Tim keller every good endeavor3/1/2024 ![]() Keller uses a passage from Luther’s Treatise Concerning Good Works to cut deep to the heart of idolatry: ‘All those who do not at all times trust God and…His favour, grace and good-will, but seek His favour in other things or in themselves…practice real idolatry. Esther’s elevation “for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14) reminds believers of the peril of being “in the Palace”: “Unless you use your clout, your credentials, and your money in service to the people outside the palace, the palace is a prison… if you are unwilling to risk your place in the palace for your neighbours, the palace owns you” (p.123). ![]() The Ecclesiastes “meaningless” diatribes are balanced by aphorisms such as “a person can do nothing better than to… find satisfaction in their own work,” (Ecclesiastes 2:24). These modern examples are complemented by biblical hermeneutics. 109), and went on to work for her church and senator. Instructive examples include court composer Antonio Salieri’s frustration at his own modest abilities compared with Mozart’s effortless genius and a more contemporary problem of Debbie, who resigned her job as a successful interior decoration consultant after beginning to “question my motivation for encouraging people to … spend huge sums of money on furniture.” (p. In the second section, ‘Our problems with work’, Keller describes the danger of work becoming fruitless, pointless, and selfish. Sayers, and citing the example of an airline pilot using his experience and skill to avert a major disaster. He writes that ‘One of the main ways that you love others in your work is through the “ministry of competence”’ (p.76), drawing on the writings of Martin Luther and Dorothy L. Keller then describes work as a combination of cultivation of God’s world and service to others. Keller writes, “Not since the Protestant Reformation has there been so much attention paid to the relationship of Christian faith to work as there is today” (p.19). In the first section, ‘God’s plan for work’, Keller discusses the design and dignity of work, starting with Robert Bellah’s challenge to “reappropriate” vocation in Habits of the Heart, which is implicitly based upon Os Guinness’s The Call, Abraham Kuyper’s Princeton Lectures, and ultimately Calvin. The three sections, modeled on a creation-fall-redemption structure are: ‘God’s plan for our work’ ‘our problems with work’ and ‘the gospel and work’. ![]() Here we have a mirror to hold up to the blemishes in our own vain, confused, secular conceptions of work, which are inferior to the ideal that unfolds in Keller’s book. Every Good Endeavour bristles against the hollow, self-centred worldviews of the new atheists. It proceeds from Redeemer’s decade long investment in the Center for Faith and Work, which is led by Katherine Leary Alsdorf, a former hightech CEO. Every Good Endeavour is designed to provoke it desires to reinvigorate it aims to correct. Perhaps this is why the book does not fit easily into one’s expectations of a biblical exposition on work, or an ‘airport easy read’, or an academic analysis. It naturally fits into Tim Keller’s Reason for God apologetic theme, alongside his six other books including The Prodigal God and The Meaning of Marriage. Every Good Endeavour is a dependable yet positively disturbing book. Keller’s holistic understanding of how the Gospel impacts this life helps explain this growth, attracting a large proportion of seekers and recent converts among the many young professionals who frequent it. Tim Keller has achieved prominence in recent years as founder-pastor of New York’s Redeemed Presbyterian Church, which has grown to 5,000 members since its inception in 1989. Every Good Endeavour: Connecting Your work to God’s Plan for the Worldīy Timothy Keller (with Katherine Leary Alsdorf)
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