Finding True Satisfaction Through a Relationship with God

Welcome to Uncover. My name is Hannah, and I'm your host this evening. Uncover is a series of talks put on by the Christian Union at lunchtimes. Oz Guinness is taking us through some of life's biggest questions, and in these evening talks, we have Tim Keller talking to us about the life that Jesus offers.

This evening, Tim is going to be speaking about uncovering satisfaction. Tim's going to speak for 30 minutes, and then we're going to have some time for Q&A. Tim leads a church in Manhattan, New York, and he's also written several books, some of which have ended up on the New York Times bestsellers list.

Let's invite Tim up and give him a hand.

So, Tim, you speak all over the world on all sorts of things, but you seem to come back to England a few times. Are you a bit of an Anglophile?

I think I've been here, I counted it, about 30 times from the States. That shows right away how old I must be. You start to work that out. Great! So, Tim, take it away.

Thank you! That's always a great start—little applause.

What we're going to do every night this week is look at five things that human beings can't live without. We're looking at, last night, meaning; tonight, satisfaction; and then freedom, identity, and hope. We can't live without those things.

Christianity, I'm arguing, not only explains why we need those things but supplies those needs, arguably in ways that are better than any other view. That's what I'm arguing right now.

One question came up last night, which is actually a great question. Even if what I'm showing you—Christianity offers—is a very powerful thing, if you find it compelling, if it resonates, you say, "Well, that would be great." But then the question comes up: "But how do you even know Christianity is true?"

Let me say a couple of things about that. Actually, Oz Guinness, tomorrow at noon or lunch here in this spot, is going to be talking about truth. How do you know? How can you be sure of anything?

I'm not going to be in the evening talks directly saying, "Here are the arguments for why Christianity is true." The fact, of course, is that there's no comprehensive view of things—whether you're a secular person, a Buddhist, or a Christian—there's no comprehensive view of things that can be demonstrably approved in what we call in America some slam-dunk argument that everybody agrees must be true.

In some ways, you can't prove anything finally, right? Didn't you see The Matrix? There's no proof that you aren't in a vat somewhere with plugs coming out of the back of your head. There's no proof; there's no way to know that.

And yet, you can come to understand truth, but it's never through one demonstrable argument. It's cumulatively. There are rational arguments, there are personal arguments, there are even social arguments. You see how it works itself out in people's lives. Cumulatively, you can come, I believe, to the assurance that Christianity is true.

I'm not going to necessarily be unpacking all those arguments in the evening. I am going to be each night, though, showing you a reason why you ought to be trying to find out if it's true. I'm going to try to be motivating you to take the time and even be patient.

I think a lot of folks in places like Oxford or Manhattan, where I'm from, won't sit still to even think about the reasons why Christianity might be true because they say, "It doesn't offer me anything." That's just not true. It offers you the things I'm mentioning tonight and every night this week, and these things are actually compelling.

In some ways, they also provide some argument for the truth of Christianity. As I'm going to show you, they resonate so deeply you begin to ask the question, "Well, if they resonate this deeply, maybe that's telling us something about the nature of things."

Tonight, I want to talk about satisfaction, and I want to read to you from a passage of the Bible. I'm not going to unpack all this; it's John chapter 6, verses 25 to 35. If you have enough light to read it, you're sitting on a piece of literature that has this text in it. I'm not going to be unpacking it tonight; I'm going to be referring to it.

There are some themes in here that I think will shed light on our topic. This is John chapter 6, verses 25 to 35.

Jesus answered, "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, for on him God the Father has placed a seal of approval."

Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"

Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

So they asked him, "What sign then will you give us that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"

Jesus said to them, "Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

"Sir," they said, "always give us this bread."

Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

First of all, I'd like you to see that there's such a thing as spiritual hunger. I like you to think with me about the reality of spiritual hunger. Jesus uses a metaphor; it's clearly a metaphor. He says God offers you the bread of life, the bread from heaven.

It's a metaphor in a couple of ways. One is, in those days, people usually didn't have meat for a meal; only the rich people had meat all the time. You and I came to think of meat as the center of the meal. Actually, for most people, bread was the thing that kept you on your feet.

That's the reason why, in ancient times, bread was a metaphor for life itself and certainly for strength. But for the Jews who knew the account from the book of Exodus, when they were on their way to the promised land in the wilderness, the book of Exodus says that God every morning sent manna.

Manna looked like frost on the ground, but it could be gathered up and turned into kind of cakes or a form of bread, and it was very sweet. So when Jesus says God gives you the bread of heaven, he's talking metaphorically about something that is both powerful because it gives you strength and pleasant—it's a delight.

Power and pleasure—it's a metaphor for what could only be called spiritual fulfillment, spiritual satisfaction, maybe you could say spiritual contentment. He says God offers that.

But then he says in verse 27, "Do not work for food that spoils, for food that endures to eternal life is what you will need." But don't work for food that spoils.

Now Jesus is extending the metaphor and saying most of us, maybe all of us, are seeking that spiritual satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment in things that will disappoint us. Maybe not right away. Food that spoils doesn't mean it spoils immediately, but food that spoils is Jesus' metaphorical way for saying that there's a spiritual hunger we all have.

There's a desire for fulfillment and contentment that we all have, and we look for it in the wrong places. We expect things to give it to us that, in the end, we just discover it spoils—that is, it disappoints us.

So let me put the thesis like this because this is a thesis I'm going to be testing with you tonight: We all have a desire for something that, when you're young, you don't even recognize it as such. You're looking for something beyond the things that ordinary life can give you.

When you're young, you're pretty sure that if I get the right love partner, if I get the right spouse, if I get the right career, if I make some money, if this and that happen in the future, I'm going to live a satisfied life.

You don't realize—and it takes quite a number of years in many cases to find out—that there's something I'm actually looking for in those experiences that I assume is inherent in the experiences, and it's not. You're looking for something that the experiences will never be able to give you.

They'll never be able to give it to you because they spoil, as it were. As a result, as the years go by, you will find that you're a lot less happy than you think you are. You will learn how deeply discontent you really are.

The things that you thought certainly were going to satisfy you, certainly going to fill you up, certainly going to give you a sense that, you know, I'm content with life—they're not going to be able to do it.

Then you're going to begin to see, "I am spiritually hungry." If you don't know you're spiritually hungry right now, it's because you don't recognize the spiritual hunger for what it is. It's because you naively think that things out there, ordinary life, are going to give you those things. It won't.

That's Jesus' thesis; that's my thesis. Now, there's a lot of testimony to tell you, and I don't just take it from me. There's the well-known classical writer Horace, who simply said this: "No one lives content."

Wallace Stevens—I'm just jumping around the centuries here—the writer Wallace Stevens says, "In contentment, I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss."

See, there we go. He's beginning this little phenomenological description of what I'm talking about. He says, "Even in contentment, I feel the need for some imperishable bliss." As he's content in a situation or in an experience, he immediately realizes, "I'm not going to be able to hold on to it," and immediately begins to turn sour because he knows he won't be able to keep it.

That begins to make him long for something that he can keep. Or, you know, Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian playwright, has an interesting play. He actually uses this and talks about this more than one place. He says, "When you take away the life lie of anyone, they lose all their happiness."

If you ask some scholars, "What is the life lie?" he talks about that in a number of places. The life lie, according to Ibsen, is the lie that this or this or this is actually going to make you happy because nothing will.

That's the life lie. In other words, you assume that you'll feel secure, you'll feel valuable, you'll feel worthwhile if you get this or this or this. At some point, life will take away your life lie, and then you'll be destroyed.

Many years ago, when I first moved to New York City, I used to read the Village Voice a lot. It's sort of a hip downtown left-wing paper that certainly tells you a lot about what's happening in New York—lots of great commentary.

But there was a woman who used to write for it named Cynthia Heimel. Cynthia Heimel was a columnist who lived in New York for many years. She was in L.A. now, but she knew a number of people who were trying to make it in show business.

She actually mentioned some of the names—I'm not going to mention who they are, but she says, "I knew a number of people," and she's writing in the 1980s, actually, who, when they were working as the hat check behind the cosmetic counter at Macy's or a guy who was a bouncer for a local club, and then they made it in show business.

Now there they are; they're big celebrities. Here's what she says about them. She noticed something about all of them because she knew them before and knew them after they were successful.

She writes this: "That giant thing that they were striving for—that fame thing that was going to make everything okay, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and happiness—had happened, and nothing changed. They were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable."

Now she's referring to the fact that people who thought, "If I get that, if I make it in Hollywood, if I become an actor or an actress who gets twenty million dollars for a movie, then everything will be fine."

She says when they discovered that they were still them, the disillusionment made them actually considerably angrier, nastier people than they were before. She goes on about that; it's a little catty, but she's probably right.

Then she says the last thing: "I believe that if God really wants to play a rotten practical joke on us, he grants our deepest wish and then giggles merrily as we begin to realize we want to kill ourselves."

By the way, she's not a Christian writer, but that is profoundly biblical. If God really wants to play a rotten practical joke on us, he grants our deepest wish and then giggles merrily as we suddenly realize—or eventually realize—we want to kill ourselves.

The thing that was going to make everything right, and it didn't. And you know, if you hear me saying this and you're a young Oxford student and you say, "Yeah, yeah, I've heard about all these disillusioned people, billionaires, and their life isn't happy," and you say, "Not me; I'll be different."

No, you won't. You won't be different. Nobody ever has been different. If you were able to grasp that now, the deep disappointment awaits you—that the things you're sure are going to make you happy, you're sure are going to fulfill you, will not.

If you knew that right now, it would change the course of your life. I'm trying to help that happen, by the way, right now.

And of course, that's Cynthia Heimel. And by the way, one other thing to do: go onto YouTube sometime and find Peggy Lee, 1969, singing "Is That All There Is?" It's classic, and it's based on a Thomas Mann novella called Disillusionment.

Basically, the song is about a woman who goes through life thinking, "If I'm in love, then everything will be fine." At the end, she says, "Is that all there is to love? It didn't satisfy me."

She goes through, and there's always something missing. Finally, the song goes like this: "I suppose you're wondering why, if I feel this way about life, I don't just end it all."

And I thought about it, except I'm almost positive that death is going to be every bit as disappointing as life. There's no reason to hurry to get that done.

Essentially, it's a terrific song explaining what Cynthia Heimel says, what Horace says, what Ibsen says, what I'm saying. That is this: except I have a local lad who made good eventually, a guy named C.S. Lewis, who actually put it in the most perhaps classic way in his BBC radio talk on hope.

I think it is that chapter. He says this: "Most people, if they really learned how to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want and want acutely something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never keep their promise.

The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love or first think of some foreign country or take up some subject that excites us are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning can really satisfy.

I am not speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages or trips and so on. I'm speaking of the best possible ones. There is always something we grasp that in that first moment of longing that just fades away in the reality.

The spouse may be a good spouse; the scenery has been excellent; it has turned out to be a good job, but it has evaded us.

So the thesis is that you're looking for it, and it takes usually a number of years to even realize you're looking for it. You think, "I just want to live life; that's all. I just want to live life."

No, you're looking for something that ordinary life can't give you—that life actually can't give you. You don't realize how discontent you are. You don't really understand how deep the desires of your heart are. You don't know how deep your heart goes, and the things you think are going to satisfy it won't.

Now, the second thing I'd like to talk to you about more briefly is I'd like to give you seven strategies that people take with their spiritual hunger.

There are seven ways to go about handling your spiritual hunger. There's basically two ways, but I'm going to break each one down into four categories and three.

There are two ways you can either decide, when you begin to experience disappointment, that it is still out there; I haven't gotten it yet, but it's still out there. Or you may decide it doesn't exist.

There are four things to do on the way to if you think it is out there. There's really four categories of strategy for a spiritual guy.

I already gave you one. I call it the young strategy. The young strategy is to say, "Well, I just don't know you're unhappy. I think you're just getting ready to be happy."

Because as you just, if you dot your i's and cross your t's, if you do well here, you get a good job, you play your cards right, you actually are unhappy; you just don't recognize it.

You just feel like, "Well, of course I'm going to be happy. I haven't gotten out there to do all the things that I'm going to do."

So I call that the young and naive approach—not to even recognize how spiritually hungry you are. That will change.

The second approach is what I call the angry approach. As you start to move out in life and you begin to realize that I'm not getting it, one of the things to do is to blame the things that you might call barriers.

For example, if you're the victim of prejudice or discrimination, if you are in a society that is not open to a lot of the things that you want to do, or if there are individuals who have wronged you.

If you get into business, for example, and your partner basically betrays you, you did it on a handshake, you didn't sign a contract, the partner does something and ruins you, and you have no recourse.

Now, there are all kinds of things that can make you pretty unhappy. Instead of assuming that it is not out there or it is out there, you just assume everything would be fine if it wasn't for him or for her or for that or for this policy.

So you become an activist, or you become a vigilante, and you go after the person. In other words, you get angry, and that kind of gives you meaning in life for a while. It's even kind of satisfying, by the way. It gives you some satisfaction until eventually you break through that barrier, and you have the freedom to get the job, and you find it is not there.

A third strategy, besides the young and naive and the angry strategy, is I guess what you call the driven strategy. Actually, C.S. Lewis talks about that in his radio talk in that chapter in Mere Christianity on hope, where he says you just assume that even though I haven't found it yet, I need to get rid of this spouse and get a better spouse.

I need to get rid of this job and get a better job. I need to get rid of this house and get a better house. You assume it's still out there, and so you just go through houses and spouses and jobs and lives, assured that the next time I do this, it's going to come.

So you're driven; you're frantic. The fourth approach is to fear because you decide you blame yourself when you don't find it out there very often.

I mean, some people get angry, and some people get frantic, but a lot of people begin to beat themselves up, and they say there's something wrong with me. I haven't done well enough; I haven't gone far enough up the job ladder.

I haven't, and nobody loves me, and nobody wants to date me, and something's wrong with me. I'm ugly; I'm stupid; I have personal hygiene problems.

You get mad at yourself. Actually, Francis Bufford, who's a British writer, has written a hilarious book called Unapologetic, and he has a place where he says this: "Most people, it takes a number of years to realize what he calls 'the human tendency not just to lurch and stumble and screw up by accident, but our active inclination to break stuff.'"

Human beings have an active inclination to break stuff, including promises, relationships we care about, to break our own well-being and other people's, as well as material objects whose high gloss positively seems to invite a big fat scratch.

You can get quite a long way through adult life without recognizing your active tendency to break things. But then the realization comes—that one of those classic moments of adult failure when your marriage ends, when a career stalls or crumbles.

It doesn't have to be dramatic, though, and you're lying in the bath, and you notice you're 39, and the way you've been living scarcely bears any resemblance to what you thought you always wanted.

Yet you realize you got there by a long series of choices. What he's trying to say is that sometimes the response to not finding it, you start to hate yourself. You start to get depressed; you might get suicidal.

So some people say it is still out there, but I haven't found it: naive, angry, frantic, despondent.

Well, some people finally, though, realize maybe it doesn't exist. I want something that just isn't; it's imaginary; it's wrong.

There are three things you could do with that, and in some ways, all three of them seem to be an improvement, but I'm not sure they are in the end.

There's the altruistic way. There are many people who say, "I thought it was something I would find in acquisition and in success and in getting things, and now I realize it is not in things."

So you become altruistic. You start to become a social activist, or you become an advocate for the poor, or you just lose yourself in doing good. You lose yourself in works of charity or justice.

Charles Taylor, by the way, a Canadian philosopher, has written a great book, A Secular Age, and talks about the fact that if you do that—if you say, "I'm actually going to find myself by caring for other people"—he actually says that that very often can lead to despising the poor.

You have to have a tremendous amount of internal contentment in order to go out there and help needy people. Taylor says if you don't, if you try to find satisfaction or contentment through helping other people, you'll come to despise them because they are hard to help.

People don't want to be helped, and you'll end up becoming incredibly paternalistic and despising the very people that you're supposed to be helping because it's an incredible drain. It doesn't really work.

Another possibility: people say, "Okay, it's not out there," and they just become—and this is, I think, your average British sophisticated secular person over the age of 45.

This is where this person gets. The person says, "Yes, when I was younger, I thought it was out there, and now, of course, I've grown up. I realize nobody is ever satisfied; nobody's ever content. I've stopped chasing rainbows. I've stopped crying after the moon, and I just realize, you know, nothing really is all that satisfying. I pretty much have to kind of live for myself."

There are two problems with that, and they're severe. One is that almost always creates a certain amount of pride and self-righteousness. The cynics, the sophisticated person, the person sort of hardened their hearts, very often they are very condescending toward other people—incredibly condescending.

Anybody who seems to be happy, they just laugh at; they scoff at. But worse than that is if you decide the thing I'm trying to get—the fulfillment, the meaning, the contentment, the joy, the happiness I'm trying to get—it's just not there, and you harden your heart against it, you are dehumanizing yourself.

I mean, what makes you a human being and not an animal is that you want those things. It's what makes you a human being and not an animal is that you want love, and you want meaning, and you want satisfaction.

And there's one last category, which I won't give enough time to, and that is what both Eastern religion and the old Greek Stoics and many of the Greek philosophers did. They said the reason why we're always unhappy is because we attach our heart to things, so you detach.

Buddhism actually has a version of this; Stoicism—the old Stoicism was a version of this. The reason why you're so unhappy is because you attach your heart to things, and then you lose those things.

So don't love anything too much; just detach. Remind yourself that everything is changing, and you'll never be satisfied anywhere.

Even though that's got a better philosophical pedigree than just the cynic, the sophisticated cynic that sneers at everything, that also hardens your heart. I think that also dehumanizes you.

And so you see, here's what we are: you want something that nothing in this life can give you. If you try to just harden your heart so that it doesn't bother you, you dehumanize yourself.

And so we get down to this very, very famous place in that chapter by C.S. Lewis where he says this: "So a duckling wants to swim; there's such a thing as water. A baby wants to suck; there's such a thing as milk. And if I find in myself a longing which this world cannot meet, then it probably means that I was made for another world."

Elsewhere, C.S. Lewis says, "How could an idiotic universe produce creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger and better and subtler than itself? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been or would not always be purely aquatic creatures?"

And if you are really the product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home here? See, it's a strong indication that we've got a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, and you will find that out.

If you don't just—if you don't harden your heart and destroy your desire for this and dehumanize yourself, you're going to be basically saying, like Peggy Lee, "Is this all there is?"

And of course, the biblical answer is no.

Now, what is the solution? What is the Christian solution? Briefly, an analysis, and then finally the actual offer.

An analysis—the best analysis I know of is the great writer, Christian theologian St. Augustine. St. Augustine says that the reason why we have the discontent we have is because our loves are disordered.

Augustine says what really makes you what you are is not so much what you believe and not so much what you think—not even so much what you do—but it's what you love, especially what you love most.

See, the Stoic and the Buddhist says your problem is you love things; detach. Augustine says, "No, the problem is you don't love the most important things most and the least important things least and the middle things middle."

You love things you shouldn't love most least, and the things you should love most least, and the things you should love least most.

So, for example, he says loves are disordered. If you love your career more than your family, you'll destroy your family because your love is disordered.

There's nothing wrong with loving your career, but not out of order. If you love making money more than you love justice, then you'll exploit your workers because your loves are out of order.

There's nothing wrong with loving making money, actually, but not in that order. And if you love your children more than you love God, you will smother them with your expectations; you'll drive them away; you'll crush them because they will be the source you think of all your happiness.

They won't be. And what Augustine says is we were made by a tri-personal God—a Trinitarian God, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in one God—that's the Christian understanding.

God is inherently relational. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been loving and knowing each other through all eternity, and then we're made in His image according to the Bible.

Therefore, we're made to love Him supremely. What Augustine says is don't attach your heart; don't harden your heart. Don't say, "Oh, I guess it's not out there," and turn yourself into something hardened.

No, the problem is not that you love too much; the problem is that you don't love God more than anything else. You don't love anything less. Love God more.

And when you love God supremely, then and only then does the contentment start to come. Or to put it this way, St. Augustine says, "Only love of the immutable will bring tranquility."

If you love anything that you can lose—anything in this world—number one, it won't be big enough to fill your heart; your heart's deeper than you know.

And number two, it's too fragile. One of the things that my wife and I know is that we've got three sons, we've got daughters-in-law, we've got grandchildren, we've got art, we've got a loving family, and we know that even if you're lucky enough—even if you're fortunate enough to live a long time—if you do live a long time, you will see every other person that matters to you in the ground.

And you're the fortunate one because you have a long life. If all the source of contentment and love is your family, that's intolerable.

Augustine says only if you love God more than you love anything else will your heart not always be broken, or you'll be hardening it in order to deal with how it tears you up.

If you love anything more than you love God, you've got to love God supremely because it's the only thing that can't be taken from you.

And only when you love Him supremely does everything else go into order. Instead of looking to these things as the deepest source of your contentment, you can enjoy them for what they are.

Instead of looking at money as the way that you get contentment or your career as the way you get contentment, it just becomes work—a great way to use your gifts.

It just becomes money—a great way to supply your family. It doesn't become your source of contentment.

Now, here's where we come at the end. If you say, "So you're telling me I just need to have an experience of God. I just have to experience God."

No, I happen to know that if I just tell myself, "Okay, you need to love God more than you love Cathy. You need to love God more than you love your career. You love God; you just need to love God." That doesn't work, does your heart work like that?

It's tell it what to do? No. Here's what you do: Jesus Christ does not say, "I give you the bread of life. I have this wonderful bread; I have this spiritual power; I have this connection with God, and I'm the dispenser of it. Come to me, and I'll dispense it to you, and I'll give you this wonderful feeling."

No, He says, "I am the bread of life."

You know, outside of salt and a couple of minerals, everything that you eat has died that you may live. Every single thing you eat has died that you might live. That's how it works—substitutionary sacrifice.

The plant died, and if you're eating bread, not only did the grain die, but the bread has to be broken into pieces. If the bread stays whole, you starve, and you fall apart.

Or the bread is broken into pieces, and you take it in, and then you live. When Jesus Christ says, "I'm the bread of the world; I'm the bread of life," this is my body broken for you.

Here's what He's saying: "I am God become breakable. I am God become killable. I'm God become vulnerable, and I've come to earth to die on the cross for your sin."

You say, "Sin? Look, if God really did make you, and if He keeps you alive every minute, what do you owe Him? You owe Him love."

If you were to take a child and raise that child up and work your fingers to the bone to send that child to college, and afterwards the child sent you a Christmas card occasionally, hardly gave you the time of day, that's wrong.

It's wrong, is it not? Because that child, in a sense, owes you not just deference but love. And of course, it would be far greater for God.

The fact that we don't live for God and we don't love Him supremely is wrong—much more wrong than that would be of a child to a parent.

The only way for God to reestablish the relationship is just like you. If someone wrongs you and you forgive them, you absorb the debt, or you make them pay.

If somebody comes to your house, has a party, breaks your furniture, they can say, "Oh, I'm sorry; let me pay for it." Did you say, "No, no, no, no. I'll pay for it; I forgive you."

You see, if something wrong has been done, you need to pay for it, or the person needs to pay for it. If God's going to forgive you, there's a debt to be paid.

And Jesus Christ says, "I have come that you might live. I'm broken so you can be whole."

Only if I see Him doing that does that change my heart. You'll never get contentment unless you see that. Unless you see that love, you can't force your heart to love.

Just a kind of God in the air, a God of love, an abstract God—that'll never change your heart. This will change it, and this will begin to give you it.

Yann Martel wrote The Life of Pi some years ago; it became a movie that I did not understand. But it's about Pi, a character who's exploring various religions.

At one point, he's leaning toward Hinduism, thinking of becoming a Hindu, but then he talks to a Catholic priest. The priest starts to tell about the gospel story about Jesus Christ coming to earth and dying on the cross for our sins.

This is what Pi says when he hears the Gospel story: "That a God should put up with adversity, I could understand. The gods of Hinduism faced their fair share of thieves, bullies, kidnappers, and usurpers. What is the Ramayana but the account of one long bad day for Rama?

Adversity? Yes. Reverses of fortune? Yes. Treachery? Yes. But the cross? Humiliation? Death? I couldn't imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets, and to top it off, crucified at the hands of mere humans to boot.

I'd never heard of a Hindu god dying, but divinity should not be blighted by death. It's wrong. It was wrong of this Christian God to let His avatar die. That's tantamount to letting a part of Himself die.

For if God the Son is to die, it cannot be faked. If God on the cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the passion of Christ into the farce of Christ.

The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me that His death was but once. A dead God is always a dead God. Even resurrected, the Son must have the taste of death forever in His mouth.

The Trinity must be tainted with the taste of death. There must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave that to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful? Why spoil what is perfect love?"

That was Father Martin's answer. That's where your contentment lies—knowing that we are going to listen to a videotaped account of an Oxford student who is going to tell you something about a spiritual journey that he's been on.

After that, you can text your questions into that number that you've been seeing up here, and Hannah will come back up, and we will do some questions and answers before we wrap up.

When I was young, I was taught that hard work and striving to be the best was the key to success and happiness. That got me pretty far until I came to university.

Before that, it wasn't that I didn't have to think; I just didn't have the thing for myself. When I was young, success was a pretty straightforward narrative. I knew what I had to do, what I was going to be measured up against, and when I could stop.

For me, that was academics and chess. I was just studying hard, getting my A's, going to a good school, rinse and repeat until I landed up here in Oxford.

But having life hurdling straight at me wasn't all that great. They magnified my problems, my choices, and my responsibilities. Life wasn't just about figuring out how to do a problem sheet; it was figuring out what I was going to do with my life.

Conscription in the Singaporean Army gave me two long years, and in that time, I got a good disillusionment and jaded with what I wanted to do. Every time I felt unhappy, I projected my happiness into the future.

But every time we should let go, the fleeting sense of happiness vanishes. I'm not from a Christian family, but having friends that brought me to church was a great experience.

I used to treat it as a matter of intellectual curiosity: What would people put out so much suffering to defend something that they could not prove to others? Why was Christianity so special if I just wanted something to make myself feel better?

But as I began to ask my questions, things started to click together. As I read the Bible for the first time, I was amazed to find out how could so many people write so many different books over such a long period of time, and yet the Bible remained coherent.

My vision of life and much beyond the material things of this earth, I realized that Christianity was not just the way to make myself feel better. We cannot accept the gifts but reject the giver.

As I came to look at Jesus, I realized that this really was God Himself who wanted to know me. The promises that God made to me in the Bible were almost too good to be true.

Paul writes in Romans that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved—not just for forgiveness for sins past, but also hopeful future where there's no death, crying, mourning, or pain.

Seeing that my life has changed since becoming a Christian is a bit of an understatement. I've learned to be kind to others as well as to myself. I've learned to be grateful and content and not to take things for granted.

I've also learned to be more open-minded because the Bible has things to say about almost anything under the sun. A little more about God and His promises, and that even though it can be difficult trying at times to be a Christian, I've learned to find joy, peace, and hope in an everlasting figure that is Jesus Christ.

Right, so we're going to have some time for Q&A. I think if we can have a first question: How do you explain the millions of secular people who live their entire lives without ever experiencing this trajectory towards disappointment? Did they ever just realize, or is it not possible that they did, in fact, lead happy and fulfilling lives?

Well, where'd it go? It's so long you've put it back; that's helpful.

First of all, if you actually do live in a culture that is—its deep background is that you should detach. Many Eastern cultures are like that. A lot of the ancient pagan cultures were shaming on our cultures, and shame and honor cultures back basically do.

I think suggests that you detach the heart. I think Western cultures sometimes might feel it a little bit more poignantly, but I guess in the end, I would rather contest your initial premise that millions and millions of people don't experience disappointment.

I don't know how you can say that, actually. You know, it may be showing my age. I'm being a minister; I've spent quite a lot of time with an awful lot of people.

But I do think that disappointment does tend to grow as you get older, and I do think people do have that trajectory. All I could tell you is I do think that there are certain kinds of cultures and even certain kinds of temperaments and certain kinds of family backgrounds that would make you naturally more stoic, and your expectations are maybe dialed down a little bit more in some cultures.

That doesn't mean that there's not a trajectory toward disappointment; I think there is.

Can we have the next question, please?

If I cannot find complete satisfaction in, for example, a great marriage, should I still go for such as it can give?

Sure! Thank goodness—a question that I could answer well.

Maybe I should put another clause onto the question that you didn't ask, as I said I went by fast. This is the problem with talking about such big topics.

I said that the Stoic shame and honor culture, Eastern approach, is you dial down your expectations; you dial down the attachment of your heart to love the object.

I do know a couple of Stoic authors, for example, who say that—I forget who it was, once the author, an ancient Greek author, said when you kiss your little boy in the morning, in your heart say, "You may die tomorrow; you may die next week."

Just make sure you don't attach your heart too much to the child. I really think that the danger with marriage without God in your life is either you turn the love partner into your Savior.

This person's love is what really makes you feel good about yourself. Ernest Becker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Denial of Death, actually says that without God—and he was an atheist—this is without God; it's almost impossible not to make your love partner into someone that gives you what that love partner can't give you.

Because no human being can give that to you. If you put so much of your desire for happiness in that person and so much of your desire for affirmation in that person, if that person has a problem, you melt down.

You can't give them what they need because you love them, in a sense, too much. This is what Augustine is saying.

The other possibility is to detach and just see that your spouse is a kind of business partner and not get yourself too attached. Both of those approaches—both of those alternatives are terrible.

You leave God out; you're going to end up going one way or the other in your marriage. It doesn't mean that there aren't people who do a pretty good job of muddling along, and of course, that's the British thing, but along nevertheless.

I really feel like you put God in the center, and suddenly it takes the pressure off the marriage, but it also keeps you from detaching your heart too much from your spouse, and things can really begin to fly.

Just because humans are often unsatisfied doesn't mean there is a God. Shouldn't we all just lower our expectations?

Well, twice I have said this; that's a perfectly right question. This is the problem with me talking to you for just a few minutes at night and not being able to be a friend and hear you out and to give you the other things.

I did mention that tomorrow, for example, Oz is going to talk about truth here at lunchtime. How do you know something is true? I didn't go through that tonight.

I didn't say, "Here's how you know Christianity is true," but I can tell you there are— even though you're not your Oxford students, you may just hear that there aren't any good arguments for the truth of Christianity.

That's just not true. They keep coming up—three or four books in the last three or four years, in some cases by people who aren't Christians, are making very strong arguments for that.

Consciousness—human consciousness is strong evidence that there's something more than just natural processes at work. Tom Nagel, excuse me, New York NYU professor, has written a book called Mind and Cosmos in which he argues that you cannot account for human consciousness just as evolution and natural processes.

You've got a number of other—if you're willing to listen, there are really strong arguments for why Christianity is true. Tonight, I just tried to say, "Why wouldn't you want it to be true? If this is the possibility, why would you at least take the time to explore?"

That's actually all I'm trying to accomplish tonight.

If God is all-loving, then why does He allow the things that we love to be taken away from us?

That's a suffering question, by the way. Are you doing a whole day on suffering? What day? Friday?

Now, by the way, I don't want you to think that Oz Guinness is a panacea for all the questions I have left unaddressed, but in a sense, that is a question about suffering.

You know, why does God allow evil and suffering in the world? Because basically, even evil and suffering is taking away things that we love.

I'll just say two things about it. The philosophical question of why God allows suffering essentially comes—the best answer is this: if you and I can't think of a good reason why God allows the world to continue to go on with suffering and evil in it, you know, the Christian understanding is that God will end it someday.

But right now, He hasn't decided to do that, and He's allowing it to go on. If you ask the question, "Why is God allowing it to go on? Why hasn't it stopped now?"

The answer is, "I don't have a good answer." And if you say, "That's not good enough," Alvin Plantinga, a Christian philosopher at Notre Dame for many years, said that there's a hidden premise when people reason like this: "God would not allow suffering unless there's a good reason for it. There are no good reasons for all the terrible things that happen. Therefore, either there is no God, or He's a bad guy."

Can I do that again for you? If there was a good, powerful God, He wouldn't allow evil and suffering without a good reason. There are no good reasons for all the terrible things that happen.

Therefore, either there is no God, or He's not good, or He's not all-powerful. Plantinga would say there's a hidden premise in there, and the hidden premise is because you and I can't think of any good reason why God has intended evil and suffering yet there can't be one.

Think about that; that's a non-sequitur. See, when you say there is no good reason, what that means is we can't think of any good reason.

Charles Taylor, in his book A Secular Age, points out that before 1500, before the year about 1500, people knew that evil and suffering was a terrible thing, but virtually nobody—in fact, he actually says it wasn't really until the Lisbon earthquake in 1756—virtually nobody ever said, "Because of evil and suffering, I can't believe in God."

He says it took a modern mindset, and the modern mindset is if I can't think of a good reason why God is doing something or is not doing something, there can't be one.

He says only modern people—ancient people said, "Hey, if there is a God, surely there would be ways past our finding out." Modern people don't believe that.

They believe in their powers of exhaustive surveillance. They think if I can't think of a good reason why there is evil and suffering and it hasn't ended, there can't be one.

Taylor says, and Plantinga says, and I say, that's a non-sequitur. Of course, there might be some reasons, and since you can't prove that, you can't disprove God with suffering and evil.

The existence of—but the other thing to say is Christianity is the only religion that says God actually came down and participated in suffering.

So we don't know what the reason is that God allows evil and suffering to keep on going, but we do know what the reason is not: it can't be because He doesn't love us, or He wouldn't have come down and gotten involved.

Actually, there's no other religion that dares to say that God has suffered with us, and that is a huge emotional psychological resource.

So Christianity has not a slam-dunk answer for why God allows evil and suffering, but He does have a lot to say to us and a lot of helps for us.

We have time for one more or not?

Can other religions provide what you describe?

Great question! Last night, I said more clearly what I could have said tonight. Notice how at the end I said that Augustine believed and taught that the reason why we are discontent is because our loves are disordered.

They're out of order, and that you can see that at one level. If I love my career more than my family, in the end, my career blows up because my personal life blows up.

If you don't love things in the proper order, it screws up your life. Then he just projects that and says, "Well, if there is a God, then you'd have to not just believe in God; you ought to love Him."

Your heart should be more engaged in God than anywhere else. That way, you don't make an idol of—you don't take a spouse or a career and try to turn it into your main source of satisfaction, which it never can be.

Or you have to harden your heart and detach from it. So he basically says God—so there is a sense in which any religion that believes in God and says love God could, at that level, offer you what other religions could also offer: God something beyond this world to help you deal with your discontent.

What I try to show at the very end is what's unique about Christianity is—well, I'll speak personally. My heart doesn't just get in gear when I tell it to do something. It has to be captured by the beauty of something.

I can't just tell myself, "You know, love this." It has to capture my imagination. And of course, the gospel story of Jesus Christ becoming bread, being broken to pieces, becoming vulnerable, and doing it voluntarily for me—that's a story that's not an abstraction.

That's quite compelling—not for everybody, but I do think what that does is that gives you that hard engagement that you need in order to get the contentment.

So I would say Christianity gives you resources that other religions don't, and yet the answer is that Christianity gives—other religions also do give you resources that secularism doesn't.

And so my answer is basically the same last night as it is tonight.

So I'll wrap up a little bit here, and yeah, yeah.

So we're just going to move to Tim for some closing thoughts in a minute. If your question wasn't answered, Tim's happy to hang around for a little bit at the end if you want to ask him your question yourself.

Thanks, Tim.

Thanks, Hannah. We'll come back to close this up.

Here's my closing thought to you: one thing I already told you—the next two lunchtime events will be very important to get to. If the questions that you brought up here, if you're really interested in more information, more help, come to us, number one.

Number two, what Hannah just said: if you didn't get your questions answered, I stick around afterwards, and you can queue up or not.

It's always interesting to see people from different parts of the world. They come at me in very different ways—some more directly, some more indirectly—but I'll be here for you.

The only other thing to say is when Jesus says, "I'm the bread of life," what that means is He's not a dispenser of some kind of spiritual power. He's not a prophet or a sage.

He's not someone that if you push the right buttons, do the right thing, somehow you'll get this feeling. When He says, "I'm the bread of life," what He means is you have to receive me to get this contentment.

He's not just going to give you some feeling of contentment; you have to get Him. "I am the bread of life."

You know, outside of salt and a couple of minerals, everything that you eat has died that you may live. Every single thing you eat has died that you might live.

That's how it works—substitutionary sacrifice. The plant died, and if you're eating bread, not only did the grain die, but the bread has to be broken into pieces.

If the bread stays whole, you starve, and you fall apart. Or the bread is broken into pieces, and you take it in, and then you live.

When Jesus Christ says, "I'm the bread of the world; I'm the bread of life," this is my body broken for you.

Here's what He's saying: "I am God become breakable. I am God become killable. I'm God become vulnerable, and I've come to earth to die on the cross for your sin."

You say, "Sin? Look, if God really did make you, and if He keeps you alive every minute, what do you owe Him? You owe Him love."

If you were to take a child and raise that child up and work your fingers to the bone to send that child to college, and afterwards the child sent you a Christmas card occasionally, hardly gave you the time of day, that's wrong.

It's wrong, is it not? Because that child, in a sense, owes you not just deference but love. And of course, it would be far greater for God.

The fact that we don't live for God and we don't love Him supremely is wrong—much more wrong than that would be of a child to a parent.

The only way for God to reestablish the relationship is just like you. If someone wrongs you and you forgive them, you absorb the debt, or you make them pay.

If somebody comes to your house, has a party, breaks your furniture, they can say, "Oh, I'm sorry; let me pay for it." Did you say, "No, no, no, no. I'll pay for it; I forgive you."

You see, if something wrong has been done, you need to pay for it, or the person needs to pay for it. If God's going to forgive you, there's a debt to be paid.

And Jesus Christ says, "I have come that you might live. I'm broken so you can be whole."

Only if I see Him doing that does that change my heart. You'll never get contentment unless you see that. Unless you see that love, you can't force your heart to love.

Just a kind of God in the air, a God of love, an abstract God—that'll never change your heart. This will change it, and this will begin to give you it.

Yann Martel wrote The Life of Pi some years ago; it became a movie that I did not understand. But it's about Pi, a character who's exploring various religions.

At one point, he's leaning toward Hinduism, thinking of becoming a Hindu, but then he talks to a Catholic priest. The priest starts to tell about the gospel story about Jesus Christ coming to earth and dying on the cross for our sins.

This is what Pi says when he hears the Gospel story: "That a God should put up with adversity, I could understand. The gods of Hinduism faced their fair share of thieves, bullies, kidnappers, and usurpers. What is the Ramayana but the account of one long bad day for Rama?

Adversity? Yes. Reverses of fortune? Yes. Treachery? Yes. But the cross? Humiliation? Death? I couldn't imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets, and to top it off, crucified at the hands of mere humans to boot.

I'd never heard of a Hindu god dying, but divinity should not be blighted by death. It's wrong. It was wrong of this Christian God to let His avatar die. That's tantamount to letting a part of Himself die.

For if God the Son is to die, it cannot be faked. If God on the cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the passion of Christ into the farce of Christ.

The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me that His death was but once. A dead God is always a dead God. Even resurrected, the Son must have the taste of death forever in His mouth.

The Trinity must be tainted with the taste of death. There must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave that to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful? Why spoil what is perfect love?"

That was Father Martin's answer. That's where your contentment lies—knowing that we are going to listen to a videotaped account of an Oxford student who is going to tell you something about a spiritual journey that he's been on.

After that, you can text your questions into that number that you've been seeing up here, and Hannah will come back up, and we will do some questions and answers before we wrap up.

When I was young, I was taught that hard work and striving to be the best was the key to success and happiness. That got me pretty far until I came to university.

Before that, it wasn't that I didn't have to think; I just didn't have the thing for myself. When I was young, success was a pretty straightforward narrative. I knew what I had to do, what I was going to be measured up against, and when I could stop.

For me, that was academics and chess. I was just studying hard, getting my A's, going to a good school, rinse and repeat until I landed up here in Oxford.

But having life hurdling straight at me wasn't all that great. They magnified my problems, my choices, and my responsibilities. Life wasn't just about figuring out how to do a problem sheet; it was figuring out what I was going to do with my life.

Conscription in the Singaporean Army gave me two long years, and in that time, I got a good disillusionment and jaded with what I wanted to do. Every time I felt unhappy, I projected my happiness into the future.

But every time we should let go, the fleeting sense of happiness vanishes. I'm not from a Christian family, but having friends that brought me to church was a great experience.

I used to treat it as a matter of intellectual curiosity: What would people put out so much suffering to defend something that they could not prove to others? Why was Christianity so special if I just wanted something to make myself feel better?

But as I began to ask my questions, things started to click together. As I read the Bible for the first time, I was amazed to find out how could so many people write so many different books over such a long period of time, and yet the Bible remained coherent.

My vision of life and much beyond the material things of this earth, I realized that Christianity was not just the way to make myself feel better. We cannot accept the gifts but reject the giver.

As I came to look at Jesus, I realized that this really was God Himself who wanted to know me. The promises that God made to me in the Bible were almost too good to be true.

Paul writes in Romans that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved—not just for forgiveness for sins past, but also hopeful future where there's no death, crying, mourning, or pain.

Seeing that my life has changed since becoming a Christian is a bit of an understatement. I've learned to be kind to others as well as to myself. I've learned to be grateful and content and not to take things for granted.

I've also learned to be more open-minded because the Bible has things to say about almost anything under the sun. A little more about God and His promises, and that even though it can be difficult trying at times to be a Christian, I've learned to find joy, peace, and hope in an everlasting figure that is Jesus Christ.

Right, so we're going to have some time for Q&A. I think if we can have a first question: How do you explain the millions of secular people who live their entire lives without ever experiencing this trajectory towards disappointment? Did they ever just realize, or is it not possible that they did, in fact, lead happy and fulfilling lives?

Well, where'd it go? It's so long you've put it back; that's helpful.

First of all, if you actually do live in a culture that is—its deep background is that you should detach. Many Eastern cultures are like that. A lot of the ancient pagan cultures were shaming on our cultures, and shame and honor cultures back basically do.

I think suggests that you detach the heart. I think Western cultures sometimes might feel it a little bit more poignantly, but I guess in the end, I would rather contest your initial premise that millions and millions of people don't experience disappointment.

I don't know how you can say that, actually. You know, it may be showing my age. I'm being a minister; I've spent quite a lot of time with an awful lot of people.

But I do think that disappointment does tend to grow as you get older, and I do think people do have that trajectory. All I could tell you is I do think that there are certain kinds of cultures and even certain kinds of temperaments and certain kinds of family backgrounds that would make you naturally more stoic, and your expectations are maybe dialed down a little bit more in some cultures.

That doesn't mean that there's not a trajectory toward disappointment; I think there is.

Can we have the next question, please?

If I cannot find complete satisfaction in, for example, a great marriage, should I still go for such as it can give?

Sure! Thank goodness—a question that I could answer well.

Maybe I should put another clause onto the question that you didn't ask, as I said I went by fast. This is the problem with talking about such big topics.

I said that the Stoic shame and honor culture, Eastern approach, is you dial down your expectations; you dial down the attachment of your heart to love the object.

I do know a couple of Stoic authors, for example, who say that—I forget who it was, once the author, an ancient Greek author, said when you kiss your little boy in the morning, in your heart say, "You may die tomorrow; you may die next week."

Just make sure you don't attach your heart too much to the child. I really think that the danger with marriage without God in your life is either you turn the love partner into your Savior.

This person's love is what really makes you feel good about yourself. Ernest Becker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Denial of Death, actually says that without God—and he was an atheist—this is without God; it's almost impossible not to make your love partner into someone that gives you what that love partner can't give you.

Because no human being can give that to you. If you put so much of your desire for happiness in that person and so much of your desire for affirmation in that person, if that person has a problem, you melt down.

You can't give them what they need because you love them, in a sense, too much. This is what Augustine is saying.

The other possibility is to detach and just see that your spouse is a kind of business partner and not get yourself too attached. Both of those approaches—both of those alternatives are terrible.

You leave God out; you're going to end up going one way or the other in your marriage. It doesn't mean that there aren't people who do a pretty good job of muddling along, and of course, that's the British thing, but along nevertheless.

I really feel like you put God in the center, and suddenly it takes the pressure off the marriage, but it also keeps you from detaching your heart too much from your spouse, and things can really begin to fly.

Just because humans are often unsatisfied doesn't mean there is a God. Shouldn't we all just lower our expectations?

Well, twice I have said this; that's a perfectly right question. This is the problem with me talking to you for just a few minutes at night and not being able to be a friend and hear you out and to give you the other things.

I did mention that tomorrow, for example, Oz is going to talk about truth here at lunchtime. How do you know something is true? I didn't go through that tonight.

I didn't say, "Here's how you know Christianity is true," but I can tell you there are— even though you're not your Oxford students, you may just hear that there aren't any good arguments for the truth of Christianity.

That's just not true. They keep coming up—three or four books in the last three or four years, in some cases by people who aren't Christians, are making very strong arguments for that.

Consciousness—human consciousness is strong evidence that there's something more than just natural processes at work. Tom Nagel, excuse me, New York NYU professor, has written a book called Mind and Cosmos in which he argues that you cannot account for human consciousness just as evolution and natural processes.

You've got a number of other—if you're willing to listen, there are really strong arguments for why Christianity is true. Tonight, I just tried to say, "Why wouldn't you want it to be true? If this is the possibility, why would you at least take the time to explore?"

That's actually all I'm trying to accomplish tonight.

If God is all-loving, then why does He allow the things that we love to be taken away from us?

That's a sufferi