Category Archives: Reading

Oct 07 2020
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Faith, Reading

Bible Reading

Last week, as I was reading my Bible, I began to reflect on the passages I have been reading lately are not generally regarded as “devotionally rich.”  I read 2 Kings 12, Psalm 137, Jeremiah 51, and Revelation 18.  If you aren’t familiar with these chapters, they have a lot of judgment in them, aside from 2 Kings 12, which is chiefly about money collected for repairs of the Temple by King Jehoash of Judah.  I began to ask myself, “what is the value of soldiering on through parts of the Bible like these, where there doesn’t seem to be an immediate takeaway?”

I usually answer this question with the analogy of food.  If we insist that every meal we eat be as memorable as eating in a 5-star restaurant, we will be disappointed.  Hopefully, our food is tasty and nourishing.  But the majority of our meals may not be memorable.  We don’t stop eating because some of our meals are as unremarkable as a bowl of cereal.  Biological necessity drives us on to eat.  Food fuels us.  It keeps us alive.  And every so often, we enjoy a meal where the quality of food is memorable.

I am not writing this to impugn the perfection or the sufficiency of God’s Word.  But the Bible is to be our daily food. Job writes: “I have not departed from the commandment of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food” (Job 23:12).  There may be some days when the passages that we read immediately convict us of sin, or remind us of God’s mercies, or show us an area of our lives where we are not believing the gospel, or we see the sufficiency of Christ in a new light.  There are other days in which God’s Word is like a “square meal.”  It’s nourishing, but there’s no “zip” in the taste buds.

When those days come, keep soldiering on.  The Lord is strengthening you, even if you don’t necessarily feel it.  And today, I did see an unusual coincidence that I probably would not have seen if I did not read Jeremiah 51 and Revelation 18 on the same day.  Jeremiah prophesies to Judah concerning the imminent deportation of the Jews to Babylon, and God’s future judgment of Babylon for her idolatry and immorality.  Revelation 18 chronicles the judgment of Babylon as well, but it’s a different Babylon.  Some scholars believe that historically, this was Rome.  Others believe that it was Jerusalem.  But Babylon is symbolic of this present world and everything about it that stands against God.  While I didn’t do a deep study of Jeremiah 51 and Revelation 18, I did take great comfort that judgment is coming against everything that takes its stand against the Lord.  These chapters also moved me to search my heart to seek to find whatever in me is opposed to the reign of Christ.

What I found surprising is that the Lord would show me this great truth in two different passages on the same day.  And my Bible reading plan isn’t “staged” so that I’ll read those chapters on the same day.  I read from four places in the Bible each day.  The first is, having started from Genesis 1, I’ll read a chapter a day up through Job, and I’ll start over again.  I do the same for the Psalms.  Then, starting from Proverbs through Malachi, I read a chapter a day and start over.  And I do the same for the New Testament.  There’s no calendar or schedule of days, so if I miss a day, I don’t have to catch up.  I don’t necessarily stay quite on schedule either, because if I’m prompted to pray, I’ll stop right where I am and pray, even if I’ve only read a couple of verses.

So, that’s my plan.  I’d be interested in hearing from you.  What is your plan for reading the Bible?  Contact me if you need some suggestions or encouragement.

Oct 02 2019
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Education, Faith, Reading

On Books and Reading

     If I am at all successful in keeping up the writing habit, you will see that I make many references to the books that I am reading.  I recognize that I am a prodigious reader.  I’m not sure if I count this as a virtue or not.  Most of my friends do not have the kind of reading habits that I do.  They add much-needed balance to my life.  But I really do enjoy opportunities to talk about the books that have made an impact in my life.
     So, why do I keep this habit ?
     As a “knowledge worker” (I hate that phrase!), I need to be constantly learning and growing.  The 2008 recession precipitated a change in the labor market.  The trend since then is for employers to hire “younger and cheaper.”  In order to continue to be relevant, I need to continually push myself that “my progress may be evident to all.”  Resting on one’s past achievements is not an option in today’s market.
     Books are tools, rather than collectibles.  As much as I love books, I’ve never gotten into the hobby of book collecting.  I don’t need first editions.  I would even say that “paperback is better.”  It takes up less space.  In some ways, it’s easier to write in.  Yes, I write in my books rather copiously.  If somehow, my former students happened to acquire one of my books, they said that it was “more valuable” that way.
     When we lived in Cincinnati, I had a friend who was an auto mechanic.  He and his family lived frugally.  Yet, he had a “tool payment.”  He needed the right tools to be able to do his job.  For students and teachers, books are your tools.  Don’t skimp on them.  For most students, learning and studying is hard enough as it is with the tools that they need.  Don’t handicap them.
     The book habit is cheaper than going back to school.  Also, no tests, no essays, no term papers, no restrictions.  I’m reminded of Ray Bradbury, one of my favorite writers.  He couldn’t afford to go to college, so he got his education at the library.  It served him quite well.
     As tools, I’ve learned to hold books lightly.  My desire is to have “an open heart and an open hand.”  I used to be quite possessive about my books.  Then, I had to give many of the away when we went through a period of life when we had limited storage space.  This was good for my soul.  Most books, even out of print ones, can be replaced.  Hopefully, people who borrow my books and don’t return them are more blessed by them than I am.
     I recently went through my library looking for a couple of books that I had purchased some time ago that I really wanted to read.  Then I remembered that I had lent them out.  At first, I was a little peevish.  But then, I realized, “what an opportunity to pray for that person.”  Not imprecatory prayers, or prayers that this person would “repent and acknowledge the depth of their sin,” but that that person really would be blessed, and that I may be able to be a blessing to them, and that the Lord would make his face shine upon them, lift up his countenance upon them, and give them peace.
     That prompting and opportunity for prayer was far more precious than those books.  That sign that God is working in my life, turning the vice of covetousness and acquisitiveness into a desire to pray and a genuine prayer for another’s well being, giving me a generous spirit when I’ve previously  had a tight-fisted spirit, was a priceless gift to me.  I pray that would be able to continue to recognize that I possess nothing that has not been given to me, that I brought nothing into this world, and that I will take nothing out of it.  Blessed be the name of the Lord our God.
Oct 01 2019
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Education, Faith, Reading

What I’m Reading Now

     There are many things that I cannot do while I am recovering from surgery. But I am resolved to do all the good that I can while I am laid up.  I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to engage in some concentrated study;  Here are some of the books I’ve been reading.
     Blessed: A History of the Prosperity Gospel, by Kate Bowler, is an academic history of the Word of Faith movement.  Dr. Bowler is a professor of church history at Duke Divinity School.  This is an important book that I’ll write a separate post on.  I say that it’s important, because Texas and Oklahoma are the centers of the prosperity gospel.  What this means for us is that many of our neighbors have been taken in by this aberrant teaching.  As I will point out in the future, this should not make those of us who are Evangelical and Reformed feel superior.  On the contrary, we need to be patient and compassionate with those who have experienced t his faith tradition, and who have felt betrayed by its false promises.
     The Man of God: His Calling and Godly Life,  by Albert N. Martin.  As a pastor, it’s always good to reexamine your call and your fitness for it in terms of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.  Having pastored a single congregation for forty-six years, Pastor Martin is a master of pastoral theology.  Any minister or interested church member would profit by reading this book.  This is the first of four projected volumes of pastoral theology.  It’s wonderful to be able to “listen in” on the wisdom of such a godly servant of the Lord.
     Living by Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles H. Spurgeon, by Tom Nettles.  This is perhaps the definitive biography on Spurgeon.  It’s refreshing to read a biography of a man whose holiness matched his immense gifting and effectiveness in ministry.
     Job.  I’m continuing to work ahead on sermons from the Book of Job.  I had anticipated being able to preach through the book in about ten or so sermons.  In doing so, I had forgotten the counsel of Dr. Hughes Oliphant Old, who was the pre-eminent scholar of the Reformed faith in the twentieth century.  He said, “every time you preach through a book of the Bible, it will take you longer because you find more depth.”  However, I do not plan to preach 157  sermons on Job, as Calvin did, or 576, as Joseph Caryl did.  I’m working through Matthew Henry’s commentary and Derek Thomas’ doctoral dissertation:  Calvin’s Teaching On Job:  Proclaiming the Incomprehensible God.   I feel like I’m trying to bail out the Atlantic Ocean with a coffee cup.  But it’s good to read over your head, and some of it will stick.  
     Some Pastors and Teachers: Reflecting a Biblical Vision of What Every Minister is Called to Be, by Sinclair Ferguson.  Dr. Ferguson has spent a lifetime in the pastorate.  In this book, he writes on lessons learned from John Calvin, John Owen, and John Murray.  
Latin. Having taught Latin for ten years, I may be functional but have a long way to go.  I’m pushing myself to stay sharp and improve.

Sep 30 2019
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Faith, Reading, Teaching

Job and the prosperity gospel

It’s been quite an education reading Kate Bowler’s Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel alongside studying the Book of Job.  One church member offered the observation that the counsel of Job’s friends sounds much like the prosperity gospel.  The prosperity gospel is also known as the “health and wealth gospel” and the “Word of faith” movement.  A more crass description of this teaching is “name it and claim it.”  Here are two errors that are prominent in both the prosperity gospel and much of the counsel of Job’s friends.
An Unbiblical Anthropology.  Both Job’s friends and the Word of Faith teachers bring God down to the level of humanity.  Both the Creator/creature distinction and the holiness of God are slighted.  Both create a world in which God can be placed in man’s debt.  The reason why I point this out is that apart from the Creator/creature distinction and the holiness and justice of God, there is no room for the gospel.  In this paradigm man, on his own, can achieve the righteousness of God apart from being born again, apart from a changed heart, and apart from the gracious enabling of the Holy Spirit.  Having minimized “death in Adam,” they preclude “life in Christ.”
An Over-Realized Eschatology.  Eschatology is the study of the “end times,” the “last things.”  Both Job’s friends and the prosperity gospel bring all the blessings and judgments of the world to come into this world.  There is only immediate blessing and immediate retribution.  Our Lord Jesus first suffered, and then entered into glory.  As those who are in Christ, this is what God has called us to as well.  Suffering precedes glory.  This was Peter’s stumbling block in Mark 8:32-33.  He saw the glory of our  Lord, but could not imagine the necessity of the suffering of our Lord.    This paradigm makes the process of sanctification, which is a vital element in the Christian life, superfluous.  “Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.
In future posts, I’ll add more thoughts to this.
Mar 08 2017
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Education, Reading, Writing

What I’ve Been Watching

     I’ve watched two movies in the last couple of weeks that have directed my reading and thinking.  I Am Not Your Negro, directed by Raoul Peck, is based on James Baldwin’s unfinished work, Remember This House.  Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, this documentary narrates the history of racism in the United States through Baldwin’s accounts of his interactions with Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  This was a compelling movie and one that caused me to examine my own beliefs and prejudices about racism and the development of African-American culture in the United States.

     The other movie was Paris After Midnight, a Woody Allen romantic comedy that is set in Paris. Owen Wilson plays Gil Pender, a writer who is working on a novel.  His materialistic fiancee, Inez, ridicules this project and wants him to stick to screenwriting. This conflict becomes more pronounced during the film while Pender considers moving to Paris.   While on his way home from a night of drinking and dancing, Pender gets lost and a vehicle picks him up and takes him back to the Jazz Age.  Each night at midnight, he is able to revisit the Paris of the twenties, meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, and other luminaries  from this period.  Through traveling back in time, Pended gains the courage to finish his novel and to break off the relationship with his fiancee.

     At first glance, it appears that these films have little in common.  What stands out to me about both is the question of the “thickness” of one’s tradition.  One of the questions that I asked after watching I Am Not Your Negro was, “is the American tradition of social justice “thick” enough to bring about a better future for African Americans?  Can Americans overcome race-based slavery, Jim Crow laws, and mass incarceration to create a more just society for African Americans?  Are there people who will express the way forward for justice whom both African Americans and whites will listen to?

     Allen’s film also implies a question concerning the thickness of tradition.  Gil Pender was not able to find enough thickness in the tradition of his own day to produce serious art.  Where do we find the resources to produce serious art?  Such resources are not going to be found on Google, in popular music, or Direct TV.  There’s a sense in which we must recover resources from our past and give a fresh voice to them.

Jul 15 2016
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Reading

Summer Reading

One of the things that I’ve been able to do since the accident is read.  I have a stack of books that I’m making progress through.  Another stack is gathering dust.  Still, another stack is no longer a stack.  These books have made their way back to the shelves, but have not yet been properly shelved, giving faint hope that I will get to them.

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Currently Reading:

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.  This is the biography that inspired the Broadway musical.  It’s been on the list ever since I heard about the musical and showed clips to my US History class this past year.  Great Read!

Revival and Revivalism by Iain Murray.  A look at the development of revivals and evangelical Christianity in the United States and Great Britain before the American Civil War.

Homeric Moments by Eva Brann.  Reflections of teaching Homer for over fifty years at St. John’s College.  This is a good read but a challenging book, and worthwhile to build a stronger foundation in my thinking about and teaching of Homer.

Serving With Calvin by Terry L. Johnson.  A guide to the fundamental principles of public ministry and the calling of the pastor.  While much of this is material is content I’ve picked up and absorbed over the years, I sure do wish this book was around when I was a young minister!  It’s a judicious condensation of the work of the pastor that has spurred me on in prayer and preparing for the ministry of the Word.

Listening to on Audible:

Being Mortal:  Medicine and What Matters At The End by Atul Gawande.  Thought provoking book on aging and how the West cares for an aging population.  Gawande convincingly shows us how the medical model of caring for elderly people often ignores their desires and robs them of the agency that those of us who are able to live independently take for granted, and profiles residences where elderly people are able to exercise greater liberty and agency in their making, and how this adds years to their lives and life to their years.

On the shelf/nightstand:

The Didascalion of Hugo of St. Victor.  A medieval treatise reading, education, and the seven liberal arts.  It’s a little challenging to get through with the discomfort I’m feeling so I’ve put it aside for now.

Eisenhower by Stephen Ambrose.  I’ve always thought that Eisenhower is one of the most underrated and interesting Presidents.  I want to get into this one, but it will probably wait until after Hamilton.

How To Read A Sentence and How To Write One by Stanley Fish.  I try to keep a writing book going all the time.  Right now, the plot of this one fails to grip, but I really haven’t given it much of a chance.

The Power Broker:  Robert Caro and The Fall of New York by Robert Moses.  I’m about 8o percent through.  An interesting and must-read for anyone who is at all interested in the history of “the city that never sleeps.”  At 1200 pages, it’s too dang heavy to pick up now!

 

 

 

 

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Jul 12 2016
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Education, Reading

Recent Reading

A Secular Age by Charles Taylor.  Yes, it’s taken me about a year and a half to get through this massive tome.  I still have a little bit to go but I should finish it this week.  Philosophically, I feel like it’s the story of my generation.  There’s so much in this book that I could write about, and at least as much that is over my head, and that’s not even mentioning the untranslated French paragraphs!  Taylor’s case is fairly complicated.  While the title implies growth in secularity over time in the West (which Taylor affirms), the two most useful concepts for me were the concepts of “disenchantment” and the reasonableness of the secular paradigm even for the religious.

The idea of disenchantment is that for persons living in the West in the Modern Age, it’s difficult to believe in the supernatural and ascribe explanations of phenomena to the supernatural, even for religious people.  For example, Medievals would likely ascribe pathological evil to supernatural activity such as demon possession, while Moderns would look to explanations rooted in nurture and environment.  The “secular age” is one that is denuded of the supernatural.

This is one of the reasons why I found it so hard to teach Medieval literature such as Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur.  For Malory, everything is supernatural.  The idea of not believing in the supernatural or ascribing cause and effect to the ineffable is as unthinkable is not breathing.  Characters that readers consider both good and evil possess this worldview.  In contrast, the modern reader, even if religious, sees the secular paradigm as a conceivable option, and may often see the rationalistic option as more viable than that which is rooted in the Divine.

In this respect, A Secular Age helped me to understand my own story and my own perception of the world.  It’s a valuable work in this respect, and one I’m glad that I plowed through.

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Jul 09 2016
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Faith, Reading

Recent Reading

While I’ve been convalescing and taking care of my wife after our recent car accident, I’ve set off on a torrid pace in reading.  The following are some snippets from some of the texts that I’ve engaged with over the past week.  Below is my account of Sunday’s readings.

 The Epistle to the Hebrews (ESV Translation).  I wasn’t able to go to church so I decided to attempt to read large portions of Bible books during my time on the disabled list.  I do have regular Bible reading plan, but Hebrews is my favorite book. I derived much encouragement from this letter to a church of Jewish background that was tempted to return to Judaism while suffering severe persecution.  The writer is sympathetic to the plight of this church.  His love for this church and his pastoral encouragement comes through loud and clear, and doesn’t keep him from giving his readers a “talking-to” where needed.

Revival and Revivalism by Iain Murray.  This book has stared at me for several years from my seat in the family room for several years.  I expected a hagiographic treatment of the leaders of the First Great Awakening in America.  Luminaries such as George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and Samuel Davies were men of God whose preaching was blessed by the Holy Spirit in the conversion of those outside of Christ and the strengthening of the Church from within.  After reading the first hundred pages, I’m encouraged to see that while Murray believes that the Great Awakening was a giant boon to American Christianity, there were unsalutary developments as well, and his view of the Revival is more nuanced than I expected.

Murray has challenged the view that I’ve about the Great Awakening for many years.  Protestant church historians are largely divided into two camps on whether the Great Awakening was a positive development for American Christianity.  On one end are historians such as D. G. Hart and Nathan Hatch, who believe that the Great Awakening was harmful to the development of the development of the American church because the revival preachers operated largely outside of the individual church.  Because the church and its catechetical role tended to be bypassed by the revival preachers, the effect was a Christianity in America that was fundamentally individualistic rather than churchly, and harmful to the growth and development of the Church.  The tother camp, championed by Iain Murray, believes that the First Great Awakening was beneficial to the American Church, while the confluence of events known as the Second Great Awakening fostered deviance from orthodox Christianity.

For the last fifteen years or so, I’ve largely held to the second view.  However, Murray presents a more nuanced view than I expected.  He makes a persuasive case that the reason that the preachers of the Great Awakening often bypassed the institutional Church was not because they held a low estimate of the Church, but that often the Church as an institution (organized gatherings under the rule of elders, pastors, buildings, etc.) was still in an organizational and developmental phase, and thus lacked the capacity for the churchly Christianity that is the norm of the Reformed churches.

I’ve only reached pate 100, but I’m glad that I took this book off the shelf and I’m really profiting from it.

Serving With Calvin by Terry L. Johnson.  Much of this book is a rehash of other writings of Johnson that has been expanded and put into a more polished form.  However, Dr. Johnson has been one of the most influential men in the way that I view the ministry of the gospel.  I’ve really profited from his theological vision and his encouragement to combine such vision with the daily and weekly tasks of gospel ministry.

 

 

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Apr 24 2015
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Reading, Take Permission

Reading Goals

I previously went public with my goal of reading 100 books this year.  I’m not quite ready to say that it won’t happen.  However several factors have intervened.  The first is that my sister Cathy is requiring more care from Amy and me.  This, combined with teaching, has left me in a state of exhaustion for a sizable portion of the last month.  I haven’t missed any days of class.  But I have had a difficult time keeping up with grading.1848-261926

The other issue that tends to cast a doubt on the viability of this goal is that I’m reading some behemoths now, the main one being A Secular Age by Charles Taylor.  Weighing in at 896 pages, Taylor chronicles how the worldview of the West has experienced revolutionary changes from the Middle Ages up until now.  He writes of how the outlook of pre-Enlightenment Europe was profoundly supernaturalistic, a world that was enchanted, in which the Divine broke through, even through inanimate objects (think of the Holy Grail, for example).  Taylor makes the case that over time, a number of developments took place across different areas, such as the Enlightenment, the rise of modern politics, “polite society,” and perhaps most of all, a change in the perception of the interaction of God in this world.  I’m about a third of the way through the book.  For me, it’s timely, it’s educational, it’s interesting, and being a work of philosophy, it’s stretching me.  At this point, I’ve having to trust the author to take me where he’s going.

James K. A. Smith introduced me to this book in his guide to Taylor’s work, How Not To Be Secular.  It’s been long enough that I don’t remember too many specifics about Dr. Smith’s book, except that it made me want to read Taylor.  So, it seems that Dr. Smith achieved his purpose with me.

Another book on the nightstand is Rod Dreher’s How Dante Can Save Your Life. Mr. Dreher is a senior editor of The American Conservative, and one of my favorite writers.  He went through a crisis in his life similar to my own in many ways, moving back to the town where he grew up after an absence of over twenty years after the death of his sister, and experiencing an adjustment difficult enough to lead to a physical, emotional, and spiritual breakdown.  The Lord used Dante’s Divine Comedy to lead him out of the dark wood that he experienced midway through his life, with striking parallels to Dante’s own experience.  It’s an enjoyable read, and it has succeeded in motivating me to begin again with the Commedia.  I’ve read Inferno several times before, but have gone no further, so I opened up Purgatorio last night.  I’ve only read through Canto III, but so far, it’s surprising how hopeful and optimistic the beginning of Purgatorio is.

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Feb 13 2015
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Reading, Writing

Reading and Surrender

I’ve fallen woefully short of my publication goal for this week.  I enjoy writing for the blog. However, much of my time has been spent in teaching, getting ready to teach, or lately, running.  So, I haven’t exactly made writing in the strictest sense a priority, although most of the above has been a function of some kind of writing.  But it’s not finished writing — just enough to get the job done to either give my students a thorough lecture or devise good open-ended questions for a discussion-based class period.
In terms of audiobooks, I’ve been listening some to Middlemarch while I drive.  However, it’s kind of difficult on the run, as you really want to participate with all your faculties.  George Eliot demands a kind of surrender that many contemporary authors don’t require, and is difficult to render if a person is trying to listen while doing other tasks, or perhaps even trying to read other books.  The surrender pays rich dividends when the option is available.  This is something that I’ve noticed with other authors such as Tolstoy, Doestoevsky, and Melville.  Perhaps the reason that these works aren’t preferred by students is the necessity to utterly surrender oneself to enjoy a satisfying experience with these texts.  There’s a degree of resistance in the soul to such a surrender that must be overcome.  But this is essential to reading a work charitably, putting oneself under the tutelage of the text, and withholding judgment until understanding of the text is achieved.  I’ve also started listening to Murakami’s Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.  However, I’m wondering if he is going to require the same kind of surrender that George Eliot does.
I finished Charles Murray’s Coming Apart.  It was a worthwhile read.  The data he presents quite clearly supports his view that America is becoming more segmented and stratified as a society.  What may be controversial is how one interprets the data, and what conclusions are to be drawn from it.  And morally, is this a good development for American society, or is this something to be lamented?  On balance, it seems that this new stratification is something to be lamented.  However, the aggregation of brain power in what Murray calls ‘the new upper class” has some beneficial effects for all of America.  The downside is that the new upper class has little contact with the rest of America.  It appears that the new lower class does not either.  The only caveat on this book  I have on this one is that some of the later chapters could have been abridged or eliminated. However, I suppose he really wanted to convince the naysayers to his thesis.  I’m pretty sold on his thesis about the distance and America being segmented into demographic “neighborhoods,” but uncertain about what that means for the future or if anything can or should be done about this.
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