This may sound like a harsh way to start an obituary, but: Craig Keener (d. 1975) was exceptionally greedy, selfish, arrogant, and lustful, not to mention blasphemous. There’s really very little that his critics could say about him today that could be worse than what he really was.
For example, by age 9 he arrogantly declared, as if he wielded great knowledge, that there was no reason to believe in a god. He soon decided that humanity would have to ensure its own survival against all possibilities of disaster by conquering other life forms in the universe. This, he determined, could be achieved only if humanity were united and made efficient. This could be accomplished through genetic engineering (breeding) and the extermination of useless professions such as ministers. (He figured that, once they knew better, most people would abandon useless professions anyway.)
After reading the Iliad (about the Trojan War) at age 12, Keener thought that ending other people’s lives could be heroic. He wrote gory stories and poetry and drew gory artwork depicting the bloody killing of Trojans. He invoked spirits of Greek gods to make him better at killing. Sometimes he even tortured people in his imagination, though I should add that he thought himself quite capable of showing mercy when the occasion allowed. Yet he also tried to learn good strategies and skills to aid in subjecting the world to make it united and efficient.
Finally, at age 13, he began reading Plato and decided that ultimate reality was, as Plato thought, in the realm of ideas, so that one’s physical senses were not trustworthy testaments to ultimate reality. Taking Plato a step further, this self-centered young man decided that, given the unreliability of external senses, he could not be sure of the real existence of anyone except himself. Of course, he continued to accommodate the sensory world just in case, still looking both ways before crossing the street on the way to school.
Keener made fun of Christians, but he was also a little scared, just in case they were even partly right. Obviously the stakes were pretty high: if there was a God, absolutely everything depended on God. We owed our origin and destiny to him, and nothing mattered so much as serving him; moreover, truth mattered, and there could be no higher truth than an infinite God if he existed. But Christianity didn’t seem likely: most people claimed to be Christians, but it didn’t look to him like they were staking everything on that belief. If they didn’t believe in a God worthy of obedience, he reasoned, why should he? He knew of their god only from hearsay.
Yet he could not explain the combination of his own unique identity along with the fact that it had a beginning and, little as he cared to admit it, would have an ending. If there was nothing absolute, his own existence was an infinitesimally random coincidence. How could he explain his existence as a distinct individual, with his unique heredity and experience as a self? Was it truly utterly meaningless? Worse yet, if there was nothing infinite to guarantee more than the present life, in the infinite span of eternity life was infinitesimally short.
Only in an absolute, infinite Being could finite humans find meaning and eternal hope. But if there were such a God, Keener supposed, that God would care to confer such benefits on humans only if he were supremely loving. And if he were loving, Keener reasoned, that God would give those benefits first to those who, like him, were loving.
And thus Keener knew he had a problem. For even if, best of all imaginable possibilities, there were a God who was both infinite and loving, Keener had no way to get this God’s attention. Why would such a God want Keener? Keener himself wasn’t loving; he wanted to know of such a God only to surmount his own mortality, to find a way to live forever. Keener wasn’t good; even a good God, then, wouldn’t likely care about him. “God, if you’re out there, please show me!” he sometimes cried. But he didn’t know if God would hear. After all, Keener hadn’t even publicly admitted that he had become less than certain about his atheism.
One day, however, two genuine Christians stopped him on the street. They explained to Keener that, by Jesus’s death and resurrection, God offers eternal life to anyone who will trust him. Keener raised objections, wondering what evidence these Christians had besides their holy book. But after he rejected what they said and began walking home, he felt himself overwhelmed by a sense he’d never felt before while studying or discussing other religions or philosophies. A Presence refused to leave him alone, until finally, after perhaps an hour of resistance, he dropped to his knees. “God, I don’t understand how Jesus dying and rising restores me to you, but if that’s what you’re saying, I’ll believe it. But I don’t know how to experience this, so if you want to bring me to yourself, you’ll have to do it yourself.”
Keener felt something rushing through his body, and jumped up, terrified. He wasn’t sure how to explain what had just happened to him, but he had always believed that if he ever learned that God was real, he would give God everything. Now he had found truth and would commit himself to exploring and following all the way.
That was the day that the old Craig Keener with his selfish goals died, and a new Craig Keener committed to Christ’s eternal kingdom was born. “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3, NIV). “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor 5:17, NIV).
Someone who reads only the heading of this post may misunderstand and start a rumor that Craig Keener is physically dead. (To avoid that misunderstanding, we borrowed the ancient label of “funeral oration” for the title, rather than requiem or “in memoriam.”) Even if premature, such a rumor will eventually prove true (as Samuel Clemens [a.k.a. Mark Twain], who quipped that the report of his death was greatly exaggerated, must have eventually learned), unless Christ returns first. But the good news is that the new life in Christ lasts forever. So whether we are physically alive or dead, we are always the Lord’s (Rom 14:8). And that is what matters forever.
