Love your website, been perusing it now for about two months.

Since you don’t know me, I’ve been emboldened to make a few comments your latest journal entry about meeting Tim Keller.

Based on what you wrote, I believe that if you grew up in the 1930′s in Germany, you would have been a Nazi. If you had grown up in China during the Mao years, you would have been a Communist.

You see, your journal entry betrays a “leader-idol” predisposition in you. Anyone who approaches leaders with a certain amount of trepidation and hand-wringing (as you openly acknowledged), only to gush profusely afterwards about the kindness and magnetic aura of the person, has a certain predeliction and innate hunger to follow, and to follow blindly. There is nothing wrong to follow great leadership, in fact it can be a Biblical mandate, but there is a fundamental difference between following a great leader, and blindly following a charismatic leader.

This is not a slight on Tim Keller who is a great leader and Christian. But he’s just a human after all, something your gushing comments seem to almost bypass.

Compare your comments on meeting Keller with comments made by someone who met Mao:

The occasion was another dinner party to which my father had been invited and permitted to bring a daughter. It was Mao’s 70th birthday. By 1963, of course, I was no longer a young, ignorant teenager. I considered meeting Mao to be a rare honor, and I was filled with excitement. Mao seemed relaxed, talking to his guests and laughing often. At one point he turned to me and asked what I was doing. I answered nervously that I had finished college and was a teacher of English. Mao smiled kindly and said he could not believe that I was already a teacher. Then he asked if I would like to take him as my student. I was embarrassed and stumbled over my reply. I said, “How dare I teach you, Chairman?” Mao laughed a little and said, “Why not?”