I first fell in love with Tim Keller as an author after reading his book, The Prodigal God. If you have not yet read that--let me implore you to make it the next book that you read, particularly if you, like me, were raised in the church. It will give you a fresh (but convicting) appreciation for the story about the prodigal son. That being said, Keller's latest book, The King's Cross, is well worth a read.
As a wanna-be Bible scholar that has never attended seminary, I look for books that feed my desire to better understand the Word of God. The King's Cross is a study of the book of Mark which I found both thought provoking and informative. As you may know King's Cross is the name of a major train station in London--in fact I was there just a few weeks ago! Keller took the title of his book from this station--a name which so perfectly encapsulates the deity and the servitude of Christ.
Keller chose the book of Mark because, according to Papia (60-135 A.D.), a bishop of the early church, Mark was most likely the secretary and translator for the apostle Peter. Keller asserts that it is possible that the Gospel according to Mark was almost entirely based on the eye-witness accounts of Peter, which explains how this book contains testimony about events at which Mark himself was not present.
Perhaps the most basic and profound idea in The King's Cross is this: Most religions are based on advice--and they give us a series of "to-dos" and "not to-dos;" but the Gospel is not advice, it is news--Good News. Keller writes:
Most religions have the same logic: If I perform, if I obey, I'm accepted. The gospel of Jesus is ... diametrically opposed to it: I'm fully accepted in Jesus Christ, and therefore I obey.
Rachel Held Evans was raised in an evangelical Christian family in Dayton Tennessee--home of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. She knew the Four Spiritual Laws before she could read and she cried when she found out her grandfather had voted for Bill Clinton because she thought that surely he would go to hell for voting for a Democrat. When she went to Bryan Christian College, where her father is a professor, she began to have questions and doubts about her faith. Evolving in Monkey Town is an honest account of her on-going journey.
Evans does not arrive at answers as much as she learns to embrace the questions. My husband David says, "My theology say more about ME than it says about God." Along those lines, Evans writes:
Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God. The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice; the latter is a virtue.
I appreciated the warm tone of the book, which invited me into a dialogue of thoughts. The author is humble in her struggle and genuine in her searching. She does not outline a new theology or propose an unorthodox doctrine, neither does she acquiesce to the traditional American interpretations of scripture.
After reading Evolving in Monkey Town, I am inspired to plunge deeper into the Word and to live more fully in obedience. I share the author's hunger for depth and meaning and her fatigue of pat answers and platitudes. But if you are one who does not want to wrestle with your dearly held beliefs, do not pick up this book. It will quickly reveal if your faith is rooted in your theology or in the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ. Such a revelation can be scary, to say the least.
Young, fresh, and edgy without being bitter, Evolving in Monkey Town is easy to read, but deliciously difficult to process. I do not agree with all of her assertions, but I certainly wrestle with many of the same questions. I am thankful for the reminder that God is so much greater than my capacity to define Him.
