Books I am Reading

Okay, I admit it. I’m a bibliophile.

There I said it, I admit it: I love books.

Someone has said, When I have money, I buy books. If there is any left over, I buy food. If there is still some left, then I pay bills. Well, I’m not that bad about it. I recognize my fiduciary responsibilities, but I would rather own a good book than a good car.

When I was in the second grade, my teacher wrote a note for me to take home to my parents saying that I was going to be held over in the second grade because I could not read. We were reading Dick and Jane stories in school. “See Dick. See Jane. See Dick and Jane run.” Dad wrote back to the teacher and said that did not make any sense, because I was reading the King James Bible at home and in church.

If I have a duplicate of a book, I don’t keep it; instead I give it to a library. Maybe the Mid America Baptist Theological Seminary, my alma mater. Or maybe I give it to the Rivercrest High School library if it is fiction or something I think it would be good for high schoolers to have access to. I also don’t keep a poorly written book. I may or may not agree with the author, but that does not make it a bad book, I care more about the quality of the writing.

This brings me to books I am reading. Mark Buchanan is my new favorite author. He writes religious books, but they are powerfully written with vivid prose. My first encounter with his work is in the book The Rest of God. When I first saw the title, I was not sure if it meant the book looked at something about God that we were missing, or if its subject was Sabbath. When I got the book and saw the cover, it said that it was about Sabbath keeping. Having almost finished reading this book, I find I must read it again, because there is such a rich content that absorbing it all in one reading is not possible. Nor is it possible to read the book in one setting, not while employing its teaching and meaning. I hope to absorb more of Buchanan’s imagery in my own preaching!

Anne Graham Lotz is another of my favorite authors. Heaven, My Father’s House was a good introduction for me to her writing; her video of the same title is also excellent. I also picked up her book Why? Trusting God When You Don't Understand. Because I am interested in theodicy, this book and others on the topic are primary sources for my search for the root cause, the real origins of evil in the cosmos. Lotz’s Just Give Me Jesus is an unusual commentary on the Gospel of John, though it reads more like a devotional. Lotz’s tendency to ask questions and make lists in the middle of her texts is disruptive to her text, and I do not find the lists helpful, though the rest of the books are. Lotz’s sister, Ruth Graham’s In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart is more than biographic in nature, it read like she is trying to win acceptance for herself and her bad life choices, and sympathy for the bad things that have come into her life. She used a ghost writer, but was honest about it in that she credited Stacy Mattingly as her co-author. Ruth’s story is an informative read in how the good children of good leaders in the faith can suffer evil.

I have just finished a book by Charles Coleson, Loving God. Mostly a series of stories, this is a devotional book that tries to motivate readers for a change in prison policy and prison ministry. In How Now Shall We Live?, Coleson tries to motivate Christians to convert not just souls and minds to Christ, but to convert society to Christian values. When did Jesus call us to save our culture? He was concerned with the individual, the sufferer, the outcast, to bring them to faith, to demonstrate His sovereignty over every form of good and evil: “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them,’” Matthew 11:4-5. Jesus, however, never tried to establish a theocracy; “Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm,’” John 18:36. We need to do good in society, but that is not the form Jesus wants for His kingdom, for His church.

There are several more books I am reading, but I have bored you long enough. I’ll discuss the others in a blog later.