Book Corner: The Prodigal God by Tim Keller

I’ll start by saying I really liked this book.  I guess I was predisposed to liking it because I had heard about it and looked forward to finally reading it.  But it did not disappoint.  Tim Keller unpacks the familiar story of the prodigal son (Luke 15) and applies it to the whole story of the Gospel.  He really breaks it down so that each chapter of the book looks at one particular aspect of the parable—from the audience listening to Jesus, to each character in the story, to the larger lessons we can learn about our own hearts. 

He started with a definition of prodigal, which was important because if the common understanding of the “prodigal son” label implies someone irresponsible and selfish then it is somewhat alarming to couple that term with God, as in the title of the book.  But, Keller provides some insight in the books’ introduction:

    

     “The word ‘prodigal’ does not mean ‘wayward’ but, according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate    

     Dictionary, ‘recklessly spendthrift.’ It means to spend until you have nothing left.  This term is therefore  

     as appropriate for describing the father in the story as his younger son.  The father’s welcome to the  

     repentant son was literally reckless, because he refused to ‘reckon’ or count his sin against him or demand  

     repayment…prod-i-gal: recklessly extravagant; having spent everything. “ 

As Keller extrapolates, that word can have different connotations, depending on whose “everything” was spent, and the longer-term consequences. 

I also liked how Keller broke the story down not just as an exposition about the younger son in the parable, but rightly points to Christ’s teaching of this story about two sons.  The story is as much about the older son as it is about the younger.  I have heard some teachings in the past which included a look at both brothers, and since I most relate to the legalistic tendencies of the older, I appreciated the full treatment that Keller gives. 

Now for a smattering of some particularly good & convicting passages from the book...

Both Wrong; Both Loved (pp 44-47)

Jesus does not divide the world into the moral “good guys” and the immoral “bad guys.”  He shows us that everyone is dedicated to a project of self-salvation, to using God and others in order to get power and control for themselves.  We are just going about it in different ways.  Even though both sons are wrong, however, the father cares for them and invites them both back into his love and feast.

                This means that Jesus’ message, which is “the gospel,” is a completely different spirituality.  The gospel of Jesus is not religion or irreligion, morality or immorality, moralism or relativism, conservatism or liberalism.  Nor is it something halfway along a spectrum between two poles—it is something else altogether.

                The gospel is distinct from the other two approaches: In its view, everyone is wrong, everyone is loved, and everyone is called to recognize this and change.  By contrast, elder brothers divide the world in two: “The good people (like us) are in and the bad people, who are the real problem with the world, are out.”  Younger brothers, even if they don’t believe in God at all, do the same thing, saying: “No, the open-minded and tolerant people are in and the bigoted, narrow-mined people, who are the real problem with the world, are out.”

                But Jesus says: “The humble are in and the proud are out” (see Luke 18:14 & Luke 5:32).  The people who confess they aren’t particularly good or open-minded are moving toward God, because the prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know you need it.  The people who think they are just fine, thank you, are moving away from God.  “The Lord…cares for the humble, but he keeps his distance from the proud” (Psalm 138:6)…

                Although the sons are both wrong and both loved, the story does not end on the same note for each.  Why does Jesus construct the story so that one of them is saved, restored to a right relationship with the father, and one of them is not? (At least, not before the story ends.) It may be that Jesus is trying to say that while both forms of the self-salvation project are equally wrong, each one is not equally dangerous.  One of the ironies of the parable is now revealed.  The younger son’s flight from the father was crashingly obvious.  He left the father literally, physically, and morally.  Though the older son stayed at home, he was actually more distant and alienated from the father than his brother, because he was blind to his true condition.  He would have been horribly offended by the suggestion that he was rebelling against the father’s authority and love, but he was, deeply. 

 *     *     *

“We habitually and instinctively look to other things besides God and his grace as our justification, hope, significance, and security.  We believe the gospel at one level, but at deeper levels we do not.  Human approval, professional success, power and influence, family and clan identity—all of these things serve as our heart’s ‘functional trust’ rather than what Christ has done, and as a result we continue to be driven to a great degree by fear, anger, and a lack of self-control.  You cannot change such things through mere willpower, through learning Biblical principles and trying to carry them out.  We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts.  We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves.  That is how we grow." (p.115)

“The elder brother’s problem is his self-righteousness, the way he uses his moral record to put God and others in his debt to control them and get them to do what he wants.  His spiritual problem is the radical insecurity that comes from basing his self-image on achievements and performance, so he must endlessly prop up his sense of righteousness by putting others down and finding fault…To find God we must repent of the things we have done wrong, but if that is all you do, you may remain just an elder brother.  To truly become Christians we must also repent of the reasons we ever did anything right.  Pharisees only repent of their sins, but Christians repent for the very roots of their (self-) righteousness, too.  We must learn how to repent of the sin under all our other sins and under all our “righteousness” —the sin of seeking to be our own Savior and Lord.”  (pp 77-78)

“How can the inner workings of the heart be changed from a dynamic fear and anger to that of love, joy, and gratitude?  Here is how.  You need to be moved by the sight of what it cost to bring you home… You need to see how GREAT is our outstanding debt and distance from God and how GREAT is Christ’s willingness and action to make it right.  ” (pp 85-86)

“Jesus Christ, who had all the power in the world, saw us enslaved by the very things we thought would free us.  So he emptied himself of his glory and became a servant (Philippians 2).  He laid aside the infinities and immensities of his being and, at the cost of his life, paid the debt for our sins, purchasing us the only place our hearts can rest, in his Father’s house.”  (p 87)

“If the Lord of the universe loves us enough to experience this for us, what are we afraid of?”

“…the Cross proves God’s care for you and gives you all the security you need.”

“…all change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out of the changes that understanding creates in your heart.  Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world.  Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting.”

I highly recommend The Prodigal God by Tim Keller.  On the surface it's an easy read, but without rushing to get through it, we can come out with some real heart change.  

All excerpts taken from Keller, Timothy. The Prodigal God. New York: Dutton, 2008

the Christmas stairway

in church this advent season, we have been going through a series called "Christmas in Genesis." it has been really neat to see illustrations and foreshadowing of the Christmas story in the first book of the bible.  it's not normally the place that one might turn to remember the story of baby Jesus, but he's in there, if we have the eyes to see! 

last week we looked at the story of Jacob & the stairway to heaven.  commonly referred to as Jacob's ladder, the pastor first reminded us that the image is not actually a ladder, but some stairs. that distinction is important, because as a ladder, we think it represents how we must struggle and climb our way up to God in some unreachable place.  but in fact, Jacob's vision is one of movement both up and down the stairs.  he sees angels ascending all the way up to heaven, and angels also descending the stairs to earth.  this is a picture of God's work--the angels are the messengers of God's love and plans and as they are directed by God, they come to earth to act and as they finish their task, they head back up to heaven.

but, the angels are not the only ones occupying these stairs.  from heaven, God speaks to Jacob and says: I am with you. I will watch over you and protect you.  I will not leave you until I have done what I promised to you.  when Jacob woke from his sleep, he knew that surely God was with him.

as the pastor was delivering his sermon, i was thinking about one of my first experiences reading about Jacob, several years ago.  i remembered when i first read through Genesis and i got really hung up on this guy.  the story of him & his stairway vision comes immediately after he has stolen his brother's birthright and fled to avoid his father's punishment.  he is a deceitful trickster and i could not wrap my head around why in the world God would give him such significant blessing (not only here, but also when God wrestles with him and renames him Israel.)  can't God see how bad and undeserving Jacob is, i thought?  what is going on here???

and what i didn't know then was GRACE.  i didn't see then how Jacob's mischief and hardness of heart is a picture of mine and the very same promises God makes to Jacob can actually be mine too.  how?  only by God's outrageous grace and redemption.  the thing that upset me about Jacob was that i felt that he represented the world of "bad people" and, knowing i represented the world of "good people," i worried about this upside-down-nature of what God was doing.   is He rewarding sin?  but no!  it's by his mercy and kindness that we are led to repentance.  He chooses the foolish things of the world, the things we would cast-off and discount, as the vessels for his power and glory. 

God delights in lavishing his grace and mercy on those who don't deserve it.....which is all of us!  He loves making his riches known in situations where human wisdom can't find a way out. my gut-reaction to Jacob is not all wrong--he is in fact a bad guy. i held him at arm's length because i could not fathom a God doing good for bad people.  but, that is the crux of God's heart!  that is the moral of the whole story, the key to humility and transformation. we need to see Jacob's sin, and our own, to understand how unbelievable it is that God would come to rescue us. will we have the eyes to see our family resemblance to Jacob?

in Jacob's vision, God was still up in heaven, speaking down to him.  but at Christmas, we see the full completion of this story.  when Jesus calls several of his disciples, He amazes them by knowing things about them they didn't tell him directly.  He assures them that that is not the most amazing thing they will see him do. He then added, "Very truly I tell you, you will see 'heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on' the Son of Man." (John 1:43-51)  do you see the fulfillment of Jacob's vision?  Jesus says that He himself IS the very stairway upon which angels go up and down, the stairway that connects heaven to earth, at the top of which is God looking down with love and grace on his people. Jesus is the incarnation of that grace and mercy God spoke to Jacob in his vision. Jesus is God with us, keeping his promises to lead and protect us.  it is a sort of an odd image to picture Jesus as a stairway, but that's what He's saying--He is the very connection between man and God.  and Christmas is the time when God made that definitive act of grace, coming to Earth in the form of his son, to be with us, to save us Jacobs from our sin and deliver us from God's just wrath.  the real gift of Christmas is God giving himself to liars and tricksters and sinners like Jacob and you and me!

God does not give us a ladder, which we must climb by our own efforts to reach him.  He gives us a stairway, and He descends to rescue us.  may this Christmas be a time we remember and celebrate God's radical love.

complain much? you're in good company.

so i'm reading through exodus.  God has just dazzled pharaoh and the egyptians, not to mention his own people, with plagues of increasing intensity, eventually securing the release of the hebrews from slavery in egypt.  if that weren't enough, he led them by pillars of cloud and fire through the wilderness, promising to bring them to a new land.  only one thing stood in their way--that pesky little red sea. so, He did what He had to do: split the sea and led His people through on dry land.  as the egyptians pursued, the walls of water crashed in on them, drowning the enemies for good.  Moses & his sister Miriam respond by leading the people in great songs of adoration and praise for God's mighty act of salvation.

and what happens next?  the israelites start to complain.  that's right, they complain! can you imagine? they even tell Moses that they should have been left alone to die in Egypt--at least there they had food and drink.

as i read and reflect on this passage, i see my heart going in two directions.
first, i cannot believe or understand why the israelites would complain.  don't they see God's desire and active will to save them?  don't they see His ongoing mercy?  don't they realize that the very same God who parted the seas and freed them from centuries-long slavery would certainly give them what they needed to survive?  did they really think God had led them through all that just to abandon them in the wilderness?

and then, that quiet but persistent reminder in my heart tells me that i am not that different from the complaining israelites.  was this passage included in scripture for us to read and tout our superiority?  no, i think it was included so that we could see our place among the israelites--not just in God's acts of favor, but also in short-sightedness and forgetfulness. sure it would be easy to tell myself that i, unlike the israelites, always remember God's faithfulness and never doubt it will come again.  easy, maybe. but completely honest? not so much.  my complaints might not sound exactly like theirs, and they may not come right on the heels of miraculous sea-parting, but surely they come.  and not only do i have the record of the sea-parting to remind me of God's might and power, but also the whole rest of history...not to mention the miracles and provision i have seen from God in my own life.  what right do i have to complain?  why do i so often forget?

the other place my mind goes when thinking about my complaining brethren is to an assumption of God's response.  considering my instinctive reaction to the israelites' complaints, i want to run with that exasperation and say "fine, you don't see all that God is doing?  then you don't get anything else good!"  but what does God say?  "I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day." (Exodus 16)

we have probably all experienced ungrateful people, often exaggerated by our estimation of whether or not that other person's ungratefulness is justified or not.  the last thing i want to do for someone who is ungrateful, particularly following an especially sacrificial thing that i may have done for them, is do more.  the last thing i want to feel is even more unappreciated.  but thankfully, God's heart is much richer in grace and mercy than mine!!  what does God do when he hears the complaints of his people?  he gives more, he gives what they need.  and therein is the other lesson for me--not only do i get a reflection of my heart's own faithless tendency to complain and doubt, but also a stunning picture of the mercy and compassion that our Father gives to unrighteous complainers like us.  hold out love and blessing until they realize what fools they've become and come crawling back to apologize?  no!  surely this does not give us a picture of a push-over God--he can do what He wants to do. yes, He could have withheld blessing to teach the israelites a lesson in keeping their complaints to themselves.  but here we see that He does what He really wants to do--provide for His people, even in the midst of their doubt and foolishness and forgetfulness of His good and always-sufficient nearness.

how can i respond like this?  i pray for my instincts to change, to be able to respond with mercy & compassion when my nature often compels me to turn away from those in need or shake them until they realize how blessed they already are.  how can i learn to complain less and find contentment more?  i pray for my heart to hold on to the abundance of God's grace, and all the ways i've seen that, instead of clinging desperately to the cultural messages of scarcity and greed.

particularly in this season of all-consuming materialism, let us humbly learn from our israelite ancestors and rejoice in God's abundant provision and love, which never forgets or abandons us.