Timothy Keller. God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life. New York, NY: Viking, November 7th 2017. 400 pp.
3 out of 5
Purchase: Westminster | Amazon
Want to find a year-long devotional on the book of Proverbs? Preacher and author Timothy Keller has written this 365 days devotionals on the book of Proverbs. This review is my overall thoughts on this devotional.
I’m rather cautious in using devotionals since most of my devotional reading comes from the Bible with a good Bible commentary but I appreciated that this devotional was aware we must get the meaning of the Biblical text rather than read our own interpretation incorrectly into a passage of Scripture. Keller’s introduction to the book of Proverbs include discussions of how to interpret the book of Proverbs and also the nature of the book of Proverbs. I appreciate that lest readers think the Bible is just some kind of book where we can chop up one or two verses to say whatever we want to say.
The first portion of the book tries to go by the order of the book of Proverbs of the first few chapters in Proverbs but towards the end the devotional is organized by topics or related subject. I think readers must realize this is because Proverbs is not an easy book to teach on verse by verse. I appreciate Keller ending each days’ devotional with applications and even some useful application questions.
There’s a lot of wisdom covered within the pages of this work. I appreciate the author’s call to readers to confess to God honestly. Topics of this book include personal life, family life and work life. The book addresses adultery and lusts, wealth, family and conflicts; also I found the devotionals related to communications was also very good.
Yet the book also had some drawbacks. There’s times I felt Timothy Keller talked about things that he didn’t have as strong of a grasp understanding. The most blatant example was one of his illustrations in which he said horses at one time almost made foot soldiers obsolete. As someone who loves to study history and military matters I don’t think Keller is correct. For starters Keller’s comment here can’t be correct that horses almost made foot soldiers obsolete because war often involves countries bringing to bear all their resources, time and energy to fielding a larger army than one’s opponent is an important factor of combat. Yet there’s limitation of how many horses are available in contrast to available military age fighting men in one’s population. Horses like any advancement in means of warfare also have its strength and weaknesses such as the difficulty of horses to operate in certain terrain; all that is to say that horses never threatened having foot infantry as obsolete. Also I thought Keller throughout the book often talk about finance and business in ways that haven’t been informed by an understanding of economics. For example there’s the generalization that it is wrong to pay employees the least amount possible when there’s also a lot more factors involved economically. There was also the sound bite from Keller that the Bible does not espousing capitalism nor socialism. But I think a better view is that Scripture espouses a form of capitalism if capitalism is defined by the dictionary as “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” I think it is also important to make a distinction between cronyism and capitalism.
Overall this devotional was helpful yet readers must beware that Keller’s discussion of money sometimes sounds like the mantra of social justice warriors. Practicing discernment is important.
Thanks for the review. Although he’s very popular, I’m not a fan of Keller because he’s an ecumenist in regards to Roman Catholicism and has even pushed Lectio Divina/Ignatian Meditation contemplative prayer techniques at his church.
I’m becoming less and less of a fan of Keller. Have you written anything about Keller and Lectio Divina/Ignatian Meditation? I know you have written a stand alone post on Lectio Divina which I linked to for my Rachel Held Evans’ post, but was wondering if you have one specifically on Keller.
I’ve never devoted a post strictly to Keller. He’s not as blatant an ecumenist as say a Zacharias or a Lane Craig. But there’s several articles out there on the net about his belief that the RCC is a Christian entity and his introduction of contemplative prayer at his Redeemer church. Here’s an article about Lectio Divina on Redeemer church’s own website:
https://www.redeemer.com/learn/prayer/prayer_and_fasting/lectio_divina_divine_reading
The article below cites many problems with Keller’s endorsement of Catholic contemplative prayer:
http://www.chapter3min.org/a-look-at-timothy-kellers-book-prayer-experiencing-awe-and-intimacy-with-god/
In addition to what Tom wrote in his comment Keller also buys into what the culture has to say such as Social Justice and Cultural Marxism.
He does peddle a soft Social Justice outlook. As with any preacher be blessed with what is biblical but reject what is bad.
TY.:)
You’re welcome! God’s Word in proverbs is so practical! Hope you are getting by with the sticky and hot weather!
I am under the A/C. 🙂
I like devotional books but agree that you have to be careful with them. Course, one must be careful about the doctrinal background of any Christian book.
That’s true there needs to be discernment with doctrinal and systematic theology books as well. I do enjoy reading doctrinal books devotionally. Come to think of it we must read all things with discernment and devotions to God Amen?
Amen!
Amen!
In the nations fight against terrorism they came up with the slogan, ” If you see something say something”.
This is most needed when it comes to any and all who are introducing strange winds of false teachings.
It should be given a much higher priority than it has at present.