Redeemer’s Tim Keller on the 4 pitfalls of wealth: “To the rich young ruler, money was his identity”

tim-keller-grace-of-generosityEarly this month, I had the opportunity to hear Tim Keller’s sermon at Redeemer [wikipedia], the Presbyterian church he founded in 1989 and one of NYC’s most popular among young professionals and Asian Americans.

Because of a friend’s recommendation, I’d already read The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness [Kindle] and watched his Google appearance. His talks are wide-ranging, curious, connect-the-dots. Like all good speakers, what he covers is only the surface of a vast iceberg of knowledge about religion, philosophy, and history. He’s very quotable, too. In particular I remember his bit about how Christianity’s God is the only God who loved his creation (humans) so much that he wrote himself into the play (as Jesus).

The Redeemer sermon was great. You can tell he’s invested multiples of the 10K hours it takes to become an expert. On stage, he makes it look easy. His message focused on the pitfalls of wealth, particularly poignant in NYC where money concerns dominate (from residents complaining about soaring apartment rents to Wall Streeters worrying about their bonuses to the meccas of fashion and luxury in SoHo and on Fifth Ave).

Keller begins with a reading from Mark 10:17-31. My religious beliefs are complex and always changing, but I read the Bible and I like going to church. Whatever your spiritual label – Christian, agnostic, Muslim, undecided, meditator, lazy ;) – I believe everyone can benefit from going to church, for the community, the serenity, the music, the permission to ponder big questions.

Thanks Katy for your notes! (parentheses that start with “me:” are my annotations)

Tim Keller: The Grace of Generosity (Redeemer, Dec 2015)

why are wealth and money dangerous?

“To the rich young ruler, money was his identity and he felt good by spending…”

1. money can corrupt

  • things that keep us from god are made worse by money (me: think the 7 sins, pride, envy, greed, lust…)
  • with more money comes more corruption since we have more to lose, more pressure

2. money can be an addiction you’re blind to the presence of

  • “the more money you have the less you believe you have” – which makes you less generous to the world

3. money can lull you into a false sense of security

  • when people think money makes them safe, they aren’t really (me: accidents, acts of violence, self-fulfilling); and they’re not prepared for the day of wrath (me: when things go to shit)
  • when we’re good at making money we believe we’re good at other things and therefore that we’re better than others

4. money can make you prideful

  • the pride that comes from wealth takes us further from God
  • pride prevents us from repenting, which is the most important skill

PS. I am starting a new project, tentatively called “A Good Life” (or maybe “A Better Life”?), a journey to educate myself and others on how to build a good life for yourself, by studying books, philosophers, current events, etc. For simplicity’s sake, good in this context = meaningful = fulfilled = happy. Expect the first video soon!

Denim time machine

He hops down the front porch steps in faded denim jeans
arms and legs a-kimbo, mind flush with fantasies
a kick of the earth, a soaring leap, a slap of an old oak tree
He winces and yelps – looks back – then giggles mischievously

Boy can he run (he’ll show you!) and crawl and jump and fight
show off wrestling moves on Dad with all his might
He gets grown ups, talks their talk, knows the responsibility
Get married, buy a house, find a job, and that’s just the beginning

But for now he lives in these jeans, he wears them all the time,
this hole is from his bike, that tear is from his climb
Mom says he’ll grow big soon, they’ll have to buy new ones
but she says that every day, and tomorrow hasn’t come

And if tomorrow does, he’ll hardly see himself
A boy now big and strong, he’ll look like someone else
and on that day he’ll think, of those faded folded jeans
lying in a bedroom drawer, a denim time machine

This poem was inspired by Rainer Rilke’s A Child in Red.

TED talk notes: Chris Ryan on why humans are promiscuous but gorillas are not

Every week, I share my notes from great TED talks. Here’s the complete list (pardon the load time, it’s a long page).

Here are two talks from Chris Ryan about sex. I took notes on both, but the notes were smushed together like a chicken pot pie so it’s not clear what set of notes are from which talk.

Chris Ryan on sex

  • humans are more related to chimps and bonobos than one elephant species to another
  • the standard narrative: men trade resources for sex, a woman’s fidelity, and childcare
    • this has been the narrative since Darwin’s time
    • but it sets up male vs female as competing, oppositional genders
  • the standard narrative is wrong; instead, it’s about sperm competition INSIDE the woman’s reproductive tract, within an ovulatory cycle
  • this is fierce egalitarianism — everything is shared, which is the smartest way to survive in a foraging society
  • monogamous primates (gorillas, gibbons) have small testicles and penii
  • …while promiscuous primates (humans, chimps) have larger testicles and penii
    • the human female is rare in being available for sex through her ENTIRE menstrual cycle
    • humans have testicles in a sac outside of the body to keep them cool so they’re available for sex at any time
    • A chimp’s swollen ass signals she’s available for sex with different males; this confused Darwin because he expected a pair-bonding relationship
  • our sex act to birth ratio is 1000 to 1, whereas for gorillas (monogamous) is 10 to 1
    • most mammals don’t have sex unless there’s a good chance of fertilizing
    • why do we have so much sex? we use sex to develop complex social networks — common in intelligent social species like dolphins and chimps
    • sex is like vegetarianism — it’s healthy, it’s social
  • examples
    • in a SW China village, women and men are sexually autonomous, both have many sexual partners; when woman has a child, it’s cared for by her, her sisters and her brothers; the biological father is a non-issue
    • in a S American (?) village, children are viewed as product of many men’s sperm, so if you want a strong, smart, and funny child, you have sex with those types of partners; the partners all recognize the role they played in fathering the child

* * * * *

Here’s the full list of TED notes!

Ian McEwan talks about writing but really talks about love and happiness and aging

I only recently discovered British novelist Ian McEwan [wikipedia], but he’s quickly become one of my favorite author-speakers. While I have yet to finish one of his novels, as the author of Atonement and Solar and 30 other books, I expect it will happen soon.

This talk is outwardly about how to write about love in fiction, but becomes a wide-ranging 14 minutes on everything from what makes Anna Karenina special to why writers don’t need to retire early. He speaks more articulately than I write, and I found myself taking extensive notes.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“it’s very difficult to do happiness in novels in a sustained way, we really leave that to poetry, lyric poetry, which can see our moments. its the nature of the human condition that we’re only truly happy in bursts, we can’t be constantly happy”

“literature loves difficulty, thrives on conflict”

“its the fleetingness that gives love its precious quality”

“the slow collapse of your body becomes a subject in itself”

“writers don’t have to retire early, they accumulate more life, more love, more disappointments, more of everything”

on novels:

“we have not yet invented another art form that allows us such access to the minds of others”

PS. I am starting a new project, tentatively called “A Good Life” (maybe “A Better Life”), where I explain what we can learn from books, philosophers, works of art, etc about how to live a good life. To me, good = meaningful = fulfilled = happy. Expect the first video soon!

18 favorite passages from East of Eden

I recently finished East of Eden [link] and it’s now among my favorite novels, up there with Gabo’s Love in the Time of Cholera and several of Murakami’s books. I was astonished, again and again, by how Steinbeck uses the same English language as you and I to create art in every paragraph. Using my Kindle I highlighted as many passages in this novel as I do in the most information packed nonfiction books, which is rare.

Here are eighteen of my favorite passages. There aren’t plot spoilers in the usual sense.

For a long time Adam lay in the cool water. He wondered how his brother felt, wondered whether now that his passion was chilling he would feel panic or sorrow or sick conscience or nothing. These things Adam felt for him.

“It doesn’t matter,” Cyrus said, and he repeated loudly, “It doesn’t matter,” and his tone said, “Shut your mouth. This is not your affair.”

I love you better. I always have. This may be a bad thing to tell you, but it’s true. I love you better. Else why would I have given myself the trouble of hurting you?

He spied on Alice, hidden, and from unsuspected eye-corner, and it was true. Sometimes when she was alone, and knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.

There was one thing Cyrus did not do, and perhaps it was clever of him. He never once promoted himself to noncommissioned rank. Private Trask he began, and Private Trask he remained. In the total telling, it made him at once the most mobile and ubiquitous private in the history of warfare.

Liza Hamilton was a very different kettle of Irish. Her head was small and round and it held small round convictions. She had a button nose and a hard little set-back chin, a gripping jaw set on its course even though the angels of God argued against it.

They called him a comical genius and carried his stories carefully home, and they wondered at how the stories spilled out on the way, for they never sounded the same repeated in their own kitchens.

She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.

As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.

“I would be disappointed if you had not become an atheist, and I read pleasantly that you have, in your age and wisdom, accepted agnosticism the way you’d take a cookie on a full stomach. But I would ask you with all my understanding heart not to try to convert your mother. Your last letter only made her think you are not well. Your mother does not believe there are many ills uncurable by good strong soup. She puts your brave attack on the structure of our civilization down to a stomach ache. It worries her. Her faith is a mountain, and you, my son, haven’t even got a shovel yet.”

She wins all arguments by the use of vehemence and the conviction that a difference of opinion is a personal affront.

“No, I don’t think she meant to kill me. She didn’t allow me that dignity. There was no hatred in her, no passion at all. I learned about that in the army. If you want to kill a man, you shoot at head or heart or stomach. No, she hit me where she intended. I can see the gun barrel moving over. I guess I wouldn’t have minded so much if she had wanted my death. That would have been a kind of love. But I was an annoyance, not an enemy.”

Una’s death struck Samuel like a silent earthquake. He said no brave and reassuring words, he simply sat alone and rocked himself. He felt that it was his neglect had done it. And now his tissue, which had fought joyously against time, gave up a little. His young skin turned old, his clear eyes dulled, and a little stoop came to his great shoulders.

“You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only—and that note unchanging sorrow.

Lee carried a tin lantern to light the way, for it was one of those clear early winter nights when the sky riots with stars and the earth seems doubly dark because of them.

Cal saw the confusion and helplessness on Aron’s face and felt his power, and it made him glad. He could outthink and outplan his brother. He was beginning to think he could do the same thing to his father. With Lee, Cal’s tricks did not work, for Lee’s bland mind moved effortlessly ahead of him and was always there waiting, understanding, and at the last moment cautioning quietly, “Don’t do it.” Cal had respect for Lee and a little fear of him. But Aron here, looking helplessly at him, was a lump of soft mud in his hands. Cal suddenly felt a deep love for his brother and an impulse to protect him in his weakness. He put his arm around Aron.

“They’ll change the face of the countryside. They get their clatter into everything,” the postmaster went on. “We even feel it here. Man used to come for his mail once a week. Now he comes every day, sometimes twice a day. He just can’t wait for his damn catalogue. Running around. Always running around.” He was so violent in his dislike that Adam knew he hadn’t bought a Ford yet. It was a kind of jealousy coming out. “I wouldn’t have one around,” the postmaster said, and this meant that his wife was at him to buy one. It was the women who put the pressure on. Social status was involved.

Cal turned slowly back to his desk. Lee watched him, holding his breath the way a doctor watches for the reaction to a hypodermic. Lee could see the reactions flaring through Cal—the rage at insult, the belligerence, and the hurt feelings following behind and out of that—just the beginning of relief.