By Michael Keller
Tim Keller, my father, died on a Friday morning. Three days before, when our family learned
he wasn’t going to make it, I stayed the night with him in the hospital. Most of the time
when he was awake, he wanted to talk about his family and pray. He would say, “Michael,
let’s pray the Lord’s Prayer together. Let’s say the Apostles’ Creed. Read me some of the
Psalms.” Other times he would say, “I can’t wait to see Jesus. Send me home.”
And home he went.
In the months that followed, I struggled with grief. Well-meaning people would say to me, “He’s in a better place. He’ll always be with you in spirit. Time heals all wounds.” But each of these phrases—these everyday “cultural narratives” we live by—not only failed to help me but actually made things worse. These platitudes, though offered with the best of intentions, were too spiritually and existentially thin to help me bear the weight of my loss.
It was in this season that I returned to the project my father and I had been working on before he died. For years we had talked about writing a book together that would name
the stories we live by and how they unknowingly shape our lives. One evening while I was
working through the documents, tears began to flow down my face. As I reflected on that
last night with my father, I realized he was not reciting the Lord’s Prayer or the Apostles’
Creed as a means of distraction. He was praying them because they were the very stories
that moved him. My father was placing himself, through the phrases we were reciting, into
the stories he lived by.
As I thought about this, I asked, “What are the stories I’m living by?” If the stories the
culture was telling me about death rang hollow in my pain, how might they be failing others in their sorrow? What about all the other stories our culture tells us? Could it be that the very stories meant to guide us toward happiness and meaning are leading us to despair?
Now, it is important to stress that each of the major stories our culture tells us—narratives about identity, power, morality, happiness, freedom, truth, and progress—are responding to a real human longing. For this reason, we will first enter into each cultural narrative in this study with genuine respect. We will affirm what is true and good about it. But then we will critique the story by exploring where it falls short on its own terms. For instance, where does “be true to yourself” leave you when you can’t figure out who that self actually is? Where does “follow your heart” lead when the heart contradicts itself?
This critique will then guide us in how to redirect that cultural narrative to the gospel—not as a replacement for the story but as its completion. We will see that the gospel does not merely offer a set of beliefs for us to adopt but invites us into a greater story to live by. For it is only through Jesus that the genuine longing in our hearts can be met.
As you go through The Stories We Live By book and companion study, my hope is you will notice something surprising: The Christian story is not smaller or more restrictive than the stories our culture offers but is larger. It does not ignore our desires for identity, meaning, or fulfillment but explains them. It directs our desires toward something far more substantial than we ever imagined.
Ultimately, this is not just a study about ideas. It’s an invitation to examine the story
you are living by—and to consider if it is strong enough to carry the weight of your life.