Thoughts from a Book Study

Occasionally things will pop out of my mouth that later I think 'oh, that was actually pretty good.'  Now I'll admit, it doesn't happen often, and I'm far more likely to have things pop out of my mouth that I later regret, but sometimes I'll actually surprise myself.

Today some of us on staff started a once a week lunch study on Prodigal God by Tim Keller.  It'll be a great book for our group, and even after one day I can tell we'll have some good discussion from it, assuming that we can keep the cell phones turned off (you know who you are...).  Somehow our conversation today ranged from Free Will and Calvinism to Grace and Justice to why younger siblings are always the jacked up ones.  It was a good time.

At one point during the grace and justice point I said that, "We can't truly appreciate grace until we understand justice."  It is that idea that we can't truly appreciate driving a nice car until we understand what it is like to drive a P.o.S. every day.  We were talking about why church usually turns so many people off, why there are so many older brothers from the story at churches, and the problem with 'turn or burn' mentality that a lot of people grew up in.  I'm sure someone much smarter than I am has said my statement before (and probably more eloquently), but it is a truth none-the-less.  It is hard for us to understand how much we've been (for)given if we don't understand how bad off we were in the first place.

The monkey wrench flew in when we started to talk about who Jesus was telling the parable of the Prodigal Son.  There were both the sinners and the religious.  The parable, along with most of the things Jesus said, had a great way of hitting home with both audiences.  The sinners can identify with the younger son, the religious with the older.  My questions were: which did Jesus preach most often, grace or justice, and did his audience changed which one he emphasized?

I'll allow for people to draw their own conclusions on this one, but from what I've read Jesus spends a lot more time preaching about justice to the religious and grace to the sinners.  Somehow we've managed to get that backwards most of the time.

We all know of people who have grown up hearing about hellfire and brimstone and the judgment that comes from sin.  And while that is all true, many times the message falls on deaf ears.  In the same way, we all know of churches that preach a health and wealth type of gospel and the grace that comes along with our belief in Christ.  And while that is all true, many times the message leads to complacency and a country club mentality at church.  What would happen if we started reversing those messages to each audience more often?

Maybe what the sinners need is to hear about more is grace and the religious could use a little more judgment in their sermons.