Book Review: The Prodigal God by Tim Keller
Three Down
The Prodigal God marks the third Tim Keller book that I’ve read this year. All three books (The Reason for God, Counterfeit Gods, and now The Prodigal God) were gifts from my brother Andy and his family. They’re all worth your time.
A Revealing Twist on a Old Favorite
Tim Keller has an uncanny ability to take Bible stories that you’ve heard many, many times before and reveal their relevance in previously unthought of ways. The Prodigal God is a striking example. The entire book explores the parable of “the prodigal son,” or as Keller likes to call it, “the parable of the two lost sons.” As Keller’s renaming of the parable might suggest, he finds as much meaning and significance in the story about the older brother as he does in the story about the younger brother.
The title, “The Prodigal God” is also a bit of a twist on the normal understanding of this parable. The word “prodigal,” according to Keller, means “recklessly extravagant,” or “having spent everything” (1). And he aptly applies this title to God, who recklessly loves His people and who spent the life of His son for our redemption. Keller claims that he has “seen more people encouraged, enlightened, and helped by this passage, when he explained the true meaning of it, than by any other text” (XIII).
I don’t think Keller is stretching the meaning of this story. I think He’s right, and it’s amazing to see all the applications that this story entails.
Personally Speaking
For me personally, I can identify with “the older brother” in this parable. I know my standing before God is one based on Jesus’ performance and not my own performance. But sometimes, in the midst of life, I find myself believing that my performance is the ground upon which God is either proud or disappointed. Sometimes in these moments, especially when I think I am excelling in my pursuit of God, I am the most judgmental person you’d ever want to meet. I start expecting people to live up to my standards. This is pride, and it’s older brother syndrome. The Prodigal God, and about ten other things in my life right now, have helped remind me that I have plenty of faults, and I need to be humble. After all, when I am humble, I am most useful to God.
This is a good book. Easy to read. Life-changing. I wish it weren’t twenty bucks, because I’d buy about fifty copies and give them away.
Related Posts:
No commentsBook Review: Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis
Surprised by Joy is C.S. Lewis’ “sort of” autobiography. In the book, he traces his early childhood through his conversion to Christianity while teaching at Oxford.
This year has been a year of C.S. Lewis for me personally. He’s an author that I’ve admired for years, but only because of the admiration that other authors (whom I enjoy) have for him. Admittedly, I had never finished any C. S. Lewis book (with the exception of the first two Narnia books when I was a kid) until this year. Now I’ve finished five. Because of my current interest in Lewis, I read with great interest this autobiography of his early life and conversion.
Surprised by Joy is by far the most rapturous of Lewis’ writing that I’ve encountered so far. His description of the English and Irish countryside is superb, his story is so far removed from my own that his story is other-worldly, and the depth of his understanding of literature and philosophy is inspiring. Lewis is at the same time both wonderful for his imagination, and wonderful for his understanding of complex ideas. He was a man who felt deeply and thought deeply. A pattern I would like to mimic in my own life.
The conversion of C. S. Lewis is beautiful. It is a story that unfolds slowly through the book. God first began to capture his heart through small glimpses of “Joy” in both literature, music, and nature. As Lewis sought to recapture this “Joy” it fled from him, proving unattainable time and again. Joy would reappear, unexpected, throughout his life, and eventually became a clue that helped point him towards the God he most desired to believe did not exist. His conversion, unlike many, was gradual and slow. God pursued and broke through the barriers in Lewis’ mind until he could no longer deny His existence.
My favorite sentence in the book is, “The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation” (219). In this quote, Lewis betrays the miracle that the Spirit performed on his heart in bringing him to Christ. He did not want God to be real, and God’s pursuit of him seemed at times “hard,” but it was in fact “kindness.” Jesus’ pursuit of Lewis’ seemed to be compulsive, but it proved to be liberating. This description is beautiful, and reminds me of what I felt at seven years old, when God drew me to Himself.
I love this book. It inspires me to read classic literature, enjoy the beauty all around me, think hard about God, and feel emotion fully. Surprised by Joy is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand Lewis, and it is by far my favorite Lewis book so far.
Related Posts:
No commentsBook Review: The World’s Last Night and Other Essays by C. S. Lewis
Book Info
The World’s Last Night and Other Essays is a small, 113 page book, containing seven essays by C. S. Lewis covering a variety of topics. The seven essays are: “The Efficacy of Prayer,” “On Obstinacy in Belief,” “Lilies that Fester,” “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” “Good Work and Good Works,” “Religion and Rocketry,” and “The World’s Last Night.” These essays were originally published separately in a variety of publications between 1952 and 1959. I believe the current collected form of the essays was first published in 1959.
Efficacy of Prayer
In this essay, Lewis marvels at both the reality and unprovable-ness of prayer. He experientially knows that prayer works, and yet he is quite aware that there is no empirical way to prove that it works. Further, as the title of the essay makes clear, Lewis questions the purpose of prayer. In part his conclusion is that, “In it God shows Himself to us. That He answers prayer is a corollary – not necessarily the most important one – from that revelation” (8). Lewis ends the essay by contemplating the way in which petitionary prayer works. Good essay!
On Obstinacy in Belief
Lewis begins this essay by pointing out that it is often stated that, science demands evidence for belief, while religion demands belief without evidence. Accordingly, science and religion often conflict with each other in that they value opposite things: science values facts, religion values faith. However, as Lewis makes clear, this is an oversimplification of the situation, for science often leads men to conclusions that have not been implicitly proved, and faith in God is not entirely absent from proof. Throughout the rest of the essay, Lewis explains that the gulf between science and faith is not nearly as wide as many make it seem. Good essay!
Lilies That Fester
Lilies that Fester is probably my favorite essay in this collection. Lewis essentially predicts the movement of political correctness at least 20 years before it became a reality. He laments the day that men would quit thinking for themselves, one where only popular opinion will be regarded as “good thought.” Listen as he describes what this would look like, “Every boy or girl that is born is presented with the choice: ‘Read the poets, whom we, the cultured, approve, and say the sort of things we say about them, or be a prole’” (46). Lewis’ concern is that this sort of “political correctness” would invade the arena of Christianity and wreak havoc. Lewis is squarely on the side of freedom both in the arena of thought and in the arena of life. My other favorite quote from this essay (probably because I lean libertarian politically) is, “All political power is at best a necessary evil: but it is least evil when it claims no more than to be useful or convenient and sets itself strictly limited objectives. Anything transcendental or spiritual, or even anything very strongly ethical, in its pretensions is dangerous and encourages it to meddle with our private lives” (40). Great!
Screwtape Proposes a Toast
This is an essay that acts as a sort of prequel to the Screwtape Letters – a fictional book of letters from one demon to another regarding temptation. The whole of this essay is a fictional speech from Screwtape, a demon, to his other demons regarding methods of temptation. I’ve previously reviewed the Screwtape Letters, and am honestly not that big a fan of the book or the essay. Meh!
Good Work and Good Works
Probably my second favorite essay of this collection. Lewis focuses on the necessity for Christians not simply to do good works (religious works), but also to spend their time doing good work (doing work well). As he says, “When our Lord provided a poor wedding party with an extra glass of wine all round, he was doing good works. But also good work; it was wine really worth drinking” (71). Lewis spends some time explaining how modern culture is filled with less than good work. Accordingly, many of us manufacture or create products that we must first convince consumers they need. Conversely good work can be defined as: creating, or doing something, that we would do even if no monetary compensation were involved. He concludes that, “We shall try, if we get the chance, to earn a living by doing well what would be worth doing even if we had not a living to earn” (78). Great!
Religion and Rocketry
In this essay, Lewis contemplates how the Christian religion would be effected by the discovery of life on other planets. Would the aliens be fallen like mankind? Would they need the death of Christ? Would they be rational creatures like humans? Capable of choice? This is fun essay that shows the vastness of Lewis’ creativity, but – I suggest – probably seemed more relevant when it was written in the 1950′s. Creative and Fun!
The World’s Last Night
In The World’s Last Night, Lewis argues for the centrality of the teaching of the return of Christ in the bible. He observes that in previous generations an exaggerated view of the return of Jesus, by men like Albert Schweitzer, has led to an under-emphasized and embarrassed response from many of Lewis’ contemporaries regarding the teaching. And this, according to Lewis, is a mistake. Jesus teaching on His return is a vital part of His teaching. Christ cannot be understood apart from it. Lewis goes on to suggest how the message of the second coming of Jesus should effect us personally. I love that he comes to unique conclusions about our response to Jesus’ teaching about the second coming. His conclusion is that the expectation of God’s coming judgment (which is part of the second coming) should not lead to crisis-type actions, but should steady us, and help us to make wise decisions in each situation. Good essay!
Overall
This is a really fun and thought-provoking book to read. I’m discovering more and more that I really do like the writings of C. S. Lewis. I, however, prefer a lot of his more offbeat writings, rather than his extremely well-known works.
Related Posts:
No commentsTotal Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey
My brother Andy recently read this book and wrote a review. I’m posting it here. The implications of this book are huge: I can’t wait to read it for myself.
Summary
In Total Truth Nancy Pearcey argues that western (American) Christians have been indoctrinated by secular culture, and by poor theological frameworks within the church, that have caused them to acquiesce into a bifurcated system of living and seeing the world, one in which there is a secular/sacred divide that keeps faith locked into the private sphere of life and out of the public sector (17). Pearcey states, “Many believers have absorbed the fact/value, public/private dichotomy, restricting their faith to the religious sphere while adopting whatever views are current in their professional or social circles” (33).
The problem with this is that it is a breakdown in theology and it highlights the insufficiency of many western Christians’ worldview. A right understanding of Christianity is, “that there is a biblical perspective on everything – not just on spiritual matters” (44). Thus, it is every Christian’s duty to think through and live out all of life from a Christian perspective. “Being a Christian means embarking on a lifelong process of growth in grace, both in our personal lives (sanctification) and in our vocation (cultural renewal)” (49). Christians cannot afford to accept the terms as they stand – leaving faith at home or in church on Sundays. Rather, the Christian’s entire life should be driven by a biblical worldview. This is the only real way to break free from the dichotomies that pervade our thinking and living. As Pearcey states, “The best way to drive out a bad worldview is by offering a good one (58); one that unifies both secular and sacred, public and private, within a single framework (65-66).
And it is the church’s duty to work to this end. The church is a training ground for cultivating people equipped to speak the gospel to the world (67). And by “gospel” Pearcey does not simply mean to share that all have sinned, that Christ died for sins, and that the proper response is repentance and faith. While it is inferred that she does believe this to be true and that it is the central message of the gospel, Pearcey argues that evangelism encompasses more than disseminating these basic truths. She states, “The task of evangelism starts with helping the nonbeliever face squarely the inconsistencies between his professed beliefs and his actual experience” (314). She goes on a few pages later, “In evangelism, our goal is to highlight the cognitive dissonance – to identify the points at which the nonbeliever’s worldview is contradicted by reality. Then we can show that only Christianity if fully consistent with the things we all know by experience” (319).
Moving on in her book Pearcey traces trajectories that led America into its dichotomized way of thinking. By looking from within the church and from the outside, she exposes several contributing factors to the secular/sacred split. First from within, Pearcey explains an overarching three-part theme that should guide the Christian worldview: Creation, Fall and Redemption. She summarizes, “All of creation was originally good; it cannot be divided into a good part (spiritual) and a bad part (material). Likewise, all of creation was affected by the Fall, and when time ends, all creation will be redeemed. Evil does not reside in some part of God’s good creation, but in our abuse of creation for sinful purposes” (86). This system is, “cosmic in scope, describing the great events that shape the nature of all created reality. We don’t need to accept an inner fragmentation between our faith and the rest of life. Instead we can be integrally related to God on all levels of our being” (95). Using this three-part grid as a tool of analysis, Pearcey then argues, “Throughout the history of the church, various groups have tended to seize upon one of these three elements, overemphasizing it to the detriment of the other two – producing a lopsided, unbalanced theology” (87).
One such failure was Aquinas’s overemphasis of Creation, leading him to a theology of “nature/grace dualism” (92). The outworking of this error was that the gospel was restricted to the “upper-story realm,” isolated from science, philosophy, law and politics (93). This gave leverage for the argument that later came to fruition during the Enlightenment; namely, that science and reason are religiously neutral. From this developed the notion that secularism and naturalism are objective, rational systems, binding on everyone, all the while biblical views are dismissed as biased, private opinions (94).
Once there was an accepted dichotomy between “nature” and “grace,” it was not hard to convince anyone that “science constitutes facts while morality is about values” (107). And with Darwins’s theory of natural selection came the ability to have a complete naturalistic worldview (106). The effect of Darwin’s theory has been pervasive. Pearcey states, “Virtually every part of society has been affected by the Darwinian worldview” (155).
What is insightful by Pearcey, though, is that the overwhelming acceptance of this dichotomy and of naturalism as the “lower-level” neutral sphere of truth is all based upon a philosophical foundation. The under girding of naturalism is the belief that matter is eternal and that the “system” is closed – neither of which can be proven on naturalist, scientific terms. Nonetheless, “once people have made that philosophical commitment, they can be persuaded by relatively minor evidence” (168). Furthermore, at this point, the “game” is biased, because once the two-tiered view of reality is accepted, the naturalists define the rules for access into the “lower realm.” Science (empiricism) is put forward as the only viable means for validating truth claims. Or conversely, we must now accept naturalism as a “central tenet” of science (169).
Moving on, Pearcey progresses to show how the dichotomy made its way into the development of our country’s politics and religion. Originally, in the colonial period, the dominant political philosophy was classical Christian republicanism. But with the development of thought – that cannot be divorced from the Enlightenment and Darwinism – came the new liberalism, which replaced the sentiment of self-sacrifice and the social structures of family and church with individualism. The focus was now on self-assertion and self-interest (280). Even evangelicalism1 with all of its positive affects in many ways worked to further the gap. The focus on individual conversion led to a doctrine of one-time emotional decisionalism, which ultimately contributed to the belief that Christianity is a “noncognitive, upper-story phenomenon” (272). Pearcey concludes, “Evangelicalism has largely given in to the two-story division that renders religion a matter of individual experience, with little or no cognitive content” (293).
Pearcey eventually reveals that the bifurcation of public/private has made it into the culture in which we are currently living. And therefore Christians have a great responsibility to fight against this way of thinking because it opposes truth. “What Christianity offers is a unified, integrated truth that stands in complete contrast to the two-level concept of truth in the secular world” (119). So what we must do is “evangelize”2 culture by exposing the flaws of other worldviews and then reveal that the Christian worldview offers a better alternative. And the alternative we offer is not simply for the private sector; we must, “find ways to make it clear that we are making claims about reality, not merely our subjective experience” (119).
Critical Evaluation
The premise set forth in this book has exposed an entire schema of thinking that I have used to interpret reality. While I have thought for some time that what Christians need is an entire worldview from which to operate, I have failed to see the pervasive nature of the public/private dichotomy in the western world and my acceptance of it many times. As a result, there are some questions I now have in relation to this new enlightenment. For one, how am I to understand the concept of “separation of church and state?” Originally, this clause was set forth to guard from the establishment of a church-state and to protect the right of individuals from forced religion. But as it is used now, it seems to “guard” the government from any religious influence (except naturalism), and this seems to be an extension of the public/private dichotomy. It would be fitting to trace how it is that we should specifically think through this concept of “separation.”
Another trajectory worth tracing is what the implications are for the education of Christian children. If evangelism is as broad as Pearcey defines it3, and if, “every subject area should be taught from a solidly biblical perspective so that students grasp the interconnections among the disciplines, discovering for themselves that all truth is God’s truth (129), then is public school even an option for Christian parents? And furthermore, where do we start as Christian parents in building a biblical worldview with our children?
Lastly, Pearcey calls for us to engage culture by exposing to individuals the inconsistencies in their worldview. But at what point do we share what Paul calls of first importance: that Christ died, that he was buried and that he rose again?4 And what’s the order in our attempt to put forward both the central gospel message, and an entire worldview that comes with it?
Review by Andy Adkison
Related Posts:
No comments
