Share Your Favorite Books

I just heard about this site from a friend. It seems like a cool way to not only share the books that you have read but see what your friends are reading as well.

Henry Nouwen: On Solitude

"...solitude molds self-righteous people into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own great sinfulness and so fully aware of God's even greater mercy that their life itself becomes ministry. In such a ministry there is hardly any difference left between doing and being. When we are filled with God's merciful presence, we can do nothing other than minister because our whole being witnesses to the light that has come into the darkness."

The Way of the Heart p.22

The Prodigal God by Tim Keller

The Prodigal God by Tim Keller explores the reckless abandon with which God loves this world. He shows how this story, which is traditionally referred to as The Prodigal Son, is not really told for the sake of the younger son. Instead the story is told with the elder brother in mind as the main audience. He demonstrates that the sins of the elder son are as much an affront to the Father as those of the younger son. The only difference is that at the end of the story the younger son is participating in the banquet, but the elder remains outside and we are not told his response.

We are not told the ending because it is up to us to decide how this story ends. This story picks up a concept that I originally read about in CS Lewis. It is the idea that those most in danger of eternal separation from God are those of us who think we have it all together. We think that it is merely by doing enough religious activities or refraining from licentiousness that we will enter the banquet. Without realizing it we sit on throne of our own hearts as our on savior, which is the most precarious way to live. I'll leave you with a few quotes that I found powerful:

"The bad son enters the father's feast but the good son will not. The lover of prostitutes is saved, but the man of moral rectitude is still lost." (pg. 34)

"The people who confess they aren't particularly good or open-minded are moving toward God, because the prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know you need it. The people who think they are just fine, thank you, are moving away from God." (pg. 45-46)

"Everyone knows that the Christian gospel calls us away from the licentiousness of younger brotherness, but few realize that it also condemns moralistic elder brotherness." (pg. 67)

The Prodigal God comes out later this week and is definitely worth the read. I especially recommend it to those who have grown up in the church or who have been hurt by church people.

Pagan Christianity

Pagan Christianity breaks down many of the traditions that Christians hold to and practice and explores where they came from historically. This book makes the claim that many of these traditions have been taken directly from the pagan world and it’s practices.

I appreciated the way that this book questions many of the forms that Christians have come to accept today without questioning or considering whether or not they are Biblical. In that sense this book is a good book for us to examine the forms that we use and ask if we are really serving Christ in the way he has called us to do so. This book raises some excellent questions about what we do and why we do it.

On the other hand, I do feel that this book does fall short in answering some of my questions. If the church is as far off base as the authors claim than it would seem that the “true Church” has not existed for some time. I believe that even in flawed forms the church has persevered and even if we through out all of the flawed forms that the authors raise issue with we would still end up with new flawed forms. If you are interested there is much more discussion on this book here.

The Great Giveaway

I just finished reading David Fitch's book The Great Giveaway. This book describes how the church has given away much of it's mission to the culture around us. If you are in vocational ministry I believe that this book brings much insight and asks some good questions about how we do ministry today. Also, it does not stop at questions as so many books that take a critical look at the church tend to do, but instead Fitch offers constructive ideas and concrete insights as to where he believes the church can reclaim the mission.

I want to leave you with some of the quotes that stood out to me:

On our Definition of Success

"Let us turn from only measuring church attendance to measuring the life being lived in Christ. Are we seeing evidence of his salvation in our midst? How many marriages have been saved? How much sexual abuse has been ended? What is the number of times people have come to another's aid in the congregation financially, how many people in the church have invited a stranger to the gospel over for dinner, how many people in the church have reached out to a poor person with the gospel." -pg 45

On Leadership

"We should counter the proclivity in evangelical churches to pay and isolate specialists over and against equipping the laity to do the work of the ministry by encouraging the rise of multiple leaders and respective tasks within the church."
-pg. 93

On the Production of Experience

"Today, the typical American under thirty-five doesn't learn simply through isolated, rationally delivered propositions via the lecture hall. In fact, they are even suspicious of it. They react with questions such as, "Why are you so interested in convincing me of this?" -pg. 99

"But by the time the person makes it to the pew, a post-Christian culture already forms him or her six days a week, and so that person has already been formed to hear what he or she will hear" -pg. 101

The Story of WWII- Don't Forget!

I just finished reading The Story of World War II by Donald Miller (Not to be confused with the author of Blue Like Jazz). First of all, I was surprised at how the book sucked me in. I normally struggle through history books and find them somewhat tedious, but Miller had a way of writing which made it feel like a novel. Also, I normally read about 100 pages and then lose interest. However, this book kept my attention from beginning to end. The best thing about this however was the way he told the story of WWII chronologically. He went from battle to battle and it was the first time that I had a comprehensive understanding of this war from beginning to end. It was an awful event and hopefully we will never see something like it again. War did not seem glorious or fun, but it was portrayed as a necessary evil (although it may not have been necessary if some good men and women had stood up sooner and rejected evil). If you are looking for a good book and you want to have a better understanding of history, I would recommend this book.

Tozer: the Sacred versus the Secular

I wanted to share another Tozer quote. Here he is speaking of our tendency to consider some things as sacred and others as secular. Then he paints for us a picture of how we should live.

"We come unconsciously to recognize two sets of actions. The first are performed with a feeling of satisfaction and a firm assurance that they are pleasing to God. These are the sacred acts and they are usually thought to be prayer, Bible reading, hymn singing, church attendance and such other acts as spring directly from faith. They may be known by the fact that they have no direct relation to this world, and would have no meaning except as faith shows us another world, "an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Corinthians 5:1).

Over against these sacred acts are the secular ones. They include all of the ordinary activities of life which we share with the sons and daughters of Adam:eating, sleeping, working, looking after the need of the body and performing our dull and prosaic duties here on earth. These we often do reluctantly and with many misgivings, often apologizing to God for what we consider a waste of time and strength. The upshot of this is that we are uneasy most of the time. We go about our common tasks with a feeling of deep frustration, telling ourselves pensively that there's a better day coming when we shall slough off this earthly shell and be bothered no more with the affairs of this world....

....The sacred-secular antithesis has no foundation in the New Testament. Without doubt, a more perfect understanding of Christian truth will deliver us from it.

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is our perfect example, and He knew no divided life. In the presence of His Father He lived on earth without strain from babyhood to His death on the cross. God accepted the offering of His total life, and made no distinction between act and act. "I do always those things that please him," was His brief summary of His own life as it related to the Father (John 8:29)"

-The Pursuit of God, (Pgs. 112-113)

Pursuing God in a Technological Age

I have been reading AW Tozer's The Pursuit of God this week. I have been on more than one occasion impressed by the depth with which he writes and even though this book was first published in 1949 I am totally amazed at it's relevance for today. I want to share a quote:

"The idea of cultivation and excercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast-flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.

The tragic results of this spirit are all about us: shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit. These and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul." (p. 65)

The Church and the Homeless

"Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my feet," have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him to whom you belong?"

James 2:2-7

So, my friend Chris recommended that I read the book Under the Overpass. I just read it last week and I was a very insightful read. It is the real account of two college guys who spent 5 months living as homeless and describing their encounters. It is amazing both the ways that some people treated them horribly and how others demonstrated great acts of generosity. I was intrigued to see the different personalities of different cities across the USA come out. It was also amazing to see them being stretched. Most importantly, as Christians, they describe their interactions with other Christians and with churches and remind us what it means to live out our faith here and now so that we may be agents of Christ in this world!