The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller

I honestly believe that The Prodigal God is the most important book that I've read in a long, long time. It is nothing short of a paradigm shift and an important one if you claim to follow Christ. I could not begin to summarize this book even though it is a short and easy read, because Keller's development of his argument is so dead on. Having heard countless sermons on "the prodigal son" I was astounded to realize for the first time that Jesus never framed his story as being about the prodigal son at all. He began his story by saying, "There was a man who had two sons."

I think it is really interesting to think about why we might so easily gloss over such a patently obvious fact. The story is just as much about the son who stays as the son who runs away. Keller is so methodical in pulling out lessons from both brothers and the father, that it is almost surreal to look back and acknowledge that before I read this book, I had missed huge and vitally important chunks of this very familiar parable.

This new blog, Word, is intended to be a dialogue about books. It is not my intention to summarize someone else's book. Clearly that would be arrogant and wrong, but I will give you a few quotes. Hopefully these teasers will lead you to read this incredible little book. Here is the Amazon link to order your copy.

Notable Quotes:

• "When you realize that the antidote to being bad is not just being good, you are on the brink." p.78
• "The key difference between a Pharisee and a believer in Jesus is inner-heart motivation." p.86

So if you've read this book, I would love to know what you thought. What was the biggest takeaway for you? What really challenged you about this book? Did you disagree with Keller on anything?