An inspiring new book about one man's salvation and one family's redemption, narrated within the theological framework of the historical Christian faith.
"A remarkable book. Raffi's is a powerful and dramatic story and I am privileged to have been part of it."
-- N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, Author of Surprised by Hope and Simply Christian
Ever notice with most Christian testimonies how you can substitute the word "Buddha" for "Jesus" and essentially end up with the same story?
Many Christians have powerful testimonies about the workings of the Father, Son and Spirit in their lives, but those testimonies often get reduced to "My life was terrible, and then I accepted Jesus Christ as my savior, and now everything's great!" While that is true in one sense, there are two main problems with this general category of Christian testimony.
First, anyone who hears a story like that would be right to wonder whether the same transformation could have occurred if the person had accepted Buddha, or Mohammed, or Uncle Joe, or Betty who lives next door, as their personal savior, and believed that so doing would change their life.
And second, what if everything's not great now? What if the same fears, the same struggles, the same daily grinds that permeated our lives before our "becoming born again" continue after that climactic event? Does that invalidate the gospel message?
In other words, what makes a testimony different from a heartwarming story?
In his forthcoming book, Parables of a Prodigal Son: The Theologically Grounded Testimony of an Ordinary Scoundrel, attorney and author Raffi Shahinian gives the powerful testimony of his and his family's redemption in a manner that is grounded in a proper theological understanding of the historical Christian faith, an understanding gleaned primarily from the scholarship of N.T. Wright. The book chronicles the author’s experiences, starting with the notorious events surrounding the abandonment of his family and subsequent return, moving into less glitzy stories, and examines each of these from the viewpoint of a number of theological categories (Soteriology, Eschatology, Discipleship, Ecclesiology, etc.).
Parables is a cross between Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz and N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope. Adhering to its “spiritual memoir” motif, Parables rings of Miller’s flexible, yet faithful, assessment of traditional Christian doctrine that will resonate with the rapidly expanding Emerging Church movement. Yet Parables is more theologically tangible, inspired largely and unapologetically by the scholarship of N.T. Wright, who is widely considered the most influential biblical scholar of our time.
The overarching thesis of Parables is how one can place the events, choices, beliefs, and actions in one’s life within the grid of the entire biblical narrative, starting with Genesis and concluding with Revelation, with Jesus as its climactic center. Stemming from that theme are various prevalent offshoots. One example is the modern misconception about the historical Christian faith and the resulting dire consequences both to Christians and our world. One of the primary aims of the book is an attempt to clarify some of those misconceptions: for Christians who secretly can’t believe some of the more spectacular articles of their claimed faith, and for non-believers who cling to those misconceptions as an excuse to avoid the life-changing place to which Jesus has and continues to call them. Some of those misconceptions relate to the concept of salvation, the belief in a place called “heaven” as the final, disembodied locus of spiritual existence, the concentration on attaining that state of disembodied bliss as the perceived “name of the game,” and many more
But Parables is not a written sermon. It is a written example, an example of how those misconceptions have real consequences both to Christians and non-Christians. The attempts to correct those misconceptions are woven into the story, and the thread is provided by the scholarship of N.T. Wright. As such, the theological vision of the book is not an arbitrary, subjective interpretation that would call forth the question: “Who are you that we should take your worldview as accurate?” The remarkable thing about N.T. Wright is that he has, in large measure, succeeded in telling people that many of the core facets of their Christian beliefs are wrong, but managed to nevertheless do so while maintaining a wholly orthodox and wholly credible vision of God, the Bible, and Jesus. Wright once said that after half a lifetime engaging in serious “historical Jesus” work, he still recites the classic creeds and believes every word, but he now finds he means something very different by them.
That spirit infuses Parables and the story of the ordinary scoundrel it tells. In that spirit, Parables does more than simply clarify misconceptions. It espouses and advocates certain themes that will, hopefully, fill the void created by their shattering. It champions the merits of storytelling, conversation, a narrative approach to the Bible and theology, a non-legalistic morality, a healthy suspicion of modernist epistemology, a refusal to settle for postmodern nihilism, and the imperative of merging faith and praxis.
Parables of a Prodigal Son will be available soon from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Christianbook.com, or your favorite online bookstore.
