From time to time I will bring you books that have blessed and strengthened my commitment & devotion to God through Jesus. You may not realize it, but we are living in the greatest era of Christian investigation and scholarship in human history. The near two-thousand-year history of our faith has had some prolific and productive years of scholarship and productivity but nothing like the number of scholars of this stellar quality of education or massive quantity of communicable information.
And no, I am not going to attempt to name our generation’s Aquinas, Augustine, Jerome or Chrysostom, they were all sui generis, but I would say that we are uniquely rich in remarkable content to help us worship, understand and apply the Bible. The purpose of this post which I plan to do from time to time is to recommend these works to you so they can bless you like they did me, I also want these to be layperson-friendly so you will never see the more technical works I have enjoyed in these kind of posts, works connected to my particular doctoral investigation or heavier academic treatises that also bless and aid me in my walk with Jesus on this side of eternity.
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
by Carl Trueman
Trueman is a Christian professor at Grove City College, a popular Christian college in
Pennsylvania, as such this book feels more academic than the others in the list. Trueman
attempts to trace the various ideas that have most strongly contributed to our current post
Christian cultural situation. I believe that he has succeeded in identifying and adeptly
describing these former thinkers and how their ideas have been brought into our age and combined. Trueman wants to show how we went from the dominant thinking of his grandfather’s era to our own, in his words, “The origins of this book lie in my curiosity about how and why a particular statement has come to be regarded as coherent and meaningful: ‘I am a woman trapped in a man’s body.’” This last statement would have been unintelligible to my grandfather and his contemporaries with the academics of his era considering committing the expresser of said statement to an asylum. Like a modern prophet, Trueman shows how these former thinkers’ ideas were synthesized to encourage a “self-created” identity apart from theistic foundations.
This book can help anyone “understand the times” (1 Chron. 12:32) in which we find ourselves so that we can order our lives in ways that can live in this world but not be of it.” (John 17:14-19) If you’re looking to be pastored through the challenges, self- centeredness, anger, and anti-Christian tilt of our culture, let me also recommend Stephen MacAlpine’s Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn’t.
MacAlpine’s book is much shorter, more pastoral, and very practical. He also introduces ideas of many of the same thinkers (modern day and historical) as Trueman but with great brevity, so you’ll get the same spiritual benefit (or more) in a third of the size.
God Greed and the Prosperity Gospel
by Costi Hinn
Hinn’s book is short and not meant to be an academic theological treatise against “Word of Faith” & prosperity gospel purveyors, nor is he looking to rebel and rail against his birth family (Hinn is the nephew of Benny Hinn). The real value in this book is just how far one can go with sinful, self-deceived “biblical” justifications for maligning the gospel of Jesus Christ for a paper-thin cover for greed and manipulation. To hear how the Hinn family tried to justify their lavish lifestyles made possible by millions of widow’s mites is to give us pause in our own lives and see how the enemy of our souls can use pieces of even the Bible to keep us in darkness.
Remember, Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness by Satan quoting parts of God’s Word to Jesus! There is also much to be drawn from Costi Hinn’s insights into how he and others have pulled away from this and repented forever benefitting from this Word-of-
Faith prosperity gospel “racket.” The last part of the book has enormously helpful tips for
engaging and challenging especially untutored, uninformed loved ones “caught” in this self-
centered alleged “gospel” of health and wealth under the guide of “Holy Spirit” language. The author, Costi Hinn, is convinced that the proliferation of the health and wealth gospel is the greatest threat facing the church today. Even if you are not convinced that this is our greatest challenge we Christians face today the book is still a worthy read and study as this has been too successful as a movement amongst Christians to ignore.
Immortal
by Clay Jones
Clay Jones is a professor at Talbot Theological Seminary in southern California. Jones says this book was born of what he believed was an exaggeration. He read a modern philosopher who said that all philosophy that has ever been done is motivated by a fear of our individual and collective deaths. Jones thought that this was a massive oversimplification and, hence, an overstatement of epic proportions. After researching this for a number of years Jones now
believes this philosopher was right! People are either constantly thinking about their end or finding ways to cope with this fact of their mortality. This book is a cataloguing of how ancient and modern thinkers and the rich try to answer the “mortality problem.” Along the way, Clay offers the true Christian alternative, making Christianity shine through compare and contrast. Jones uses all sorts of evidences to show just how pitiful the attempts are to answer the death issue.
Two quick examples; in one section Jones discusses how some people are hoping desperately for computer to advance to a place where “our personalities, memories, hopes and ambitions can be downloaded to a computer to be uploaded later into a synthetic body. Jones demolishes this idea with facts about just how far we are away from mimicking the brain and having no idea how a soul operates. In another section he talks about cryogenics and attempting to freeze our brains to be reawakened in the future and given a
new body. Jones shows just how precarious a freezing and thawing process is for things as
fragile and mysterious as synapses and how far we are from repair and mimicking of
neurological operations and phenomena. Immortal is a fantastically interesting book which
can certainly help a Christian with a desire to evangelize as well as expand upon our Lord
Jesus’ admonition in Luke 12:25-26.
The Case for Heaven
by Lee Strobel
Lee Strobel’s “Case for” series has been my suggestion for years for those just coming to understand and apply apologetics to their devotional life as well as augmentation of their evangelistic endeavors. Strobel’s own story as well as interview style makes the read a quick one. His series also introduces quality academic Christians who specialize in particular areas of theology that are pressure points exploited by skeptics online and offline. In his Case for Heaven Strobel gives reason after reason for Christians to remember this great but often forgotten inheritance won for us by Jesus. Strobel comes at this topic of eternity from different angles and even has a chapter on hell as the antithesis of heaven that is both reasonable and faithful to God’s Word. The book is a long reminder of why heaven matters and why Christians should consistently discipline themselves to be “eternally minded.”
As we close this post let me hasten to add that if I find one of these books particularly helpful
across the book’s breadth then I will dedicate an entire post to the explication and elaboration of said book.
Soli Deo Gloria
Comments