What Story Are You Living? Michael Keller on Tim Keller, Culture, Identity, and the Gospel

We’re all living inside stories. The strange thing is, most of the time we don’t know they’re stories.

“You do you.” “Follow your heart.” “Live free.” “Truth is relative.” They can feel less like cultural assumptions and more like oxygen—simply the way things are. In this conversation, Stephanie sits down with Michael Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Lincoln Square in New York City and son of the late Tim Keller, to ask what happens when we begin noticing the water we’re swimming in. They discuss the book Tim Keller co-authored with Michael before passing.

Listen to the conversation: https://www.podcastics.com/episode/430367/link/ 

Watch on YouTube (uncut): https://www.youtube.com/gospelspice 

Michael and his father began working together on a book exploring these cultural narratives before Tim’s death in 2023. What emerged became something more personal for Michael than he expected. They talk about identity that is received rather than achieved, why our culture’s vision of freedom may leave us lonelier rather than freer, and what happens when love slowly becomes synonymous with affirmation.

And then the conversation gets tender. Michael shares what it meant to work among his father’s words after losing the man himself, and what he discovered about grief, fatherhood, and finding in Christ what death seems to have taken away. Stephanie and Michael come at that question from very different experiences with their earthly fathers, yet somehow arrive in the same place: Jesus.

They also explore Tim Keller’s much-discussed approach to culture. Michael explains why “affirm, critique, redirect” isn’t an attempt to find a comfortable middle between opposing sides. The gospel stands somewhere else altogether, exposing what is broken while recognizing echoes of goodness and redirecting our longings toward Christ.

So perhaps the question isn’t simply whether we believe the gospel. What stories are we actually living as though they were true?

MORE ABOUT DR. TIM KELLER

Timothy J. Keller (1950–2023) was the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, cofounder of Redeemer City to City, and the author of numerous books, including The Reason for God, The Prodigal God, and The Meaning of Marriage. His thirty-one books have sold over six million copies and have been translated into twenty-nine languages.

MORE ABOUT DR. MICHAEL KELLER

Dr. Michael Keller is the senior pastor of Redeemer Lincoln Square in New York City, a church he planted with his wife, Sara, in 2017. He grew up in New York as the son of the late pastor, author, and apologist Tim Keller, watching his parents plant Redeemer Presbyterian Church beginning in 1989. Michael earned his undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and later received an M.Div. and a Th.M. in Apologetics, magna cum laude, from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He also holds a Ph.D. from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where his work brought computational linguistics into conversation with historical theology. Before planting Redeemer Lincoln Square, Michael served in ministry in London, Queens, and Boston and helped establish an urban Reformed University Fellowship ministry in New York City.

MORE ABOUT “THE STORIES WE LIVE BY” by TIM KELLER AND MICHAEL KELLER

We are the stories we believe. But what if our culture's stories are failing us? The Stories We Live By reveals the hidden cultural narratives that shape us and points the way to the life we've been looking for.

"Do what makes you happy." "Be true to yourself." "Live free." If these slogans promise the good life, why do they so often leave us feeling hollow and empty? Could the very stories our modern world tells us about happiness, freedom, and identity be the source of our growing anxiety and disillusionment?

The culmination of a journey Michael Keller began with his father, beloved pastor and bestselling author Timothy Keller, before his passing, The Stories We Live By unmasks the hidden cultural narratives that shape our lives, often without our knowledge. Examining seven dominant narratives of modern culture--concerning identity, power, freedom, morality, truth, happiness, and progress--the authors show how these stories contain elements of truth yet are built on flawed assumptions and internal contradictions that leave us fragile, divided, and unable to cope with the realities of life.

The Stories We Live By helps us:

• Recognize where these stories appear throughout culture
• Understand why they leave us feeling hollow and unfulfilled
• Decode the specific ways these stories hijack our decision-making--and learn how to critically evaluate them going forward
• Understand why the Christian story offers a more satisfying answer to our deepest longings
• Make sense of both the beauty and the brokenness of the world
• Find a hope that can sustain us through suffering, grounded in a story that is bigger than death itself

For the skeptic, this book offers a challenge to examine the unproven beliefs that drive our lives. For the Christian, it is an essential tool for recognizing where we have unknowingly absorbed cultural narratives that conflict with our faith. And for everyone, it is an invitation to discover a story that is big enough to make sense of both the beauty and the brokenness of the world--a story of grace that has the power to carry us through life's deepest joys and sorrows.

Born from a conversation between a father and son, The Stories We Live By is more than a cultural analysis. It is a guide to finding a truer, more beautiful, and far more satisfying story to live by.