrong, if you pre order the book, you don't love it, I'm gonna send you a $20Amazon gift card as a money back guarantee. Why?

Two reasons.

One, this is a different book for me, right. I know this is a very different biography. What is Jordan Rayner doing? And I know it's risky, so I'm going to de risk it for you. Because listen, in my other books, Redeeming youg Time, the Sacredness of Secular Work, Master of One, etc, etc, I am telling you and me how we can.

Glorify God in our work, but in.

Five Mere Christians, I'm doing something very different. I'm showing you what that looks like practically through these unforgettable life stories of five Mere Christians from history. These are the top men and women that I would love to have on this podcast today if, you know, they weren't dead, right? So that's the first reason this is a risk and I'm gonna de risk.

This book for you.

Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended.

End quote. But here's the thing.

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Now, please enjoy today's episode.

Hey friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Hi, I'm Jordan Raynor.

How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as managers Stay at home parents and carpenters. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Kathy Keller, wife of the late great Tim Keller and co author with Tim on some of his biggest books, including the Meeting Meaning of Marriage. Kathy and I recently sat down to discuss the significant role that Christian professionals played in making Christianity credible and winsome to her sons. We talked about why sometimes the worst thing God can do for you is let you be happy and how you and I can die wishing we had spent more time at the office. Friends, you are not going to want to miss this terrific episode with my friend Kathy Keller.

Kathy Keller, welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

We mentioned Roosevelt Island a couple times before we started. By the way, I don't think I ever thanked you properly for this. You probably don't remember, but back in, I guess this was like June of 2023. I emailed you asking for some recommendations on how to do Roosevelt island in New York with my young daughters. And you sent me this book length email that was so kind and thoughtful with these great tips of what to do around the island. And it ended up being my kid's favorite thing of the entire trip. They loved it. That tram ride to Roosevelt island is the best. Do your grandkids love coming over there?

Oh, they love riding the tram. My own children were just, I can't tell whether horrified or angry was the predominant emotion when Disney World down in Florida had put the tram ride in as one of the Roosevelt island tram. You know, it had Roosevelt island emblazoned on the side as one of the rides and they had it entering and leaving a graffiti painted station with all kinds of mess and garbage and New York as it was decades and decades ago and not how it is now. You know yourself, that's not how it is at all.

No.

You could have your dinner on the platform and be fine, but Disney had.

To ratchet up the drama.

Yes. They were so insulted. You know, New York City equals squalor. And that was.

Right.

Of course, not the case.

I love it. It's a great place. We were actually there right after your husband Tim passed away and I was so deeply saddened by his loss when Tim was on the podcast a few months before that. So this must have been, I think, September of 2022. I had the chance to tell him, number one, I'm not sure I'd be a serious follower of Jesus if it weren't for God's work. Through Tim and your writings, Kathy and two, I certainly wouldn't be helping Christians think about how to apply their faith to their work. He was a giant who I miss dearly, which is why I was so pumped to see the first book in Tim's name published post Hominis, tell us about this devotional. And you told me before you're going to correct me, it's not a devotional. What is this thing? Kathy?

It's an anthology. It has excerpts from all of Tim's books and his works. And it was the brainchild of his English publishers, Hodder and Stoughton. Just to take these excerpts out and, you know, three or four from a book and then move on to another book and then maybe get back to it later on. But just as a way of acquainting people who might not know that he'd written things on various subjects and with the corpus of his work. So the devotionals that we've written actually as devotionals, Songs of Jesus and navigating Life with God's wisdom on Psalms and Proverbs, are meant to be pre your own devotional life reading. Tim had a word for that. He said, before you sit down and do your own Bible study and your own prayer life, you need to read yourself hot. Or he sometimes called it read yourself ready with some classic work of devotion. John Newton's letters or John Stott or John Owen or. Lot of John's in there, but you know, something that would get your theological veins pumping. They were never meant to be replacements for your own Bible study and your own prayer. If somebody thinks they can buy a devotional book, read it and then be done. Oh, did my, you know, tick that off the list? I did my time with God today. They're quite wrong. But a devotional book can be helpful as sort of an entree to your own study. However, this isn't even that. This is maybe the pre reading or just interesting reading. I gave one to the doctor who was treating me for my broken wrist that I had a couple months ago, and he says he loves it. He reads a little bit every day and he just thinks about it. And I don't know whether he's a believer or not, but that's what he's using it for, is food for thought sort of thing. But not as a devotional aid.

Yeah, that's good. It's the greatest hits remastered.

That might be a way of putting it. They're not the full books, but they have the attribution. So you know where to go to get the full book.

Yeah, it's Beautiful to see that fruit come to fruition after so many years of hard work. Given the focus of the show, Kathy, you won't be surprised to learn that many of our listeners have read the book that Tim co authored with Catherine Leary Alsdorf. Every good Endeavor. That book was all about work squarely aimed at the Christian professionals who are listening right now.

I'm curious.

From your perspective, which of Tim's other books do you think ambitious Christian professionals need to read most? I have my own thoughts on this, but I want to get your take.

Well, anytime anyone asks me, like where should they start with Tim's books or I work on an oil rig or I'm a doctor or something like that, doesn't matter what they say, I always point them to Prodigal God because that's sort of the quintessence of Tim's message of the gospel, that you can be avoiding God by being irreligious or by being religious and one is no better than the other. I mean, it might look better externally, but it's really not better. So I would always say prodigal God comes first, but after that, take your pick. His book on prayer is excellent. Preaching is neglected by a lot of people because they think, oh, I'm not a preacher, I'm not going to be doing any preaching. But anyone who wants to communicate the gospel, even in a conversation, that would be a helpful book to read. Making sense of God. That's sort of helpful because you get in conversations and you need some apologetic grist. That's always a good place to look at. You know, it's hard to find a book that Tim didn't write to people that were in the context of the secular world. So I'm not sure that there's a book. I'll tell you one place that most people wouldn't know. It's not a book, but it would really repay the effort. Citytocity.com has a little place you can go to that clicks and says DNA. Now, very few people would pay that any attention, but that may be the richest thing that's out there. For the last real push that Tim had before he died, he wrote 18 papers on various subjects, sent them out to global Christians in the City to City network all over Africa and Asia and South America everywhere, got their feedback, edited what he said, went back to them and talked about, you know, will this work? Will that work? You know, does this make sense in your cultural context? Those papers have all been put up on the City to city website under DNA plus Tim did little 1012 minute video explanations of the papers. So I would recommend that to anybody because he has papers on work, he has papers on evangelism, he has papers on worship. This there's not a subject that you couldn't but that's always been the shorthand around redeemer. That our DNA is the way we think about the gospel in terms of speaking it to people who are skeptical. So I would really recommend that.

I love it. I already had this DNA resource on my reading list because Dr. Francis Collins can't stop talking about it. He mentioned it to me live on the podcast recently.

I actually think he referenced it in.

His new book and so we'll put the link in the show notes, but I've got it right here. Redeemercitytocidity.com DNA and as I was thinking back through the Keller canon, if you will, of books really relevant and books I recommend a lot this podcast. I kept coming back to Prodigal God, the Freedom of Self forgetfulness and Counterfeit Gods on the topic of idolatry. Speaking of, I read this great interview that you gave recently. I can't remember how many months ago where you you mentioned that you and Tim used to frequently quote John Newton's words that the biggest danger of a happy marriage is idolatry. And you said that you had no idea how true that was until Tim was gone. And here's a quote from the article says there was this big hole in my life where I'd put him instead of Jesus. End quote. And so Kathy, every one of us, present company included, struggles with this turning good things like spouses, kids, careers and idols. What advice would you give for how we can enjoy God's gifts while delighting in the gift giver above all of those created things?

Well, when Tim was asked this question, he would say, you can't love your spouse or your kids or your neighbor too much. You can only love them too much in relation to how much you're loving Jesus. And I think the key here is spending enough time in prayer and Bible study and devotional reading so that your heart warms and you realize the riches that you have in Christ that far surpass the riches that you have from all other sources that you can't be content with just things that make you happy. You have to realize the immeasurable love that Jesus has given is how high, how wide, how deep, how long his love is and compare that to anything else and Jesus is always going to win the race. But most of us just sort of are content with the things that provide an earthly happiness. You know, if we're content in our earthly lives and we have relationships and the things that we're doing for Christ, etc. We tend to sort of stop there and don't push past any barrier. In fact, I've heard myself say that, that very quote, the John Newton quote. And I just cringe when I hear it because I say I was speaking it, but I wasn't listening to myself, you know, because it's easy to say that, but it's just to really mean it and understand it in a way that is fruitful for you is much more difficult.

Is this why in the same interview you said something along the lines of the worst thing God can do for you is to let you be happy and content with the good things he's given you. Is that why? Because we'll settle for the lesser thing?

Well, that's just Psalm 73, where the Psalmist is being a little bit peevish because he sees the people who don't love God having great lives. And then he, it says he entered the temple and he perceived that their feet were in a slippery place because all of their happiness was built on things that were going to leave them, that were going to desert them and could desert them. Suddenly at any moment, you know, you go in for, well, like Tim, you know, he went in for an X ray for, well he thought was colitis. And they said, I've got two little spots here. They probably just enlarged lymph nodes. And two months later they said now it's pancreatic cancer. So it's the sort of thing that comes out of left field and you're not expecting it. So we've been told that wisdom is to number our days. So after you're 70 years old, you're kind of like all bets are off. But Tim and I would say to each other frequently, we didn't expect to feel this young when we were 70 years old. This feels more like 50 and 70. But the reality of it is that all bets are off if you're 10 or if you're 15. There's no guarantees that this won't be the day that your soul is required. And if you so struggling with external difficulties with what would look to other people, what feels like to yourself, suffering and privation and lack of resources. Those things throw you onto God. Even if they throw you onto God, like Job, where you're yelling at God and saying, why are you doing this? And I don't get it, and I don't Deserve it. You're at least engaged with God in a way that your comforts don't do that. Your comforts just make you comfortable.

Yeah, it's good. I remember Tim talking about this in his little book On Death, which I loved this series on birth, on marriage, on death. There's a quote in On Birth that I've thought about dozens of times since I've read it. And I've been meaning to ask you about it for a long time. Tim said this quote. Kathy and I gratefully discovered that despite our mediocre parenting, which I doubt it was mediocre, our young teenage sons grew up with a very positive regard for the Christian faith. It was because they were surrounded in our New York City church with young men and women in their 20s and early 30s who were accomplished in their.

Fields and attractive in their character, but.

Also deeply committed believers. End quote. So I'm curious, from your perspective, why do you think that mattered to your sons? That they were surrounded by young professionals.

Who were seriously serious about Jesus and.

Serious about their work?

Well, think back to your teenage years. Did you sit around and say, gee, I hope to grow up and be just like mom and dad? It would be hard to find 10 teenagers in the whole United States that sit around and say that. You know, it's just. You want to see someone who is a role model for you, someone that you aspire to be, someone who's as cool as you aspire to be. There's a fellow who's a voice talent agent. I was just talking to him on the phone the other day, and he was the coolest guy. He is the coolest guy that my boys had ever met. He was just amazing. I mean, his stable of actors, voice actors that he had, would just knock your socks off. But at one point, one of our sons was really very eager to try the clubbing scene in New York City. And he had tried like crazy to get in, even though he was underage and gotten found out, gotten grounded for 10 years. And we were talking about, you know, what are we going to do about this? When Steve came by and we told him the story, and he said, okay. David came up and Steve said, hey, I hear you want to go to the Limelight, which is a very notorious place where there were rooms where you could do drugs and have sex. And Steve said, I used to do that. He says, I promised myself I'd never go back there again, but I'll take you. I'll take you. I'll show you the rooms. I'll show you, the people. He says, it was meaningless to me now, but if you're interested, I'll show you. David never asked again. Never asked again. Because Steve had been there, he'd done that, and he had found Jesus better. And so he did not have to take it any further. It was like, if this guy is so cool and he thinks this is a waste of time, then I do too.

So good. Anytime I meet somebody who has kids in their 20s who are walking with the Lord, I always ask them, what do you think you got right? And what do you think you got wrong? And the most frequent answer I hear to the what did you get right? Question is exactly what you just said, is that our kids grew up with role models who were doing interesting things professionally, but who were serious about their walk at the Lord and really believed that Jesus was better than any other thing.

Were you and Tim intentional about surrounding the boys with these people, or did it just kind of happen naturally in the life of the church? Talk to us more about this.

Well, it happens, I think, naturally in the life of any church plant will attract people that have. If you're not planning a church that's just going to be church as usual, you know, boring. If you're ready to say Jesus is better than the way we've always done it. And I don't mean. I mean, I heard a knock on one church and you can guess which one it was, that it was a cross between a concert, a laser show and a TED talk.

Yeah, we get it.

That was their version of not doing church as usual. That wasn't our understanding. It was just we didn't go in for the Christian psychobabble, you know, with all the mysterious words that non Christians wouldn't believe and understand. So being part of a church plan is a really good way of having interesting people join you. Not people who've been churchified for years and therefore kind of lost their connection with the world. And the non Christians that when we started Redeemer, people would bring their non Christian friends and they'd point at Tim and they'd say, you listen to him. That's what I mean. That's what I've been trying to say. Because they would feel like I've been trying to say this and I'm not very good at communicating, but that's what I mean.

But Tim gave him language. He said, yeah, hey, you and Tim, you already mentioned it before, but you and Tim had to stare down death a few times. Thyroid cancer, 2022 or 2002. Sorry. And then of course, pancreatic cancer just a few years ago.

I'm curious how that dwelling on death.

I'm not sure if you'd articulate that way, that focus on mortality influenced the work that you and Tim were engaged in over the last 20 years or so.

Well, probably not enough, to be fair. The surgeon and the people we worked with in 2002, when Tim was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, basically said, this is not a disease you die of, It's a disease you live with. And we also weren't as worried about the pancreatic cancer as possibly we should have been, because Francis Collins, who you've mentioned, got a hold of Tim before he even started chemotherapy about a week after the diagnosis and said, come down to the nih. There's a trial here. I want to get you enrolled in it before you start chemotherapy. What we do is we filter out your white blood cells that are matched with the pancreatic cancer cells. And then we, in the words of Steve Rosenberg, who's head of the trial, we breed them, we feed them, and we turn them into ninjas. So we went down there for the second time expecting to have the same good results, and that's not what happened. I mean, he came home and went into hospice. So we were not really thinking, oh, we're coming up on the end. I see the end of the road approaching. And we weren't as prepared, either of us, for it to be the end.

Once you started to realize that it was the end. In those final months. I think about that old cliche, nobody lies on their deathbed wishing they had spent more time at the office. But I'm curious if that was true for Tim. Right. You both have this terrifically rich theology of work. I'm curious if he did wish that he had more time to spend, yes, with you, your family, but also the.

Work God had given him to do.

And if so, what were some of those unfinished symphonies that he was lamenting having to leave unfinished?

Well, when he was ready to write a book, he would collect all of the other books that he was going to use as resources and put them in a pile. And he had 20 books that he was getting ready to work on, and there are still 20 piles of books in the room. That's right off of where I'm sitting right this minute. I don't know where to put them. I don't know what to do with them. I don't want to just go shelve them again, but probably that's the best thing to do. But he had Plans for things he wanted to write, things he wanted to say. But his plans and God's plans were not the same. And I think we probably have to go with God's plan. But he had things he stole, still wanted to say, wanted to write about.

So it wasn't like he knew the end was near. And he's like, no more thinking about work. I'm done.

No, we really didn't think that was going to happen. The doctor took us into a conference room on a Wednesday and said, let's stop torturing this man. This is just not going to end well. It's not working. And all of us were just shocked out of our wits. And he was dead on Friday.

Geez.

That was Wednesday to Friday.

I knew.

I take great peace when I think about. I mean, I'm way younger than you and Tim. Tim once told me I was young enough to be a son. I think that's true. 38. But all of us die with unfinished symphonies. And I take great peace in the fact that I'm going to die with unfinished work. And either God is going to tap somebody else on the shoulder and have them pick up that work because I'm not special. Two, he's going to complete it without any other human being, or three, I get the joy of completing it at some point on the new earth, but either way, I'm not the point. God's glory is the point, and his purposes will never, ever be thwarted. I'm sure you and Tim took great solace in that as you thought about those unfinished symphonies.

Yes.

Yeah. What's next for you, Kathy? You're still fairly young. You said 72. Feels like 50. Come on.

What.

What do you feel the pull to?

Well, I'm working for Gospel and Life, which is a division of city to city right now, and curating Tim's intellectual property, signing agreements with these agents, and those agents working on collecting some of his sermons and having them not translated is not the right word, but made less oral and into written books, sort of like the blessedness of self forgetfulness, but not on that topic. But I mean, single sermon booklets, that can be just one off, that sort of thing. So I'm fully employed working with Tim's content. That's a plus and a minus. I'm very happy to be working on things that will further the reach of Tim's gifts into the world for spreading the gospel. But at the same time, I'm listening to him preach sermons and give talks and that sort of thing, and it's like he was just in the next room. So that's like picking the scab off sort of every time.

We'll be praying for you to that end as you engage in that good and important work. Kathy before we wrap up, there are four questions I ask every single guest. I just hinted at the first. Looking ahead to the day where Christ makes all things new and bodily resurrection for Tim and all those who are in Christ Jesus on the new earth. Isaiah 65 says, we'll long enjoy the work of our hands, but not labor in vain. I'm curious if there's a particular kind of work that you would just be thrilled that your heavenly Father gave you to do for his glory on the new earth.

I have got to stop myself from thinking about what's heaven going to be like, what's the resurrection going to be like, what's the new heavens and the new earth going to be like? Because I don't know and we're not given a lot of details. And therefore I don't want to feed my idolatry and say, oh, I get to see Tim. I'm trying to bypass that. Whatever God does in that realm will be excellent because he's perfect and he can't do anything less than excellent. I'm right now just concentrating on praise and thanksgiving to God. So honestly, I don't know. Don't know.

It's a good answer. I love that. Which books do you find yourself, Kathy, giving away the most to friends? Like if we pulled open your Amazon order history, what book shows up over and over again?

Well, Prodigal God is one. The Letters of John Newton, the Baker edition, which is out of print, but you can still find it sometimes. I just mentioned it to Matt Smethurst and he found it in ABE books and got it, snapped up a copy of it. But you know, every so often some copy comes available, but I mean, you can get it in different printings. But I like Baker one best. Valley of Vision, which is a collection of Puritan prayers. That's an excellent little booklet. And the Cross of Christ by John Stott is really rich. It's difficult reading, it's seminary level reading, but I recommended it to my ladies in my women's Bible study. And some of them are really making the effort, plowing through. We talk about it and their understanding is really being increased. So I would say those would be my first ones.

Those are great. I loved your acknowledgment, by the way, at the top of Go Forward in Love to all of these British fathers in the faith Including Lewis and Tolkien and Lloyd Jones and Stott and Dick Lucas, and I swear, you guys were meant to live in London. It really feels like that sometimes.

Well, we have good friends in the Lake District that we've visited for years and years, and I went back this June, and we'll go back again this next coming June. The weather was dreadful. It was in the 40s and raining horizontally, so that was a little disappointing. But. Such as England.

Such as England. That's exactly right.

Hey, Kathy, who would you want to hear on this podcast talking about how.

Their faith shapes the work they do in the world? Maybe a mere Christian in the Redeemer family who comes to mind?

You want a secular person?

Yeah.

What about your voice actor guy?

Yeah.

Your kids here.

I was just thinking he very unexpectedly came down with a fatal form of leukemia. Bone marrow transplant, survived that and is up and. And getting things. He's at Comic Con in New York City right now meeting with people and talking to people. So he would be a really good guy.

It's great.

That's a great name. All right, Kathy, you're talking to this global audience of mere Christians doing a bunch of different things vocationally. What they share is a deep desire to glorify God in how they do their work. What's one thing you want to leave them with before we sign off?

Well, I would say the goal of everything we do should be to glorify God. And that's not always clear how that's meant to be accomplished. So I think you have to pray about it, you have to think about it, you have to ask God for guidance on it. But all of us, in whatever endeavors we're doing, secular or religious or anything, should be making that. Our main goal is how is what I'm Doing to Glorify God. The famous book by Brother Lawrence. He decided he could even pick up a straw from the ground, and that would glorify God. And I've read things about mothers who think that their life is over because all they do is they spend days changing diapers and chipping Cheerios off of high chair where they've congealed and. But you're raising the next generation of brain surgeons and politicians, so you are glorifying God. You just have to have the eyes to see it. In whatever endeavor you've chosen to do that, you are participating in bringing order out of chaos, and you are participating in finding the riches that God put into the universe and making them available to the rest of us, which is what I think God intended.

And when we do it in accordance with the Lord's commands. When we do that work with him, communing with him as we do the work, I think he's glorified. Yes, Amen.

Absolutely.

Well, Kathy, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do for God's glory day in, day out. Thank you for the reminders today to work, to love the Lord above all things, including our spouses and our work. And just thank you personally for the terrific encouragement you've been over the years to me and my work. Guys, I highly recommend this I'm not calling it devotional anthology Go Forward in Love A Year of Daily Readings from Timothy Keller. It actually came out in October, but I've read most of the book already and have thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Kathy, thank you for spending time with us today.

Thank you for inviting me.

I love Kathy so much. So grateful that she was willing to come on and talk about some of those topics.

Guys, if you've got somebody you would.

Like to hear on the Mere Christians.

Podcast, let us know@jordanraynor.com we love it when you guys nominate your friends and.

People you know within your church.

Thank you guys so much for listening.

I'll see you next week.

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