The Reason for God - Timothy Keller - Google Books:
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(from page 168-169) Tim Keller points out what Jonathan Edwards wrote in The Nature of True Virtue, where Edwards argues how sin destroys the social fabric. He argues that human society is deeply fragmented when anything but God is our highest love:
If our highest goal in life is the good of our family, then Edwards says, we will tend to care less for other families.
If our highest goal is the good of our nation, tribe, or race, then we will tend to be racist or nationalistic.
If our ultimate goal in life is our own individual happiness, then we will put our own economic and power interests ahead of those of others.
Edwards concludes that only if God is our summum bonum, our ultimate good and life center, will we find our heart drawn out not only to people of all families, races and classes, but to the whole world in general.
It is hard to find a self-identity that doesn't lead to exclusion. The real culture war is taking place inside our own disordered hearts, wracked by inordinate desires for things that control us, that lead us to feel superior and exclude those without them, and fail to satisfy us even when we get them!
The Reason for God: belief in the age of skepticism
©Tim Keller 2008
Published by Dutton
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