Fine Literature

“Studies show that 45 percent of Americans say they never read a book. Worse than that, the National Commission on Excellence in Education reported in 1983 that the average college graduate does not read one serious book in the course of a year. You have too much to lose by not reading, and too much to gain by disciplined reading. Discipline yourself to learn by reading, and choose your books well. You will be able to read relatively few books in your lifetime, so read the best books. … Don’t waste your time on books you’ll regret reading when you look back upon them from the perspective of eternity. I believe in recreational reading. I don’t maintain that every volume you read should be didactic or even theological. There are books to be read for relaxation and refreshment. But even these should be edifying and help you in some sense to love God with your mind.”
~Spiritual Disciplines For The Christian Life by Donald S. Whitney page 232

Personally I was shocked to learn that most college graduates do even read a single book a year. Yet with the rise of the influence of the modern media it does not surprise me as its hard to compete with the special effects of Hollywood’s wizardry. Although it is sad in a way to think of how too many people consider the focus and thought required for reading literature too much work. When it comes to fine literature I have a feeling that while there are very few people that attack it and most will affirm it being worthwhile. Although I’m under the impression that very few people will take their view of fine literature seriously enough to actually go out and read some beyond what they were required to read while in school. So far in my life when it comes to fine literature there is one positive example that stands out to me and that is Dr. Duke Pesta, a Roman Catholic English professor that I had the pleasure of having for a Bible as Literature class at Ursinus college during the spring semester of my junior year in 2002. Dr. Pesta really excelled at bringing out the beauty and passion of the Bible’s text in a way that made you want to spend more time reading the Bible. His class was very reading intensive and forced me to read large amounts of the Bible on a schedule, greatly increasing my Bible reading attention span. Dr. Pesta’s lectures were also filled with literary images and references of how the Bible’s message had inspired great writers and how their images can help us think about Bible at times. Toward the end of the semester I visited Dr. Pesta during his office hours to ask him for a list of recommend books to read, due to his constant mentioning of literary references to various works that I was not familiar with. He was happy to comply with my request and during our talk he typed up the list in an email to me for safe keeping. Yet despite asking for the list I did not act upon it and actually forgot about it until I stumbled upon it yesterday as a memo file on my Palm Pilot and remembered how it got there. In a way its a miracle that that list has managed to survive for over 6 years in digital form given that the period included getting a new Palm Pilot when my old one broke and losing all of my old email messages a few months after graduating from Ursinus from my Outlook data files getting corrupted. Yet despite all the odds it has survived and come into the light at the time when I’m finally getting back to focusing more on reading that I was too busy to do during my seminary years. So here is this list of fine literature written by Christians and inspired by the Bible which I’m sure will meet Whitney’s definition of books that one will not regret reading on earth while in heaven.

The Religious Poems of George Herbert
The Religious Poems of John Donne
The Divine Comedy, by Dante
Paradise Lost, by John Milton
Paradise Regained, by John Milton
Samson Agonistes, by John Milton
Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan
“The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” (short story), by Dostoevsky
The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brother’s Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser

TBR 2008

I just learned about the TBR (To Be Read) Challenge site a few days ago and thought it would be a nice thing to pick up for the year even though its already April. Pretty much its a public challenge to make progress by naming 12 books to knock off one’s to be read pile in the year to come, with the option of also choosing alternative books. Sure I’m off to a slow start but that will just make it more of a challenge and I’m sure I can handle the increased pace.

1. The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer
2. Answering God by Eugene H. Peterson
3. The Spirit of The Disciplines by Dallas Willard
4. Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster
5. Spiritual Disciplines For The Christian Life by Donald S. Whitney
6. Ten Questions To Diagnose Your Spiritual Health by Donald S. Whitney
7. How Can I Be Sure I’m A Christian? by Donald S. Whitney
8. Simplify Your Spiritual Life by Donald S. Whitney
9. The New Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan with updated text by Judith E. Markham
10. The Sacred Way by Tony Jones
11. The Way of A Pilgrim And The Pilgrim Continues His Way by unkonwn - translated by R. M. French
12. Messy Spirituality by Michael Yaconelli

Alternatives/Extra Credit

1. Affluenza The All-Consuming Epidemic by John DeGraaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor
2. The Book of Creation by J. Philip Newell
3. Listening For The Heartbeat of God by J. Philip Newell
4. Promptings From Paradise by J. Philip Newell

A Good Christian Sex book

If anyone is looking for a good Christian book on sex, it might be worth your while to read Real Sex the naked truth about chastity by Lauren F. Winner. I’ll admit that its the first book on sex that I’ve read so I don’t know how it compares to others but I find it well written in such a way that it can benefit both single and married Christians. Her basic argument that real sex happens within the covenant of marriage, and any sex which falls outside of that is counterfeit in the sense that it falls short of what its supposed to be. The book is written in a very straightforward style which both informs and motives; and is not afraid to address touchy issues like the lies that the church has often been guilty of teaching about sex. At the same time, it does a good job of education the reader about the gray areas of issues which the Bible does not address in fully and unambiguously defined language. In these disputed areas, Winner stops short of making arbitrary in favor of explaining the different opinions that exist on the issue, such as the burning question of most singles of how far can on go before marriage. Another bit worth mentioning is that close to five pages of the book is devoted to the gray area of masturbation, which I find impressive as its a topic that few Christian writers seem willing to even mention let along take as seriously.

motive above skill?

“There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself … as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organizer of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all snares.”
~an excerpt from The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis pages 73-74

The other major point that stuck out to me while reading C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce was the danger of missing God while engaging in ministry. It seems sad in a way that one’s devotion towards a good cause has the potential of destroying their love for it, especially when it comes to God. Just goes to show once again how God is ultimately after our hearts and inner motives instead of our outward actions. Scary in a way as it means that an incompetent Sunday school teacher who is unable to plan a good lesson but still strives to do their best out of love for God and the children of the church, may in fact be in God’s eyes more righteous than a gifted preacher whose sermon series consistently become Christian best sellers when converted to book format, because they lost sight of God in their preaching. Even more alarming and sad is that in the light of Matthew 7:22-23 and Matthew 23:1-7, one is faced with the reality that many of the redeemed were won to Christ through the efforts of the damned. Shocking I know to think that the gifted in leadership are the ones most likely to miss God in their apparent service toward Him. But then again maybe that is why in a way God favors or at least considers blessed fools whose heart is in the right place, not because they come off as needing extra help but because they are less likely to place their trust in themselves instead of God as they are more aware of their need for Him.

On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
(Matthew 7:22-23 ESV)

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you–but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.
(Matthew 23:1-7 ESV)

hell as a choice?

“I must be clear. There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.”
~an excerpt from The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis page 106

I recently read The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis and I found its vision of heaven and hell to be very thought provoking. While Lewis made it very clear that the book was to be treated as fiction and not revelation, it contained some good points that are at the very least worth thinking about. Personally I believe that hell is both one of the more neglected and abused Biblical truths out there today. As it seems as if far too often the topic of hell is either avoided or perverted into a weapon of spiritual terrorism that causes people to miss the point and act in fear instead of love. So in stark contract Lewis paints a picture of hell in which one is free to move to heaven (in which case hell becomes purgatry), but most of the damned don’t want to do and most of those who do quickly change their mind and return to hell. While at first the idea of anyone choosing heaven over hell sounds like insanity. Yet it is the tragic pitfall of human freewill that one can turn their back on God according to John Milton’s famous “better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”. So in that sense hell regardless if one can choose to leave or not could be considered an act of grace to the damned. After all if God is the ultimate source of goodness and anything that turns away from God becomes evil, isn’t hell simply God generously granting them their selfish desire to have nothing to do with Him? Honestly I don’t know if this proposed view, if it can be shown to be fully Biblical, is a source of comfort or terror. As I could see it reassuring struggling Christians who are earnestly seeking God, that He won’t give up on them for stumbling one too many times. Yet the mere though that one can fall to the point of finding hell more attractive to heavy is utterly terrifying to me.

Are are focued on the wrong enemy?

“More persistent and more troubling was the practical deism that had wormed its way into the churches of colonial New England, paving the way for theological deism and Transcendentalism to follow. Such practical deism is alive and well today, even in churches that take their stand on the Bible. However correct their statements in Bible studies or Sunday school classes may be, in practice many Christians really assume that God’s “interference” in people’s lives pretty much came to a halt sometime in the past - perhaps in the apostle’s time, perhaps at the Reformation or some revival of bygone days, but surely before our time. Would we say this out loud? Never! But our meager prayer lives, our anxiety, our dependence on novel techniques in evangelism, our hope in technology to solve spiritual problems, our doubt that loving discipline can restore wandering brothers or sisters to repentance and reconciliation - all these testify to our unspoken assumption that God’s real action is in the past and in the future but not in the present. We act as though Jesus wound up the church and then flung us out on our own when we say, “Our church can’t grow in this neighborhood,” or “I won’t apologize until she does - and she won’t!” or “He says he’s sorry but he’ll do it again,” or “What will become of us?” Could any of these attitudes survive if we were convinced that God is present and at work among us? The presence of his power would dispel our discouragement. His authority would melt our stubbornness. His terrible purity would banish our temptation to compromise. Surrounded by his peace, we would laugh at our fears”
~an excerpt from The Message of Acts by Dennis E. Johnson pages 16-17

Ask most Christians what the number one threat to the church is today and most likely the spread of Islam will be one of the most popular answers. As I would have said myself up until fairly recently or at least for the West since while worldwide Christianity is the fastest growing religion worldwide, Islam is in the West. Regardless I’m starting to fear that we may have become too concerned about what is going on outside of our doors that we have let in a Trojan horse that now needs to be fought off from within. As the whole idea of the existence of a Christian Deism heresy thriving within the Church was very alarming as well as disturbing. At the same time, I wonder if this Deism within the church is at all related to the lukewarmness of the church of Laodicea in Revelation that Jesus threatened to vomit out if they didn’t chance? If so it forces the equally difficult question of how much of the professing US Church is really Deist merely deceiving itself in believing that it is Christian when in reality it is not? It is clear that the issue of the general lack of expectations of God’s continual interaction in the world is Deistic in nature is something that needs to be given more attention and focus.

A Scary Idea About Context

“The principle of reading in context certainly makes sense, and most of us will affirm the need to so read the Bible, at least on a theoretical level, but many of us fail to do so in practice. Our failure has more to do with laziness than anything else. We give the Word of God only a snippet of our time, so we end up reading only a snippet, that is, a few verses here and there. Since we don’t know Scripture well enough to have a sense of the whole, we end up extracting nuggets out of God’s gold mine of truth. The problem is, extraction Scripture from its context often results in misunderstanding and misapplication of the Word of God. … Some people misunderstand context to refer strictly to the paragraphs immediately before a passage and the verses right after it. That is where we start but we do not end there. Context may be envisioned as a series of concentric circles emanating from the passage presently being read. An Apt comparison is the ever-expanding circles of waves going out from the center point when one throws a rock into a pond.”
~an excerpt from Making Sense of the Old Testament by Tremper Longman III, pages 32-33

The mere thought that not reading the Bible enough can affect one’s ability to understand what they read when they do spend time in Scripture came off as alarming to me because with the exception of a basic framework of Old Testament history and the Gospels, while I have virtually no context of the structure of the epistles and especially the prophetic books which I’ve probably only read through fragmented three or four times in my life so far, which has really gotten me wondering how much am I missing when I’m reading the Bible from my lack of an overall context of the structure of a very sizable chunk of the Bible. Yet I can’t get away from the idea and the more I think about it the more that I think its correct. It also reminds me of Dr. Petter, on of my professors who really stressed the importance of sitting down and reading entire books of the Bible in a single sitting in order to get a better understanding of them as a while. In fact for the Genesis - Foundation of Biblical History class that I took with him, on of the main assignments for the semester was the read Genesis at least five times and the first time had to be in a single sitting. Sure one reads faster when reading through books in a single sitting but there is nothing wrong with that. Just like Dr. Putnam commented on the first day of Old Testament survey that he is often asked whatever or not if its a sin to speed read the Bible by people in this class, often in the sense of reading any faster than it being possible to slowly pouncing every word. To which he responded that the question is not an either or but about the benefits of reading the Bible in different ways. As one gets a better understanding of the big pictures during “speed readings” over a large breadth yet one also needs to slow down at times to take in the depth of Scripture as well, and that neglect in either of these areas can cause problems. Yet again it all boils down to the core problem of laziness in which we are unwilling to spend enough time in Scripture or misplaced priorities resulting is us being too busy to be able to do so. Personally I feel that for most, including myself, it is a mixture of both.