Tim Keller offers insight into how preachers can effectively engage the modern mind in Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism. To do this, he offers five cultural narratives that mark our modern society. Understanding these narratives is the first step towards challenging the modern mind with biblical truth.

What are these five narratives?

1. The Rationality Narrative: instead of a rational God behind the universe, who is our only hope in a fallen world, the modern mind believes human reason is sufficient to solve our problems.
2. The History Narrative: Christianity challenged the prevailing ancient view that history was cyclical and showed that history was progressing towards an end. The Modern mind picked up on this progressive view of history but “detached it from any idea of divine control” (Keller, 130).
3. The Society Narrative: society is important, but the individual is supreme. “The social order, under this narrative, is not to further the interest of any one group nor to promote any particular values or virtues but rather to set all individuals free to live as they chose without any hindrance…(131).
4. The Morality or Justice Narrative: people, particularly here in the West, are committed to the cause of justice. However, they eschew the term “morality.” Furthermore, the pursuit of justice is not tied to any sense of God’s moral norms.
5. The Identity Narrative: who we are, our deepest identity, is not discovered outside of ourselves but is determined by self. In Keller’s words, the modern mind believes in (or asserts) the “sovereign self” (133) (“expressive individualism”). The individual person turns inward to find their identity. They determine who they are and why they exist.

Keller goes on to show how Christianity challenges each narrative. In so doing, he provides preachers with helpful tools for engaging those who sit under their preaching.

1. The History and Rationality Narrative Challenged: Keller combines these two in this section of the book. There are some who still believe technology and science will lead to human salvation. But, as Keller says, “The belief that everything has a scientific explanation and that every problem has a technological solution is hopelessly naive…” (154). And, in terms of history, Christianity challenges both the pessimistic and overly optimistic views of history. “There is no reason for Christians to believe that every decade and stage in history will be better than the stage before, but we believe that all is being brought infallibly to a glorious end” (154).
2. The Society Narrative Challenged: though highlighting the importance of the individual is important, making the self-sovereign is a bridge too far. According to the modern mind, the individual self is meant to be absolutely free from constraints and have unfettered freedom of choice. The problem is that individuals comprise the whole of humanity. God did, after all, create male and female. He instituted the family and designed societies. And these societies ought to be marked by love for one another. According to Keller, this emphasis on love “is the main way to engage the freedom narrative in your preaching” (144). “Show that at the human level love does not grow or even survive alongside the self-absorption of the late-modern understanding of freedom and choice” (144).
3. The Morality or Justice Narrative Challenged: though we live in some sort of moral culture, those morals are not grounded in anything transcendent. The challenge, then, is to ask several questions. First, why should humans be morally upright or care about something like justice? That is, what is the “moral motivation” (147)? Second, why ought human beings pursue something like justice? From where does the modern man derive any sense of obligation or ought-ness? Third, since there is no transcendent moral norm outside of us, it seems moral norms are simply “socially constructed.” According to Keller, when the modern person proposes a moral right/wrong, “there is no way to justify or even have a conversation about it with someone who disagrees” (150). Christianity, on the other hand, answers all three challenges. We care about morality and are motivated to pursue things like justice because of who God is. Given we are created to reflect the God of justice and righteousness (moral categories), we ought to live just and righteous lives. Lastly, when we assert right and wrong, or make moral arguments, we ground our assertions in the objective standard of God and his Word.
4. The Identity Narrative Challenged: the modern man asserts the sovereignty of self, looks inward to determine who they are, and then expresses their self-asserted identity in whatever ways they choose. The Bible offers a competing picture. God is the one who created humanity (Gen 1–3). God is the one who created us for his glory (Is 43:7) and calls us to live for that glory in all of life (cf. 1 Cor 10:31). As Keller puts it, “the question of identity is not “who am I?” but “whose am I?” (138).

Helpfully, he notes that it isn’t merely the unbeliever who needs to have these cultural narratives challenged. Christians need these challenges as well. Why? Because Christians live and move and have their being in a culture dominated by these ideas. Whether in tv shows, movies, music, books, magazines, advertisements, amusement parks, billboards, or in conversations with friends and family, these cultural narratives are the air we breathe. So, faithful preaching not only challenges the atheist but the (Christian) theist who may have unknowingly imbibed the lies of the culture.

What this means for the preacher is that part of preparing to preach week in and week out is to take stock of the culture. What narratives dominate your city? What are the issues facing your people in your particular place and moment? How does the Bible confront those ideas and stories with God’s reality? Those are questions worth asking as you aim to rightly and powerfully preach the Word.