Growing My Faith in the Face of Death

Posted on January 5, 2022 
Filed under People, Resources

“I have spent a good part of my life talking with people about the role of faith in the face of imminent death. Since I became an ordained Presbyterian minister in 1975, I have sat at countless bedsides, and occasionally even watched someone take their final breath.

I recently wrote a small book, On Death, relating a lot of what I say to people in such times. But when, a little more than a month after that book was published, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I was still caught unprepared. …”

– Tim Keller, who in December shared that his cancer has progressed to ‘stage IV’, recently relinked to this article which he wrote for The Atlantic in March 2021.

And please do uphold Tim and his family in prayer.

See also:

Pastoring the city – Tim Keller on coming to Christ and learning to love the city – Part 1 of a December 2021 Q&A with Tim Keller by World Magazine.

“To make a long story very short, reading C.S. Lewis on pride helped me finally understand the depth of my sin as something that was not simply a matter of wrong behavior, but something profoundly wrong with my heart, identity, and outlook—and most of all, it was alienation from God. Underneath all the religiosity, I saw I was actually hostile to God. For the first time, I recognized the need for salvation by sheer grace. …”

Handling a hostile culture – Assessing how the Church is responding to shifting cultural pressures – Part 2 of December 2021 Q&A with Tim Keller by World Magazine.

“Every Sunday I preached, every meeting I taught, I took unpopular stands that went against the grain of center-city dwellers. I faced weekly—sometimes daily—opposition and hostility.

Redeemer Presbyterian Church is a conservative, evangelical church in secular, liberal Manhattan. Every single week I was telling people things that most considered absolutely outrageous, if not dangerous—Jesus is the only way to salvation; without believing in Him you are lost and going to hell; the Bible is true in every word and you must submit to it whether it fits your opinions or not; sex is only for a man and a woman in marriage; you should be radically generous with your money, and, if you are prosperous, you should adopt a modest lifestyle. And so on! …”