Even if you don’t attend church
regularly you’ve probably heard the parable of the Prodigal Son as told in the
Gospel of Luke. There have been sermons preached on it, books written about it,
it’s been adapted, and I imagine that without much difficulty, one could find
movies or plays which at least touch on the major themes of these verses. So why do we need still another book based on
that same passage?
The
simple answer to that complex question is probably because most of the people I
know, myself included, have a prodigal in their life. Maybe it’s a parent, a
child, a sibling, a spouse, or a longtime friend. Maybe your prodigal is you. Those
people are in our lives, and we all need help in learning to love them the best
way we can. We don’t want to slam the door in their face (well maybe at times
we do), and we don’t want to enable them in their addictive or inappropriate behaviors,
and at the same time we want to help.
And that’s where this book may be helpful.
Is
there hope? Jim Putman with his father Bill
Putman think so, and they explain why, along with a lot of helpful tips in their
recently released book Hope for the
Prodigal: Bringing the Lost, Wandering, and Rebellious Home (BakerBooks,
2017).
The
book is broken into three sections I: the Ideal, II: the Ordeal, and III: the
New Deal. And those section headings are enough to give you the main idea of
each section. We know what we should be striving for in our relationships, but
sometimes stuff, often horrible stuff, happens, but there is hope for
restoration.
Although
I enjoy the Parable of the Prodigals, and the book is based on the story and
the main points within, I found this book slightly difficult to follow.
Although there were some helps as to who was writing [ I (Jim) or I (Bill)], it
was often confusing because the stories were repeated—once in the first person,
and once in the third.
I received a copy of the book from
BakerBooks in exchange for a review, I was not required to write a positive
review.
4/5
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