Book Review: The Reason for God

I had a discussion with my father a few weeks back when he told me he had read this book called The Reason for God by Tim Keller that articulated many of the ideas I had expounded over the past couple of years. My dad said that it was really helpful for someone from his generation to convey the types of things that people of my generation hold as integral to our faith: social justice, the politics of the Kingdom, and an apologetic of action more so than intellect.

I have wanted to read Tim Keller for a while now, having heard many good things about his church in New York City. I was deeply impressed by the prospect for belief in an age of skepticism that Keller outlines in this book. So many books masquerade belief as fact—Keller has stayed the course, first paved by N.T. Wright, of presenting a hopeful understanding of belief that is rooted in Christ and his message to the world instead of a belief in proofs of Christ’s existence and work. At its core, belief in an age of skepticism can never pretend to be a bastion of encyclopedic fact: we must come to a reasoned belief that is a third way between the Bible thumping fundamentalists and the Darwin thumping New Atheists. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to take a humble look at Christian belief.