20 Reasons to Read (Good Christian Books)…

In this final installment on How to Read Christian Books, I want to offer a list of “20 Reasons to Read (Good Christian Books)…”, which comes from Unashamed Workman, a blog by Colin Adams, a Baptist pastor in Edinburgh Scotland.

1. You will grow in your knowledge of God, yourself and the world around you
2. You will gain a better understanding of the bible, the book of books
3. You will broaden your English vocabulary, helping you to express similar truths to your congregation (or family) in fresh ways
4. You will have an improved imagination and actively engage your mind in a way that probably won’t occur when watching TV
5. You will be able to sit at the feet of some of the great Christian teachers and minds over the centuries (even if you have few ‘living’ teachers to assist you)
6. You will be forced to cease from incessant activity and think
7. You will receive a historical perspective on current problems and spot present day blind spots
8. You will have some of your questions answered and confront other questions you hadn’t even thought of
9. You will be able to practically apply Paul’s command to think upon “wholesome” things
10. You will develop a sense of how arguments are constructed and be able to weigh both strong and weak arguments
11. You will enjoy spiritual input during the week, not just on a Sunday (if not a pastor)
12. You will (if a pastor) be able to engage with other issues beyond this week’s text, thus broadening your perspective.
13. You will be able to mull over a subject. You will be able to put the book down to think, chew over a sentence or re-read a paragraph. You will be able to exploring an issue at length, rather than brush over a topic too quickly
14. You will be better prepared for the task of evangelism, after reading clear presentations of the gospel by great communicators
15. You will be better prepared for the task of discipleship, having a good way to open up discussion about Christian life issues (what are you reading?)
16. You will be made aware of how Christians interpret and apply Scripture differently in various cultural contexts
17. You will gain information for your ignorance, inspiration for your weariness, and insight for complex problems
18. You will be better equipped to lead in your church, marriage and family
19. You will be stimulated, as in a good conversation, to new lines of thinking
20. You will be drawn to worship God, especially when the book centers on God not man

To the Deep End of the Pool

After several weeks on how to read good Christian books, we’re ready to jump into the deep end of the pool. And no pool gets any deeper than the Puritan pool.

Who are the Puritans and why should we read them. Rather than answer that question here, let me refer you to an excellent article by Joel Beekes, called “Why You Should Read the Puritans” which is included in a post on The Shepherd’s Scrapbook blog.

From my perspective – the Puritans are the best antidote to the sound byte cleverness of much of what we can get from modern (and post-modern) writing. Yes, it seems like they never met a point that didn’t deserve exhaustive unpacking. Yes, they use lonnnnnng sentences and words that sometimes send you to the theological dictionary. And not all puritan writing is the same. These men like us, are products of their time. They are not writing scripture – they are trying to apply it to the real issues of ordinary people in their world.

But they are bulldog tough on one thing – ‘what would it mean if the saving work of Jesus Christ were truly applied to EVERY area of life.’ There is no tough question they aren’t willing to wrestle with. And it is in this ‘all of life’ approach to Biblical living that they are valuable to us.

So with this in mind, here are some tips on reading the Puritans.

· Don't read in bed unless you have insomnia.

· Read slowly - small chunks over time. Puritan books make great devotionals – but be prepared to be in one for several months

· Don’t get caught up in all the arguments. The Puritan approach was generally to make a statement, then support it and argue away all the objections to it. Rather than getting lost in all the arguments, try to keep tracing the main point all the way through

· You really want to mark puritan books (see last weeks blog for pointers)

· Consider abridgements to begin with. Banner of Truth has created abridgement (condensed versions) of many classic puritan works that are very faithful to the full length text, but focus on the essential content. We have several titles in our Book Shoppe, or you can check out the Westminster Bookstore for a more extensive selection. The abridgements of John Owen’s “Communion With God” and “The Excellencies of Christ”, are particularly good.

· Consider reading Thomas Watson, one of the more readable Puritans. His “The Art of Divine Contentment” is a great one to start with.

· If you want to tackle something like “Overcoming Sin and Temptation” by John Owen, consider the recent edition by Kapic and Taylor. Tim Challies did a chapter by chapter study of the book on his blog.

Why not make it a point to read one puritan book in the coming year. Come on in, the water’s fine.

How to Mark Up a Book

This is the fourth installment in our little practical series on how to read good Christian books. Today I’ll share my simple way to enhance the value of reading through marking up a book. We’ll jump from last week’s final point.

Mark It Up: Books aren’t like baseball cards, they increase in value when you write in them. Unless you’re very famous, your marked up book won’t sell well on eBay, but a marked up book is something that you can return to for inspiration and insight again and again. I value my marked up books also because they serve kind of like a journal, I can read what I marked and remember back to what God was doing in my life at the time.

Here’s what I’ve developed as my ‘mark-up strategy’.

1. Put your name and telephone number in the front of the book – its really frustrating to lose a well-marked book

2. Highlighters can be very useful, but I don’t use them because they kind of say to me, ‘only what is highlighted is any good’. I don’t underline for the same reason, plus, I can’t draw straight lines so my underlines can look like I’m trying to cross something out.

3. I put little asterisk/stars (or checkmarks if you prefer) in the margins of the book next to things that really stick out to me or speak to me in some special way when I’m reading. This will direct me in the future to a section on the page but will make me read the full context to get the idea. It also allows me to add more marks if I re-read the book because there is room on the page. The actual type of the book doesn’t get cluttered up with underlines, etc.

4. If there is a particular sentence or paragraph that stands out, I’ll put brackets around it to emphasize it.

5. If the author defines a term I’ll underline the term and write ‘DEF’ (for definition) beside it, because I’ve found I often go back to a book to see how an author understands a certain word or theological concept. I may also put other simple words or phrases in margins if the page addresses a theme that is particularly relevant in my life (for example, wherever an author mentions sloth or unbelief you’ll see a note in MY margins).

6. I use the empty back pages of the book like a journal, making personal notes I can pray over in the future.

7. After I’m done, I’ll go back through the book and look at all my little stars. If in a second look the section still really hits me, I’ll put a circle around the star. This is for the stuff that really defines the experience of reading that book for me. I can go back to those points in particular years later and say, ‘that was God speaking to me!” Sometimes I’ll even type up the section as a quote.

8. The last marking I do is to put the month and year that I completed the book inside the front cover. This is just a personal quirk, but it helps me associate a book forever with a season of my life. I love opening a book and seeing something like, ‘10/92’ and then remembering where I was in my walk with God as I read that book.

This is just what works for me. You may have something else. The point is, the real value in a book is in how we make it our own.

Next week we’ll talk about jumping into the deep end of the pool – how to read a Puritan book. It can be done!

Reading an Unreadable Book

This is the third part of our series on reading good books. Let’s assume you’ve got your book and you’re looking to dive in. How can you get the best out of the experience? Here are some tips.

When To Read: Books with good theological content are best read at a slow, reflective pace. Find a time when you are generally alert, unhurried and are not likely to be distracted. Try to learn to read for half-hour to hour stretches – good books tend to build their content and you want to get the flow of the author’s thinking. Read complete sections – try not to just stop at a random place. If possible read whole chapters. If you find a book is really feeding your soul (many actually do!), use it as a devotional book as well as reading it at other times.

Read Prayerfully: This doesn’t mean simply praying before you read, though it’s a great idea to ask God for the gift of illumination and understanding. Even during the selection process it’s good to be asking the Lord where he wants you to focus your attention. Many people read because of what they have gone through. We don’t often think that God might draw us to a book to prepare us for something in the future. But he just might do that for you. Also, pray that God would give you grace to persevere through difficult parts or things that seem boring. Often the best gold comes from the hardest digging. Folks who give up on books that aren’t being ‘helpful’ can miss much of the richness in theological study.

Plan To Finish: All theology books look intimidating when you first open them up. Long words, small print, endless footnotes, no pictures – not exactly user friendly. Remember that theology builds – theologians tackle problems, wrestle them down as best they can and try to deliver a meaningful perspective at the end. Try to read a book straight through, and try to finish it. I find that I’m not really able to keep more than one or two theology books going at once.

Keep the Source Close at Hand: Have a Bible nearby so that if an author is referencing a passage of scripture you can look it up and consider what he’s saying. I’ve found at times that I’ve been reading a theology book, consulted a reference, and seen the Bible text with such a fresh clarity that I’ve put down the book and picked up the Bible. Not a bad trade-off!

Mark It Up: Books aren’t like baseball cards, they increase in value when you write on them. Unless you are very famous, your markings in a book won’t sell well on eBay, but a marked up book is something that you can return to for inspiration and insight again and again. I value my marked up books also because they serve kind of like a journal, I can read what I marked and remember back to what God was doing in my life at the time.

Next week we’ll talk about ways to mark up a book.

I Heart Theology?

In our blog last Thursday we talked about some ways to choose good Christian books. Okay, let’s pick a book.

What To Read?: There are several general types (genre’s) of Christian books. Let’s assume we’re not interested right now in fiction or biographies. Among non-fiction books let’s consider several options. Devotional books are written to help people in a very personal way with their relationship with God. They tend to be written in a very inspirational way – sometimes they are selections from a well published author or preacher. They are often bite-sized reflections which are not really connected to each other – ideal for daily reading. Practical Theology is a very broad category that seeks to take Biblical truth and apply it to issues of life. Marriage and parenting books, books on worry, on financial management, etc. are all practical theology. The challenge with practical theology is that some books can deal with the practical very well, but lack in the theology department. Or they may be theologically sound but miss the mark in where we really live. We should have a regular diet of good practical theology to help us walk in a manner worthy of our calling as believers.

A third type of book, and the one that intimidates us, is sometimes called Theology Proper. Theology is ‘the study of God’. Theology books wrestle with ideas, particularly about God and our relationship to Him. Many theology books are ‘systematic theology’, a theologian grappling with what the Bible says about something in particular, or a range of things. Theology wrestles with doctrine – what should be believed. For example, the difference between a practical theology of suffering and a doctrinal theology of suffering might be something like this: The practical theology would seek to help you or me wrestle with our own suffering and seek to give us help in responding to it in God-honoring ways. A doctrinal work on suffering would wrestle with the BIG questions – why is there suffering, what does the Bible say about suffering, what is God’s purpose for suffering. It may have little practical advice for folks who suffer. Besides systematic theologies, there are biblical theologies (tracing the development of an idea through the Bible); historical theologies (dealing with how a theological idea has been treated through history), and commentaries (verse by verse studies on specific books of the Bible). Each type of theology has its own merit and use.

Just remember our point from last week – not every Christian book (and this includes theologies) is a good book. Theology is evaluated based on its ‘soundness’ – how well it conforms to the teaching of the Bible as understood in proper context.

Next Thursday we’ll jump into how to actually read a book of theology. Yipee.

Learning to Read

If you haven’t guessed it by now, we’re a reading church. Our Book Shoppe isn’t in the business of making money, and our book table in the old Gauntlett Center was a losing proposition as well. Are we bad at business? No, we so want to get resources into your hands and minds and hearts that we are happy to simply cover our costs of having them around.

Why this emphasis on reading? Reading quality Christian books will never replace the reading of God’s word or the preaching of your pastor, but it will help you hear and understand with greater maturity. A good book will challenge your thinking and motivate your heart. It will dislodge error and give you an appetite for truth. Good books humble us by reminding us that, to paraphrase an old Irish proverb, ‘good ideas often aren’t new, and new ideas often aren’t good’.

Here at the Family Life Blog we want to stir families to read – starting with you, dads. So here is the first of some occasional posts on ‘learning to read’.

· You can assume that Christian books are written by well intentioned authors. But not every book that seems to be Christian is a good Christian book. One way to do a spot evaluation of a book is to see who endorses it. While endorsements are a part of marketing, they reveal who the author looks to for inspiration, and that can tell you a lot about what he or she wants you to get from the book.

· The test of time is very important for evaluating the quality of a Christian book. While not all old books are great books, new books tend to reflect fads in culture and can be so trendy as to have little value over the long haul.

· Sales of books don’t always reflect their ultimate value; they tend to reflect the amount of marketing behind the book or author.

· Who the author is, and what his/her life reflects matters in a Christian book – even fiction. Learn about the authors before you read their books – does their work come from a good life model?

· I tend to recommend reading deceased authors as a priority. Not that there are no good living writers, or that dying instantly makes bad writers into good ones. Its just that how someone finishes the race tells me a lot about the value of what they had to say while they were running it.

· C. S. Lewis sums up my goals in reading – to learn wisdom from those who are wise:

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are. (C.S. Lewis, The Quotable Lewis p.233)