Tim Keller died a couple of weeks ago. For many Christians, especially those who have (or have hoped) to brand themselves as intellectuals, he was a father in the faith. Most of us who consider him thus never met him, nor did we attend his church, Redeemer in Manhattan. But we read him and we heard him preach and we thought of his as a modern day Augustine, a theologian for the times.
He was prolific, 34 books published over his writing life. Known to be practical while maintaining a depth untouched by any who would deign to call themselves contemporaries, he wrote on marriage and reason and biblical parables and church-planting and sex and life and even death. I read Reason for God while investigating the faith. I read Prodigal Godlater during a crisis of meaning, and Meaning of Marriage before proposing to my wife. Center Church, his textbook on church planting was the seminal text of my seminary experience.
When he was diagnosed with cancer, he wrote a long essay confronting his own mortality with an honesty and terrible nobility that was his way in everything else he wrote. I have read it a dozen times.
He never had a scandal, to my knowledge. And I pray his legacy does not go the way of some of the other men whose posthumous stains bled through onto those who covered themselves with their work. I pray he remains a titan, an unsung model of what is possible when one simply does the work that is good to do, without delusions of grandeur, and only for the Good of it.
There is a scene in Game of Thrones, season 4, when the Night’s Watch, an ancient order of defenders fallen on hard times, has turned away the invading wildling tribes. The elder statesman, Maester Aemon, must lead the mourning of the fallen, and viewers get insight into what happens when a man of the Night’s Watch falls.
There is a part in Maester Aemon’s remarks said over the prepared pyre of the departed that serves as a signal to the rest of the men. He says, “We shall never see their like again.” The rest of them men recite in unison, “And now their watch is ended.” The old maester repeats the line.
We shall never see their like again.
The men who died were not special. The whole subtext of the rest of the funeral speech was that they were ordinary men from ordinary parts of the realm. They were sons and brothers and fighters and criminals. They were little lords and peasants.
They took oaths and made good on them, but no one will ever know their names. They fought and died in battles that weren’t theirs. Their lack of remarkability is evident. They all took the same oaths, oaths to fight and die, to never continue their bloodlines. They wore the same black cloaks. Black, an amalgam of all colors and yet featuring none. And when they die, the same words are said over their bodies,
And yet, those words feature that line, we shall never see their like again. They are unremarkable, and yet, they are each, individually, unrepeatable.
There is in each good man a uniqueness that is inherent in the deeds themselves, the character of the person. The men of the Night’s Watch fought for the men, women and children of the realm. They sacrificed their lives. They gave up having families, careers, inheritances. The individual story of each man who sacrificed renders him unrepeatable. The first born son who is raised to inherit the land and title of his father, who leaves it all behind and takes the oath of the Night’s Watch, then fights and dies for peasants who never know his name. There are other stories like his, other men just as brave.
Yet, something about his uniqueness rings true. Even though his story is not unique, he seems singular.
It is what amazes us about veterans and officers. Not that there are swaths of bureaucratic courage, but that there are so many individuals that are courageous, each man or woman a microcosm of valor unique unto themselves. Heroes, every one.
Cowardice and malice and all those things that make men not so great, however, come across our radar as unremarkable. The nazi officer who was a school teacher is unremarkable in his cowering. The policeman who abuses his power. Even the celebrity who apologizes for an innocuous comment uttered years before, folding to a mob of faceless scolds.
If we are honest, we evaluate the acts of those that horde their power, cover their tracks, refuse to admit mistakes, and we know that our nature asks the same of us. We revere those we are not, and we hate those that act like we might if confronted with the same opportunity to bow. The Soviet empire was built on this premise; the citizens informed on one another, creating the means by which oppression reigned supreme.
Sin abounds on its own, yet sacrifice and greatness must be sought out.
When we think of the great leaders of this nation, they have similar attributes. Washington, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. Yet we know their names and we envision them as distinct. We will never see their like again.
But as of late, our leaders seem to stand out not for their courage or tenacity or ability to see what no one else does, to walk where no one else will. They stand out for their corruption, pomposity, propensity to alienate,. They have gone to the same schools, avoided the same wars while sending other people’s sons to fight.
I don’t mean to make a political statement. Only to say, the vast majority of Americans agree on who the greats were, but we are divided on the others. This makes evident the reality that they weren’t great. Some were better than others, but greatness, goodness, are obvious and irreducible.
One need not voice disagreement. Who is great and who is not does not matter. It only matters that we are in need of greatness now.
The world needed a man like Tim Keller. In an era where Christians were known more for their moralizing than their impact, for their trite slogans more than their depth of theology, Keller stood on his own.
And the world needed Washington and Lincoln.
Knowing that Tim Keller lived, and the impact he had on me begs the question. Where are our greats? Where are the men and women we need? Our great novelists and writers and leaders and theologians?
Perhaps you know them. Perhaps you are them and somewhere along the way you learned that it would be nearly impossible to take up the mantle you were born to have. Perhaps greatness comes in other ways, in the normal and insurmountable tasks demanded of fathers and mothers and teachers. It has always been deeply true of our nation that greatness resides in places where we least expect it, waiting to be brought to the surface. Or maybe we lost our hold on it, because we expected it from our leaders and not from ourselves.
When good men die, their passing does not encourage us to become them. No good man would tell you to be him, only to be the best version of the person your own conscience and ability will allow.
I do not want to be Scott Harmon, my father, a great man in his own way. When he passes, I will mourn and I will speak the words. We shall never see his like again. But I will not become him, and I do not think he would want me to. He would want me to be myself, to assume greatness on my own terms, if possible, and to build out my own name and legacy through the lessons he taught me.
I do not write to become Tim Keller, or even to be like him. I write to form a legacy independent of his, and yet streaked with the words he wrote.
And when I write, comment, and vote on policy and politics, who of my generation’s politicians should I acknowledge as a foundation? I may favor their policies, but can I model any goodness I can muster after them?
It is not that one should aspire to greatness, for no great man ever does, and this is the crux of the lackluster nature of our political figures of late. But to recognize that every one of us has the capacity for it, what Keller and the fathers of our faith would call the Imago Dei, the image of God in us, is to take a step toward legitimate impact, greatness on a small scale to be accomplished as only sinners can.
Gone are the days of political greatness, though I suspect there is still a distinctly American greatness somewhere in the shadows, waiting for the light.
Keller knew it, and he wrote of the Faith to an American and international audience hoping to call forth the Imago Dei in every heart, the image of the invisible and the capacity for greatness. Greatness that is marred by sin and pain and circumstance, and yet, possible. Keller’s vision was one where people experience the grace of God and come forward to become great fathers and mothers and husbands and wives. Where each used his gifts to spur the greatness of others.
This is not the vision of our leaders. They have no vision other than their own greatness and power, and this is not a vision at all. And where there is no vision, the people perish. But even amongst the perishing, perhaps there are those who will stand in the gap, moving toward a future where the good triumphs over all else.
I think Keller knew the good. And I think he would tell you, now, from his rest in that other, greater place, that his own work pales in comparison with the Good that triumphs.
Rest in peace to Tim Keller, a good man. We will never see his like again.
Beautiful. Just beautiful, the way it is.
Glad to have some writing back in the inbox. Enjoyed the piece thoroughly and its various threads. Though not completely connected, reading through some of the bits on leadership and aspirations sparked in my mind an old Harry Potter passage
“It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.”