The transcript (with slight editing for refinement) is from Tim Keller’s sermon “Peace” (April 25, 2010), preached at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in the series The Real Signs of the Spirit, on Philippians 4:4–12:

… if you walk into a Barnes and Noble or a Borders bookstore, and you go to the section on anxiety, worry, stress, dealing with stress, how to relax, and you get out a book, here is what they will never do. None of these books will ever say, “So you are stressed, you are worn out, you know, anxious. Let us start by asking the big questions. What is the meaning of life? What are you really here for? What is your life all about? Where have you come from and where are you going? What should human beings spend their time doing?” Never.

Do you think that is going to relieve stress to a modern New Yorker? Of course not. Why? Here is why. They go right to the technique. They never ask you to think. They never say, “Let us think about the big questions. What is life all about? Let us put things in perspective.” Never. They go to techniques. They go to relaxation techniques. They go to work and rest balance. For example, they will say, look, a couple of times, you know, every quarter, go somewhere, sit on a beach, look at the surf, and just bracket it out, stop worrying, stop thinking about everything. Or they will give you thought control techniques for dealing with negative thoughts, negative emotions, guilt thoughts, and so forth. They will never tell you to think. They will tell you to go right to the technique.

Here is why. Let me read you two. You will not see where I am going for a second, but let me read you two interesting quotes.

Here is Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin said, quote: “A person who has no assured belief in the existence of a personal God, and no belief in a future existence with retribution or reward, such a person can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow whatever impulses and instincts are the strongest, or whatever seems to him to be the best ones.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the great Supreme Court justice, quite a formidable intellectual in the early to mid twentieth century, once wrote this to a friend in his personal correspondence. He said: “There is no reason for attributing to a man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand. The world has produced me and the rattlesnake, but I will kill it if I get the chance, and the only reason is because it is incongruous to the world I want, the world everyone is trying to make according to one’s own power.”

Now, by the way, Oliver Wendell Holmes got a lot of heat for this. He is a Supreme Court justice, you know, and he says there is no rational reason to say that a human being is really more valuable, more significant, than an animal or a rock. Oh my goodness. People have gone after him for it. But you know what his biographers have said? He is just working out the implications. This is what Darwin is saying too. If you do not believe in God, and you believe you are here by accident, and when you die you rot, that is it, and when the sun dies everything goes away, then nothing that human beings have ever tried to accomplish amounts to anything.

What are the implications of that? One of them is that there is no right and wrong. You may feel there is right and wrong. Darwin says you may have a feeling, but your feelings should not trump anybody else’s. You can feel it, but there is no right and wrong. There is really no way to tell people how they ought to live. Holmes is right. Ultimately, what a human being is, is that we are the product of these forces, and we are going to go away someday. And what is to say? You may feel more significant than an animal or a rock, but you are not. What the biographer said was that Holmes was simply thinking out the implications of not believing there is a God, or that there is a purpose in life.

Well, I know plenty of New Yorkers who have the same beliefs. Lots of people have the same beliefs. That is, they do not think there is a God. They think things are here by accident. But they would say that to think about it like that, to work out the implications, is morbid. Okay, fine. That is fine, to say, let us not think out the implications, it is morbid. But I want you to see what you are doing. You are getting your peace by not thinking out the implications of your beliefs.

Whereas Paul is saying Christian peace is exactly the opposite. Christian peace comes from thinking out the implications. Thinking. What is true and what is right? What is the Christian doctrine of God? There is a God, and He made us for fellowship with Him. He created a perfect world, a world in which there was originally no sorrow or disease or death, and He wanted to live with us in it. Of course it has all gone wrong. We have turned from Him and the world is broken. But He has sent His Son into the world to rescue us, and He is preparing a new heavens and a new earth, and we are going to live with Him forever. Look at your value. Look at the fact that the future is secure.

Now what does that mean? If you are a Christian today, and you believe all that doctrine, and you are not at peace, you are not thinking. That is what it is: you are not thinking. You see, there is a stupid peace and then there is a smart peace. Let me define the stupid peace. The stupid peace is, “Ho, ho, ho, to the bottle I go, to heal my heart and drown my woe.” Now what is that? I am going to pop a cork, I am going to sit under a tree, I am going to look at the surf, and I am not going to think. I am going to bracket it out. You see, if I think about all the things that are going wrong in life and in the world, I am just going to bracket it. I am not going to think as much.

But Paul’s point is this: if you are a Christian, you do not bracket out, you bracket in. You think big. Big picture. Everything is going to be okay. If you really believe just the basic Christian truth, and you think it and think it and think about it, you are going to get peace. And if you do not have peace, you are not thinking. There is a stupid peace and there is a smart peace, and the Christian’s peace is not by making yourself stupid. It is by making yourself as aware of your beliefs, as thoughtful, as possible.