Tim Keller, Batman, and Loving Particular Places

As you may have heard if you run in Christian American circles, Tim Keller died a few weeks ago. He was an author of best-selling books and pastor of a network of churches in New York City, well respected by those who agreed with him and those who didn't. A lot has been written about him, and I wanted to offer up my two cents about why he means so much to me personally. 

A lot of it comes down to this quote about Batman. (Bear with me. I promise it relates.)

In Christopher Nolan's finale to the marvelous The Dark Knight trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, the villain Bane says something to Batman (aka Bruce Wayne) in their final showdown. Bane thinks he’s doomed Bruce to a slow painful death at the bottom of a pit while he watches footage his beloved Gotham be destroyed—really, destroy itself—on a little TV in his cell. But—spoilers—Bruce makes it out. Superhero that he is, he makes it back to Gotham in nick of time to stop it from destruction. When Bane first sees him again, he says this:

“So you came back to die with your city.” 

It chokes me up every time. Bane says it with scorn and with triumph. This foolish weakness of Bruce's will be his downfall, he thinks. And it does seem foolish. Gotham is always on the brink of utter chaos, it is always feeding the darkest monsters of human nature, and it is always betraying Bruce, no matter how much he tries to help it. It is full of shadows, shadows that stain the streets like watermarks and shadows that stain the souls of its citizens so that the good they want to do they never do, and the evil they hate, they do. 

Why would Bruce come back? Why does he always come back? 

It's something Bane would never understand: it's love. Bruce loves Gotham. He's willing to give his life to fight for it. Even if it never loves him back. Even if it never becomes the shining city on the hill he wishes it would be. 

Gotham is, of course, a comicbook version of New York City, but that's not the main reason why I think of Tim Keller when I watch this exchange between Bane and Bruce. I think of Tim Keller because of what he says about himself in his Twitter bio. After a couple of links to various organizations he founded, it says this: “Husband to Kathy. Loves New York City.”

I'm not sure if he loved in New York City when he first arrived. From what I've read, he sensed to calling to go there and plant a church in a time when most Christians (evangelical Protestants, at least) were fleeing cities, bastions of evil and sin that they are. I don't know how he felt about cities in general or about New York City in particular. but what I know is, by the end of decades of faithful ministry, he didn't just feel a sense of duty toward it, a this is where I'm supposed to be, I am obeying God by being here. I'm sure that was true, and that's beautiful in itself. But, by his own admission, he had something else. He had love.

Love is a verb, as we all say, rightly. But it's also an affection. As a professor once told me, you are loving God when you obey him and loving others when you treat them well, even if you don't feel like it. But, he continued, I think we all know that the ideal is that your emotions and desires match your actions. Often, because the humans are rather dense, we have to just do the thing and the emotions will follow. But that's the goal, the prayer, the hope: that you will feel a radiating and joyous lift of the spirit when you walk the way of righteousness.

Back to Tim Keller. He seems to have had that love—and this is what I want to point out, this is what means so much to me—and he had it for a particular place. He loved New York City. 

I should put a disclaimer here that I live in New York City myself. I came here for college after going to a Broadway show the summer before my senior year of high school. It was love at first sight and first sound, love at first rush at the bustling streets hitting me like a body slam. I haven't been disillusioned from this love yet. So of course the fact that Tim Keller loves my particular city is a huge reason why his ministry means a lot to me.

But it's more than that. It's this universal idea of loving a particular place. In Christianity we talk about how this world is not our home, how our citizenship is in heaven, as Paul reminds the Philippians. Here there is no enduring city, the author of Hebrews says. We’re all pilgrims, all in exile. This is true and can be wonderfully comforting. But as so often happens when you embrace one idea you can miss its necessary counterpoint. 

And the counterpoint is that we humans are made to love specific places. 

I know this because we have these bony bodies bound by physical laws and we simply cannot be in more places than one at one time. Because our bodies matter, where they are physically matters. And where they are is always ever going to be one place at a time.

I know this also because the story of God's interactions with humanity is peppered with—no, built upon—particular places: the Garden of Eden, the oak tree at Mamre, the shining city of Jerusalem, the little town of Bethlehem. From before Abram was Abraham, God's plan has been to use particular people in particular places at particular times to be part of a community bigger than all of us and share a good news vaster than any of us can really understand. 

Transcendent and yet so close. Communal and individual. We call these things tensions but I don’t know. They’re only tensions because our imaginations are so small. If you really look at them without fear, they’re woven together like roots and leaves. Roots hug the ground and leaves skitter in the sky but are they in tension? Not really. And they’re not wholly separate either. They always exist alongside each other and they give to each other and together they are a tree.

I think Tim Keller understood this about particularity and universality. The gospel he preached reached a lot of people through his books and recorded sermons, and he didn’t have a New York-only superiority—he began his ministry at a small rural church and started a program that helps build churches and cities not only around the country but around the world. He wanted, as any Christian should, all people everywhere to know God. But he was grounded in a particular place. He served and wrote and evangelized from a place. And we Christians should value that more. 

C. S. Lewis talks about the fear of being too heavenly minded that you’re no earthly good and how being truly heavenly minded makes you a blessing on earth (a paraphrase of Mere Christianity). I think sometimes we're afraid to love particular places because we're afraid to be too attached to earthly things. Let me just say, I don't think that's what Paul was talking about when he talks about not loving the world. There are ideologies and temptations that permeate every place, certainly, and we must beware that we do not buy into the idols of the land we live in.

But the Christian hope is not that we will get whisked off to some alien planet or portal to another dimension of the multiverse but that the very dirt beneath our feet will be changed and remade and transformed into what it was supposed to be. It’s this earth that will be made new. These atoms that will be redeemed (I cannot begin to say what that means). These places that we have seen and smelt and touched that will be reborn at our King’s coming.

They are not going anywhere. They were made good by God and, bent as they are, they retain at least some of their goodness now and they will be good again. For that reason we should love them. We should love places by serving them—and also by seeking to feel an affection for them, a delight in them, a desire for them.

Loving particular places is a way of acknowledging and rejoicing in our embodiedness. It is a way of practicing for the coming kingdom, incarnating a glimpse of it here even now: Psst, world, this is what it will be like when the King comes. We will love the places where we walk. It is a way of testifying to the goodness of the Creator who for all his vastness and unfathomability also knows every hair on our heads and the peculiarities of every cross street.

So what I’m taking away from Tim Keller’s life is this: If you love where you are, embrace that. Love it more. That affection isn't something that's keeping you from God. It's a way of bearing his image, an overflow of his heart. 

I feel very lucky because I love the place where I am. It has been very clear to me that this is where I am supposed to be. I know not everyone has such a calling to a particular place. Or maybe you do but for a host of reasons you can't be there right now. Maybe you are in a place that you don't really care about. Maybe you’re in a place that you downright hate. I moved around quite a bit growing up, and I know what it is to dislike where you are. To not be inspired by it. To feel like you don't belong.

So here's another takeaway: If that’s where you are, in a place that’s hard to love, it’s okay. The place you are still matters. It’s not an accident or a cruel joke that you are there. And you will not be there, most likely, forever. So lean in and look for the smallest specks of prettiness and delight and God moving. He is, in every place. Love is possible anywhere. And it’s all the more precious when you have to fight for it. Don’t despite the place your feet fall. And don’t ignore it. 

Gotham is worth coming back for. Places are worth loving. Thank you, Tim, for reminding us of that, and thank you, Jesus, for a textured and detailed world that bears your glory in every nook and cranny.