As a growing number of people in our culture embrace a naturalistic worldview, many find themselves unable to account for things such as meaning, freedom, justice and hope. Tim Keller’s recent book, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical speaks to this irony and argues that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. The following is an excerpt from his book.

“Some years ago a woman from China was doing graduate work at Columbia University in political theory, and she began attending our church. She had come to the United States to study partially because there was a growing opinion among Chinese social scientists that the Christian idea of transcendence was the historic basis for the concepts of human rights and equality. After all, she said, science alone could not prove human equality. I expressed surprise at this, but she said this was not only something that some Chinese academics were arguing, but that some of the most respected secular thinkers in the West were saying it too. Through her help, I came to see that faith was making something of a comeback in rarefied philosophical circles where secular reason—rationality and science without any belief in a transcendent, supernatural reality—has increasingly been seen as missing things that society needs.”