we are all dedicated to a project of self-salvation. What am I talking about?!  So, every week the winter staff guys come over for dinner and while we recount the week of campers, we also have been reading The Prodigal God by: Timothy Keller. (Add it to the top of your reading list—seriously!) We have been unpacking the parable of what many refer to as “the prodigal son.”  In revisiting this weekly, I’m finding that it is not so much about one lost son, but two.  Both wrong.  Both loved.

“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, the father cares for them and invited 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 all together.  The gospel is distinct from the two other approaches:  In its view everyone is wrong, everyone is loved, and everyone is called to recognize this and change”.....“the prerequisite for receiving the Grace of God is to know you need it.”   (T. Keller 44, 45)