How to die wishing you had spent more time at the office
The significant role Christian professionals played in making Christianity credible to her sons, why sometimes “the worst thing God can do for you is to let you be happy,” and how to die wishing you had spent more time at the office.
Links Mentioned:
[0:00:05.4] JR: Hey friend, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast, 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 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. Friend, you are not going to want to miss this terrific episode with my friend, Kathy Keller.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:10.8] JR: Kathy Keller, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.
[0:01:12.8] KK: Thank you so much for inviting me.
[0:01:15.6] JR: We mentioned Roosevelt Island a couple of times before we started, and 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.
It was so kind and thoughtful, with these great tips of what to do around the island and it ended up being my kids’ 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?
[0:01:50.9] JR: Oh, they love riding the tram. My own children were just – I either can’t tell whether they’re horrified or angry with the predominant emotion when Disney World down in Florida had put the tram ride in as one of the Roosevelt Island tram, you know, they 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, not how it is now. You know yourself, that’s not how it is at all.
[0:02:27.1] JR: No.
[0:02:27.3] KK: You could have your dinner on the platform and be fine.
[0:02:31.2] JR: But Disney had to ratchet up the drama?
[0:02:33.2] KK: Yes, they were so insulted, you know, New York City equals squaller and that was –
[0:02:38.8] JR: Right, of course.
[0:02:39.9] KK: Not the case.
[0:02:41.1] JR: 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 to 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 posthumously. Tell us about this devotional, and you told me before, you’re going to correct me, it’s not a devotional.
[0:03:23.9] KK: No.
[0:03:23.9] JR: What is this thing, Kathy?
[0:03:26.1] KK: 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 & 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 had 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 – a lot of Johns 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, “Ah, did my, you know, ticked 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 entrée 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 of 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.
[0:05:26.8] JR: Yeah, that’s good. It’s the greatest hits remastered.
[0:05:29.8] KK: Yeah, that might be a way of putting it but I mean, they’re not the full books but they have the attribution so you know where to go to get the full book.
[0:05:38.5] JR: 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 coauthored with Catherine Leary Alsdorf, Every Good Endeavor. That book was all about works 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.
[0:06:06.8] KK: Well, any time 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, it 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 not 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, this makes sense in your cultural context?” Those papers have all been put up on the City to City website under DNA. Plus, Tim did little 10, 12-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. 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.
[0:08:46.5] JR: 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, RedeemerCityToCity.com/DNA, and as I was thinking back through the Keller cannon if you will of books really relevant and books I recommend a lot in this podcast, I kept coming back to Prodigal God, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness and Counterfeit Gods, on the topic of idolatry.
[0:09:18.7] KK: Oh, yeah.
[0:09:20.2] JR: Speaking of, I read this great interview that you gave recently. I can’t remember how many months ago, where 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. It says, “There was this big hole in my life, right? Put him, instead of Jesus.”
And so, Kathy, every one of us, present company included struggles with this, turning good things like spouses, kids, careers into idols. What advice would you give for how we can enjoy God’s gift while delighting in the gift giver above all of those created things?
[0:10:04.2] KK: 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 us, 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 the relationships and the things that we’re doing for Christ, et cetera, we tend to sort of stop there and don’t push past any barrier.
In fact, I have 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.” 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.
[0:11:39.5] JR: 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?
[0:11:52.4] KK: 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 – he 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.” They 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 what he thought was colitis and he said, “I’ve got two little spots here, they’re 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 than 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 of 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 on to God.
Even if they throw you on to God like Job here, 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.
[0:13:48.9] JR: 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, “Kathy and I greatly 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 the 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.” 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 serious about Jesus and serious about their work?
[0:14:45.5] KK: 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.” I doubt you’re – 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 is as cool as you aspire to be.
There’s a fellow who is a voice talent agent and 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 have ever met. He was just amazing. I mean, he’s 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?” And 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 Line Live,” 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.” And he says, “I’ve promised myself I’d never go back there, dude, but I’ll take you.”
“I’ll take you, I’ll show you the rooms, and I’ll show you the people.” And he says, “It’s meaningless to me now but if you’re interested, I’ll show you but you could never ask again. Never ask again.” Because Steve had been there, he’d done that, and he had found Jesus was 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.”
[0:16:37.1] JR: 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 with 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.
[0:17:18.8] KK: Well, it happens I think naturally in the life of any church plant will attract people but have – if you are 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 hear 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.
[0:17:50.7] JR: Yeah, we get it.
[0:17:51.7] KK: 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 psycho babble, you know? With all the mysterious words of the nine Christians will believe and will understand. So, being part of a church plant is a really good way of having interesting people join you, not people who have been churchified for years, and therefore, kind of lost their connection with the world and the non-Christians that you meet.
When we started Redeemer, people would bring their non-Christian friends, and then [Toya Simon 0:18:33.0] would say, “You’d 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.
[0:18:44.4] JR: But Tim gave them language.
[0:18:45.7] KK: What he said.
[0:18:46.4] JR: 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 it that way, that focus on mortality influenced the work that you and Tim were engaged in over the last 20 years or so.
[0:19:12.9] KK: 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’d 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.
He said, “Come down to the NIH, there is a trial here. I want to get you enrolled in it before you start chemotherapy. What we do is filter out your white blood cells that are matched with the pancreatic cancer cells and then we…” in the words of Steve Rosenberg, who is head of the trial, “We breed them, we feed them, and then 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, and then we came home and went into hospice.
So, we were not 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.
[0:20:29.2] JR: Once you started to realize that it was the end and his final months, I think about that old cliché, “Nobody lies in their death 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?
[0:21:03.5] KK: 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’d probably have to go with God’s plan but he had things he still wanted to say, wanted to write about.
[0:21:49.3] JR: So, it wasn’t like he knew the end was near and he’s like, “No more thinking about work, I’m done.”
[0:21:54.2] KK: 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 this, we’re just shocked out of our wits and he was dead on Friday.
[0:22:11.0] JR: Geez, wow.
[0:22:12.8] KK: That was Wednesday to Friday.
[0:22:16.4] JR: I knew I take great peace when I think about I am way younger than you and Tim. Tim once told me I was young enough to be his 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 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.
[0:23:00.7] KK: Yes.
[0:23:01.5] JR: Yeah, what’s next for you Kathy? You’re still fairly young, you said 72 feels like 50, come on, what do you feel the pull to?
[0:23:10.2] KK: Well, I’m working for Gospel in Life, it’s just 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, it’s 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 am 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.
[0:24:18.5] JR: We’ll be praying for you to the 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. Isiah 65 says, “We’ll long enjoy the work of our hands but not labor in vain.”
I’m curious if there is 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.
[0:24:51.8] KK: I have got to stop myself from thinking about what heaven’s 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’ll 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.
[0:25:32.8] JR: That’s good. That’s good.
[0:25:33.2] KK: I don’t know.
[0:25:34.2] JR: That’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?
[0:25:44.9] KK: Well, The Prodigal God is one. The Letters of John Newton, the Baker edition, which is our print but you can still find it sometimes. I just mentioned it to Matt Smethurst and he found it in Paid 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 the Baker one for this.
The 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 the – 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.
[0:26:49.6] JR: Those are great, I love your acknowledgment by the way at the top of go forward and 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.
[0:27:09.2] KK: Yeah, we have good friends in the Lake District that we’ve visited for years and years. So, I went back this June and we’ll go back again this next coming June. The weather was dreadful, it’s in the 40s and raining horizontally, so that was totally disappointing but such is England.
[0:27:33.9] JR: Such is 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?
[0:27:44.6] KK: You want a secular person, right?
[0:27:47.1] JR: Yeah. What about your voice actor guy?
[0:27:51.0] KK: Yeah, I was just thinking of him. I was just thinking, he very unexpectedly came down with a fatal form of leukemia, had bone marrow transplant, survived that, and is up 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.
[0:28:13.4] JR: That’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?
[0:28:31.7] KK: 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?”
There’s a famous book by Brother Laurence, he decided he could even pick up the 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 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.
[0:29:55.4] JR: 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.
[0:30:06.6] KK: Yes.
[0:30:06.8] JR: Amen?
[0:30:07.8] KK: Absolutely.
[0:30:08.9] JR: 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 a 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.
[0:30:42.5] KK: Thank you for inviting me.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:30:44.9] JR: 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 at JordanRaynor.com/contact. 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.
[END]