Thoughts on the Year's Reading

Republished with permission from Craig’s blog, Theology for the Road.

“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance” (Confucius).

For the longest time I hated to read. Yes, “hate” is a strong word but that is how I felt about reading. I even hated reading my Bible (heresy, I know!). Don’t get me wrong. I loved my Scofield Study Bible that I used for 18 years. I just didn’t like to read—period. I remember crying as my dad (who was himself a reader) would have me sit down and read my Bible. I dreaded the reading plans he made for my three siblings and myself. I was always behind in grammar and reading in school which was a result of my lack of desire to read.

Where it all began

Then one day things changed. I went from hating reading to loving reading. During my senior year in high school my youth pastor decided to meet with me every Monday for the whole year to mentor me since I wanted to go into ministry. I will never forget that first meeting. He took me to a fast food restaurant. He sat me down and plopped down three books on the table. My heart sunk. He told me to start reading them and we were going to discuss them together along with other things. At this point I had no choice. I had to read them and there was no saying no. I went home and began to read them. Call it divine intervention or what have you but all of the sudden I began to love reading—and I found that I couldn’t stop.

Today I have a good sized theological library for someone who is not in ministry. I have purchased books while I was in and out of school. I found books for free at different places and this last year I was able to use this blog to acquire more books which I in turn reviewed. I also won a number of books by entering giveaways.

Discussion

Book Review - Upside: Surprising Good News About the State of Our World

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Gloomy. That’s the general outlook that the vast majority of Americans seem to have when it comes to our future. Whether it’s political wrangling, economic turmoil, pandemics or education—the present is bleak and the future is downright scary. It’s not just Al Gore predicting global devastation caused by global warming, nor is it simply the war-mongers who see a jihadist behind every bush, it’s Christians too, who seem to enjoy pointing out how bad things are (and are getting).

Discussion

Book Review - Worship and the Reality of God

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“When Satan was cast out of Heaven, he fell into the choir loft.”

This oft-repeated piece of apocryphal angelology is used to bemoan the devastating effect of the “worship wars” on American churches. And while a certain Pastoral Theology professor contended that the Evil One and his minions alighted instead in the sound booth, the net result is the same—God’s people embroiled in conflict over how best to worship Him.

John Jefferson Davis, professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, has made a substantial effort to cut through the noise and touch the heart of the worship issue in his book Worship and the Reality of God, an Evangelical Theology of Real Presence (231 pages, IVP Academic). In the opinion of this reviewer, he has done an outstanding job of pinpointing the problem. His solutions, however, while well thought-out and passionately delivered, seem to fall short of the mark.

Pinpointing the problem

In the lengthy introduction (actually the first chapter), Davis relates his visits to churches of varying worship traditions. While styles differ, he identifies a common problem with all of them: the lack of awareness of the very real presence of God. He then goes into a discussion of the three “competing ontologies” he sees in today’s culture: scientific materialism, digital virtualism, and trinitarian supernaturalism. This leads to a discussion of contemporary Evangelicalism and where it is headed. Here he solidly identifies himself as “evangelical” in the Ockenga/Graham tradition, and gives a brief overview of what he considers to be the six major groupings of contemporary Protestantism. These groupings are “the evangelical left, charismatics and Pentecostals, popular apocalypticism, Willow Creekers, emergents and Reformed orthodoxy.” Dispensational fundamentalists are placed—not surprisingly—squarely in the “popular apocalypticism” camp.

Discussion

Book Review - Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary

Amazon Affiliate LinkThe Bible is a big book, and since the nineteenth century, many big Bible dictionaries have been published to assist readers and students of the Bible to understand important words, concepts and background information. The most recent effort in the field of Bible dictionaries is the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary (ZIBD).

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