Featured Book: Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

About the Book:

In Generous Justice, Keller explores a life of justice empowered by an experience of grace: a generous, gracious justice. Here is a book for believers who find the Bible a trustworthy guide as well as those who suspect that Christianity is a regressive influence in the world.

'A deep social conscience, and a life poured out in service to others, especially the poor, is the inevitable sign of real faith, and justice is the grand symptom of a real relationship with God…… We do justice when we go where the fabric is breaking down, where the weaker members of society are falling through, where the interpenetration and the interdependence isn’t happening.'  --- Timothy Keller

Keller cuts across the great conservative/liberal divide in this book. ….What Keller does best, beginning with the Old Testament and continuing through the teachings of Jesus and the Epistles is to show God's concern for social justice. You cannot read this book without being challenged to want to be more involved in correcting social injustice, whether at the individual or social level. ….This book has been like a sledgehammer to my soul, and it will take me months and years to sort out what God would have me do next.

-- Rev. Dr. Charles Erlandson

Timothy Keller offers a persuasive plea for evangelicals to embrace social justice efforts. Keller, is among a new breed of conservative Christians eager to break out of the straitjacket that frowns on justice work as doctrinally unsound or the work of overzealous liberals. Keller carefully analyzes Old and New Testament passages to make the case that God's heart for justice on behalf of widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor is indisputable, and that an encounter with grace will inevitably lead to a desire for justice. This short manifesto goes further: Keller argues that gospel preaching that aims only to change hearts while remaining oblivious to unjust social structures will never fully succeed.

-- Publishers Weekly

This is the most biblically informed and intellectually careful (read the footnotes!) “social justice” book I know of. Justice skeptics and justice proponents alike will learn from Generous Justice.

- Kevin DeYoung, The Gospel Coalition

Excerpt from:

Intersect:  Community Reflection on Faith and Culture 
a blog published by Philip and Julie Rushton.

This book seeks to show how social justice is an important aspect of the Christian life. Keller specifically addresses conservative Christians who have historically been suspicious of bringing together Christianity and social justice.

Keller’s main goal is to show how a concern for social justice does not require the rejection of traditional Biblical doctrine. He suggests that the act of doing justice, and caring for the poor is a significant by-product of a redeemed life.  The act of caring for the poor is not a means by which we earn salvation; rather, these acts of ‘doing justice’ are the result of having experienced God’s grace for ourselves. For example, Jesus reminds us in Matthew 25:31-46 that his true sheep are those who embrace and care for “the least of these my brethren.”.............We must begin to reflect the “whole cloth” that Jesus weaves – one where personal morality and social justice are brought together. Keller says, “the churches of America are often controlled by the surrounding political culture than by the spirit of Jesus and the prophets”.....

http://prushton.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/why-jesus-would-be-frustrated-with-cable-news-networks/.