Scott Tsao’s Reviews > The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith > Status Update

- Jesus tells us that both the sensual way of the younger brother and the ethical way of the elder brother are spiritual dead ends. He also shows us there is another way: through him. And to enter that way and to live a life based on his salvation will bring us finally to the ultimate party and feast at the end of history.

- Dinesen is professing her belief that something exists beyond these two alternatives, something that is neither the selfishness of the "aesthetic" nor the severity of the "ethical." She couldn't find a better way of representing that something than a wonderful meal, a great feast.
- Jesus's parable answers the question that Dinesen's story poses so skillfully. Jesus says, "I am the bread of Heaven."

- Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher who influenced Isak Dinesen, called these two ways the "aesthetic" and the "ethical," and in his writings he shows that neither approach to life is adequate.
- But what is the alternative? At Babette's feast, the diners have the momentary mystical experience in which these two things--"righteousness and bliss" (Ps. 85)--meet.

…will you ever get to know him and grow into his likeness.
- Isak Dinesen's beloved story "Babette's Feast" also ends with a feast, and also teaches us about two common ways to live that are inadequate, and the reality of another path.
- Both the worldly life of sensual pleasure and the religious life of ethical strictness fail to give the human heart what it is seeking.

- Christians commonly say they want a relationship with Jesus, that they want to "get to know Jesus better." You will never be able to do that by yourself.
- You must be deeply involved in the church, in Christian community, with strong relationships of love and accountability. Only if you are part of a community of believers seeking to resemble, serve, and love Jesus...

4) Salvation Is Communal
- Feasting is communal by nature. No reunion, family gathering, wedding, or other significant social event is complete without a meal. When we invite someone to eat with us, it is an invitation to relax a bit and get to know one another.
- If it took a community know an individual (as C.S. Lewis testified), how much more would this be true of Jesus Christ?

…other hand, if Jesus really had done everything for you to secure your salvation, the you are not your own. You were bought with a price.
- If we say "I believe in Jesus" but it doesn't affect the way we live, the answer is not that now we need to add hard work to our faith so much as that we haven't truly understand or believed in Jesus at all.

…heart-change will be superficial and fleeting.
- The gospel is therefore not just the ABCs of the Christian life, but the A to Z of the Christian life. Our problems arise largely because we don't continually return to the gospel to work it in and live it out.
- Embracing the gospel is a double-edge sword. On the one hand it cut away slavish fear. God loves us freely, despite our flaws and failures. On the...

- What makes you faithful or generous is not just a redoubled effort to follow moral rules. Rather, all change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out of the changes that understanding creates in your heart.
- Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without...

…hope, significance, and security. We believe the gospel at one level, but at deeper levels we do not.
- We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. THat is how we grow.