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Here are another pair of books worth reading. This time both serious, both important.

Michael Horton has been writing books since he was barely out of his teens back in the 80s. That this Oxford-trained theologian is brilliant is no surprise. What we discover in reading Christless Christianity: the Alternative Gospel of the American Church is that he is also wise and insightful. He doesn’t claim we are yet to the point of having taking Christ totally out of Christianity, but we are close. Evangelicalism, especially as practiced in the U.S., has become a theraputic moralism whose central tenets could largely be expressed without reference to God, let alone Jesus. The Good News has become the Good Advice and churches spend most of their time telling people how to climb to God for a better life. Horton’s call is convicting, compelling, and exhilarating. The church needs to get back to the business of reminding us of what we daily forget: our sin is worse than we think; Christ’s mercy is better than we can know.

In The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith Timothy Keller provides a fresh look at Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son in which is revealed God’s extravagant (prodigal?) grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. Keller’s focus on the elder brother made me question how often I do the right thing, but for the wrong reason. When I get around to loving my neighbor or caring for the widow or orphan, is it to gain the approval of others, or perhaps a misguided effort to earn God’s love? The prodigal brother was the ill-deserving recipient of his father’s outrageous love, but by the end of Jesus’ story, the older brother had yet to receive the father’s grace. This book is a fabulous reminder: our sin is worse than we think; Christ’s mercy is better than we can know.