2021 Book Recommendations

Last year I shared a post about the books that I recommended, and I was honestly surprised that anyone was interested. The thing about positive reinforcement is that it encourages behavior repetition. So here we go: here are the books that were most encouraging, inspiring, convicting, challenging, thought provoking, and/or paradigm shifting — listed chronologically (because ranking this sort of thing is absurd).

The Unseen Realm
Michael S. Heiser

When I Read It: January 2021

Why I Read It:
I was introduced to the work or Dr. Heiser in 2018 when The Bible Project Podcast did a 22 hour series on the nature of God, and it was was one of the most paradigm shifting things that I had ever heard in my life. I wanted to learn more.

Why I Recommend It:
Starting with Psalm 82, Dr. Heiser unpacks the full meaning of the Hebrew word “elohim” (the most common word for God besides the Divine Name) being grammatically plural. The implications are surprising when you’re used to reading scripture with a western, post-enlightenment worldview.

Notable Quote:
“All the things called elohim in the Hebrew Bible have one thing in common: they all inhabit the non-human realm. That is, they are by nature not part of the world of humankind, a world of ordinary embodiment. Elohim as a term describes residence — it identifies the proper domain of the entity described by it. Yahweh, the lesser gods, angels, demons, and the disembodied dead are all rightful inhabitants of the spiritual world. They may cross over to the human world, as Scripture informs us, and certain humans may be transported to their realm (e.g., prophets; Enoch), but their proper domain and humanity’s proper domain are two separate places. Within the spiritual world — as in the human world — there are differences of rank and power.

How To Fight Racism
Jemar Tisby

When I Read It: February 2021

Why I Read It:
I read Tisby’s previous book, The Color Of Compromise, last year. His account of American history shows that the church compromised at every step along the way in order to perpetuate the evil of racism. This book was released in January of this year, and continued that conversation by addressing the most logical question — now what?

Why I Recommend It:
It is one thing to have discussions about racism, it is another thing to take practical steps to fight it.

Notable Quote:
“In order to effectively fight racism, we must learn from the past. Contrary to the popular saying, historians are quick to point out that history does not, in fact, repeat itself. Historical events are too circumstantial and too contingent on a multitude of factors, decisions, actors, and conditions to ever simply repeat. But history does rhyme. We can hear cadences and syncopations of the past in the present. Learning about history is more than learning about what has happened before, it is about understanding what is happening now.”

Reading While Black
Esau McCaulley

When I Read It: March 2021

Why I Read It:
I had heard Esau McCaulley as a guest on multiple podcasts, and was excited to read his book.

Why I Recommend It:
McAulley gives testimony to a dismissed and overlooked ecclesiological tradition — the Black Church. Neither fully aligning with the Fundamentalist/White Evangelical movement, nor Mainline Protestantism, the Black Church provides another lens for faithful Biblical interpretation. He suggests that Black hermeneutics have been met with suspicion from both the wider church and the academy, but that it has important things to add to the conversation about ethnicity, political protest, policing, and slavery.

Notable Quote:
“The question isn’t always which account of Christianity uses the Bible. The question is which does justice to as much of the biblical witness as possible. There are uses of Scripture that utter a false testimony about God. This is what we see in Satan’s use of Scripture in the wilderness. The problem isn’t that the Scriptures that Satan quoted were untrue, but when made to do the work that he wanted them to do, they distorted the biblical witness. This is my claim about the slave master exegesis of the antebellum South. The slave master arrangement of biblical material bore false witness about God. This remains true of quotations of the Bible in our own day that challenge our commitment to the refugee, the poor, and the disinherited.”

Jesus And John Wayne
Kristin Du Mez

When I Read It: March/April 2021

Why I Read It:
I don’t remember how I discovered Du Mez’s work, but it was likely on a podcast. I know that I had seen this book recommended by a few friends, especially in the context of explaining the stranglehold that Trumpism has on the church.

Why I Recommend It:
I’ve got a lot of friends who have left the church — either my local congregation, the evangelical movement, or the faith altogether. Reasons are as diverse as the people themselves, but a reoccurring theme is politics. This book, which reads as a history of evangelicalism, takes an unvarnished look at the movement and exposes its seedy underbelly. Du Mez shows how the “moral majority” has followed the culture using fear, moral relativism, and militant masculinity in an attempt to dominate followers without thinking twice about the casualties. After reading this, God’s anger makes a lot more sense to me.

Notable Quote:
“when evangelicals define themselves in terms of Christ’s atonement or as disciples of a risen Christ, what sort of Jesus are they imagining? Is their savior a conquering warrior, a man’s man who takes no prisoners and wages holy war? Or is he a sacrificial lamb who offers himself up for the restoration of all things? How one answers these questions will determine what it looks like to follow Jesus. In truth, what it means to be an evangelical has always depended on the world beyond the faith. In recent years, evangelical leaders themselves have come to recognize (and frequently lament) that a “pop culture” definition has usurped “a proper historical and theological” one, such that today many people count themselves “evangelical” because they watch Fox News, consider themselves religious, and vote Republican. Frustrated with this confusion of “real” and “supposed” evangelicals, evangelical elites have taken pollsters and pundits to task for carelessly conflating the two. But the problem goes beyond sloppy categorization. Among evangelicals, high levels of theological illiteracy mean that many “evangelicals” hold views traditionally defined as heresy, calling into question the centrality of theology to evangelicalism generally.”

Why God
Rodney Stark

When I Read It: May 2021

Why I Read It:
A friend of mine shared a quote from the book, and I really liked it. I also heard multiple great recommendations for Stark’s other works, and since this book was relatively short I chose to dive into this one first.

Why I Recommend It:
Stark is a sociologist who offers a theory of religion that has the common sense to differentiate catholicism from paganism or atheism. Ironically, the past 100 years have excluded belief in any deities as a defining characteristic of religion, effectively rendering any system of thought as a religion. Stark assumes belief in deity as the foundation to explore the rise of monotheism, discovery of sin, and cause of religious conflict from a sociological (not religiously apologetic) perspective. The book provides explanatory power for the existence of religion and why most people throughout human history (including today) are religious, as well as a refutation of the argument against the divine.

For what it’s worth, the author’s personal beliefs are kept pretty vague, and at no point does he insist that God or gods actually exist.

Notable Quote:
Moreover, it isn’t merely blind faith that accounts for people thinking that life has meaning. Surveys of fifty-four nations found that most people say they “often” think about “the meaning and purpose of life.” Moreover, there is a logical basis for people to conclude that life does have meaning. Let me demonstrate this through a set of propositions that, I believe, model the fundamental reasoning involved.

Proposition 188: The universe appears to have been created by an intelligent designer.

Whether or not it is so, the universe testifies to intelligent design. I do not expand on this point because even the militant atheist Richard Dawkins agrees that “living systems give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Of course, Dawkins goes on to argue that this is a false appearance — that the whole universe is entirely an accident without purpose or meaning. But the point stands that life, indeed the entire physical universe, seems so complex and yet so orderly that the idea that it is a pointless accident seems absurd. Again, the truth of intelligent design is irrelevant to my purpose here. That design seems self-­evident to most people is sufficient. Do not suppose that only modern people perceive the universe as “God’s handiwork.” Creationism is central to all religious systems of thought, including the most primitive (see below). Proposition 189: Only an intelligent designer can give life meaning.

Even the most aggressive atheists accept this point, which is why they deny that life does have meaning. For the same reason, both believers and nonbelievers accept . . . Proposition 190: All efforts to find a meaning for life will lead to the designer assumption.

It is a simple matter. The universe can only have meaning if it was purposefully created. Proposition 191: Thus, humans will inevitably “discover” God.

We come now to one of the truly remarkable episodes in the history of the social scientific study of religion. Recall from chapter 1 that many of the greatest names among early social scientists, as well as biologists, dismissed primitive humans as having very little intelligence. Charles Darwin thought them to be subhumans. Herbert Spencer wrote that primitives had not even the “idea of causation,” and lacked “curiosity.” Durkheim agreed. Hence, it was assumed that their religious life was no doubt an ignorant mess of superstitious, childish nonsense. Indeed, it was the unanimous opinion at that time that groups in the early stages of cultural development had no notion of gods and that belief in a “Supreme Being is a very late result of evolution.” …

In any event, the idea of a creator God is not recent. As far as we can tell, it was a central feature of religion from earliest times. Hence, my final proposition: Proposition 192: The everlasting basis for religion will be the human conviction and hope that life has meaning.

Upon reflection I can’t help wondering whether this human propensity may have something to do with the inclination of some famous and aggressive atheists, including Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, to believe in “substitute” gods. Writing in his best-­selling The God Delusion (2006), Richard Dawkins put his belief this way: “Whether we ever get to know them or not, there are probably alien civilizations that are superhuman, to the point of being god-­like in ways that exceed anything a theologian could possibly imagine.”

In Conclusion If many of the propositions I have presented in these chapters are not modified or falsified by future scholars, then I might as well not have written this book. Theorizing is never finished! That’s why I have always been perplexed by people who claim to be “Weberians,” “Durkheimians,” or “Marxists.” This sort of ancestor worship is limited to social science and is indicative of its nonscientific heritage. Examine the course offerings for any physics department and you will never find a course dedicated to the “Thought of Isaac Newton” or “Einstein’s Basic Principles.” Although physics honors both men, it has moved well beyond them. What I have attempted to do in this book is not to stake out a reputation but to help us move on. Finally, liberal theologians and social scientists will continue to attack my theoretical efforts to explain religion as biased by my alleged “conservatism.” I confess I do find it rather unsuitable for atheists to earn their livings as bishops or seminary professors, but, that aside, my personal preferences (which remain private) did not shape these propositions. Rather, I have tried my best to base them on logic and evidence. The decline of the Protestant mainline is not a matter of opinion, but of fact. The sacred canopy thesis is refuted by history, not by my Protestant upbringing. And my preferences are irrelevant as to whether people continue to believe that life has meaning.

The Gulag Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

When I Read It: July/August 2021

Why I Read It:
I had heard a powerful quote from the book, and made a mental note to find the book and read the entire context. “But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

Why I Recommend It:
This masterpiece is both memoir and scathing political critique of the Soviet regime. Solzhenitsyn combines his own experience with evidence from 200 other prisoners and reveals the horrors of absolute tyranny and the fragility of the tortured human spirit. Yet, there are flashes of moral courage by those who refuse to be corrupted.

The work demands to be seen by those who believe that it could never happen again. In Solzhenitsyn’s words, “In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

Notable Quote:
“So let the reader who expects this book to be a political exposé slam its covers shut right now.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn’t change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Socrates taught us: Know thyself!

Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren’t.”

…

“Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble — and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Ideology — that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations…. Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago.”

Silence
Shūsaku Endō

When I Read It: August 2021

Why I Read It:
I had wanted to read it for a while. I think I discovered it about the time the Martin Scorsese film adaptation came out and a lot of people were talking about it. (I have a habit of reading the book but never getting around to seeing the movie.)

Why I Recommend It:
Shūsaku Endō presents a complicated mix of beauty and brutality — an honest portrait of humanity. Endō confronts the juxtaposition of faith, doubt, and the problem of evil with surgical precision, and like a great theologian, refuses to give comfortable answers.

Notable Quote:
On that night had that man, too, felt the silence of God? Had he, too, shuddered with fear? The priest did not want to think so. Yet this thought suddenly arose within his breast, and he tried not to hear the voice that told him so, and he wildly shook his head two or three times. The rainy sea into which Mokichi and Ichizo had sunk, fastened to stakes! The sea on which the black head of Garrpe, chasing after the little boat, had struggled wildly and then floated like a piece of drifting wood! The sea into which those bodies wrapped in straw matting had dropped straight down! This sea stretched out endlessly, sadly; and all this time, over the sea, God simply maintained his unrelenting silence. ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani!’ With the memory of the leaden sea, these words suddenly burst into his consciousness. ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani!’ It is three o’clock on that Friday; and from the cross this voice rings out to a sky covered with darkness. The priest had always thought that these words were that man’s prayer, not that they issued from terror at the silence of God.

Did God really exist? If not, how ludicrous was half of his life spent traversing the limitless seas to come and plant the tiny seed in this barren island! How ludicrous the life of the one-eyed man executed while the cicada sang in the full light of day! How ludicrous was the life of Garrpe, swimming in pursuit of the Christians in that little boat! Facing the wall, the priest laughed aloud.

‘Father, what’s the joke?’ The raucous voices of the drunken guards had ceased; and one passing by the door asked the question.

And yet when morning came and the strong rays of the sun once more pierced through the bars, the priest regained some of his spirit and recovered from the loneliness of the previous night. Stretching out both feet and resting his head against the wall he whispered words from the psalms in a sorrowful voice: ‘My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast! I will sing and make melody! Awake my soul! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn.’ In childhood these words had always risen in his mind when he watched the wind blow over the blue sky and through the trees; but that was a time when God was not as now an object of fear and perplexity but one who was near to the earth, giving harmony and living joy.”

East of Eden
John Steinbeck

When I Read It: September 2021

Why I Read It:
Partly because it’s part of the great American cannon, but mostly because it’s a desert-island book for a very influential friend. I had only read one of Steinbeck’s short stories in high school, and wanted to gain a wider appreciation of his works.

Why I Recommend It:
There is something beautiful in how tragedy unfolds — how it drives one inward, to think on the big questions of life, of meaning, of belonging. Steinbeck has a knack for mapping humanity’s most enduring themes onto California’s Salinas Valley at the turn of the 1900's. The stories of the Trask and Hamilton families weave together the timeless frailty of the human condition — identity, love, and the brutal results of their absence.

Notable Quote:
A child may ask, “What is the world’s story about?” And a grown man or woman may wonder, “What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?”

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught–in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too–in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well–or ill?

Herodotus, in the Persian War, tells a story of how Croesus, the richest and most-favored king of his time, asked Solon the Athenian a leading question. He would not have asked it if he had not been worried about the answer. “Who,” he asked, “is the luckiest person in the world?” He must have been eaten with doubt and hungry for reassurance. Solon told him of three lucky people in old times. And Croesus more than likely did not listen, so anxious was he about himself. And when Solon did not mention him, Croesus was forced to say, “Do you not consider me lucky?”

Solon did not hesitate in his answer. “How can I tell?” he said. “You aren’t dead yet.”

…

And in our time, when a man dies–if he has had wealth and influence and power and all the vestments that arouse envy, and after the living take stock of the dead man’s property and his eminence and works and monuments–the question is still there: Was his life good or was it evil?–which is another way of putting Croesus’s question. Envies are gone, and the measuring stick is: “Was he loved or was he hated? Is his death felt as a loss or does a kind of joy come from it?”

…

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

Reconstructing the Gospel

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

When I Read It: October 2021

Why I Read It:
After reading quite a few fiction works, I was wanting to read some current non-fiction. I found this saved in my Hoopla favorites library, and decided to give it a listen.

Why I Recommend It:
I knew nothing about the author before reading the book, but I realized that we had a lot in common. We both grew up in the 80’s faithfully going to Church in the Bible Belt, but in adulthood realizing that the Christianity we were taught was not good news for everybody. Somewhere along the way, slaveholder religion clouded the gospel of Christ. Wilson-Hartgrove wrestles with the darkness of American church history, and proclaims the subversive gospel that powered the church through slavery, civil rights, and the Black Lives Matter movement and beyond. Throughout the book, the author insists that Jesus wants to save us from ourselves, but that the blind must first learn to see.

Notable Quote:
“The black-led freedom movement has long insisted that there are two things white folks need to learn: when to shut up and when to speak up. One pitfall of whiteness is thinking you always have something important to say. Anyone who publishes a book about anything is subject to this temptation. But on the other side of the narrow way that leads to life is an equally perilous precipice — the danger of silence when you are the one who must speak up.”

Eugenics and Other Evils

G.K. Chesterton

When I Read It: November 2021

Why I Read It:
I’d been a big fan of Chesterton since a friend of mine recommended his work to me in college. I came across a quote of his that I didn’t recognize, and when I found it was originally part of this book, I started reading it immediately. The quote: “Evil always takes advantage of ambiguity.”

Why I Recommend It:
If you’re already a fan of Chesterton, then read it because he wrote it. If you’ve not read his works, I actually recommend reading a few of his other works first (either The Man Who Was Thursday [the first one I read], or Heretics [a good introduction to his non-fiction]). Chesterton wrote social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology in London at the dawn of the 20th century, but in a timeless way that is as relevant today as ever.

I specifically recommend this book because of the excellent ways it dismantles popular ideas of the time. Eugenics, the pseudo-scientific control of human breeding, was a prominent cause within progressive segments of the English-speaking world. Eugenics was funded by the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, promoted by Harvard University, praised in the New York Times, taught in 75% of public science textbooks, and codified by the U. S. Supreme Court to distinguish the “fit” from the “unfit.”

At the time, Chesterton was virtually the sole critic speaking against the intellectual world, yet stood unwavering in his criticism. With the conviction of an Old Testament prophet, he practically foresees the great evil unleashed by the nazi regime.

Notable Quote:
It is better to be in a bad prison than in a good one. From the standpoint of the prisoner this is not at all a paradox; if only because in a bad prison he is more likely to escape. But apart from that, a man was in many ways better off in the old dirty and corrupt prison, where he could bribe turnkeys to bring him drink and meet fellow-prisoners to drink with. Now that is exactly the difference between the present system and the proposed system. Nobody worth talking about respects the present system. Capitalism is a corrupt prison. That is the best that can be said for Capitalism. But it is something to be said for it; for a man is a little freer in that corrupt prison than he would be in a complete prison. As a man can find one jailer more lax than another, so he could find one employer more kind than another; he has at least a choice of tyrants. In the other case he finds the same tyrant at every turn. Mr. Shaw and other rational Socialists have agreed that the State would be in practice government by a small group. Any independent man who disliked that group would find his foe waiting for him at the end of every road.

It may be said of Socialism, therefore, very briefly, that its friends recommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as decreasing liberty. On the one hand it was said that the State could provide homes and meals for all; on the other it was answered that this could only be done by State officials who would inspect houses and regulate meals. The compromise eventually made was one of the most interesting and even curious cases in history. It was decided to do everything that had ever been denounced in Socialism, and nothing that had ever been desired in it. Since it was supposed to gain equality at the sacrifice of liberty, we proceeded to prove that it was possible to sacrifice liberty without gaining equality. Indeed, there was not the faintest attempt to gain equality, least of all economic equality. But there was a very spirited and vigorous effort to eliminate liberty, by means of an entirely new crop of crude regulations and interferences. But it was not the Socialist State regulating those whom it fed, like children or even like convicts. It was the Capitalist State raiding those whom it had trampled and deserted in every sort of den, like outlaws or broken men. It occurred to the wiser sociologists that, after all, it would be easy to proceed more promptly to the main business of bullying men, without having gone through the laborious preliminary business of supporting them. After all, it was easy to inspect the house without having helped to build it; it was even possible, with luck, to inspect the house in time to prevent it being built. All that is described in the documents of the Housing Problem; for the people of this age loved problems and hated solutions. It was easy to restrict the diet without providing the dinner. All that can be found in the documents of what is called Temperance Reform.

In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the bad. All that official discipline, about which the Socialists themselves were in doubt or at least on the defensive, was taken over bodily by the Capitalists. They have now added all the bureaucratic tyrannies of a Socialist state to the old plutocratic tyrannies of a Capitalist State. For the vital point is that it did not in the smallest degree diminish the inequalities of a Capitalist State. It simply destroyed such individual liberties as remained among its victims. It did not enable any man to build a better house; it only limited the houses he might live in — or how he might manage to live there; forbidding him to keep pigs or poultry or to sell beer or cider. It did not even add anything to a man’s wages; it only took away something from a man’s wages and locked it up, whether he liked it or not, in a sort of money-box which was regarded as a medicine-chest. It does not send food into the house to feed the children; it only sends an inspector into the house to punish the parents for having no food to feed them. It does not see that they have got a fire; it only punishes them for not having a fireguard. It does not even occur to it to provide the fireguard.

Reflections On The Psalms

C.S. Lewis

When I Read It: November 2021

Why I Read It:
The short answer is because it’s one of Lewis’ books that I had not yet read.
The long answer is that I was listening to an audio production of George MacDonald’s Lilith on Hoopla Digital. My habit is to enjoy these while on my daily commute, and the vocal performance was so awful that I simply quit, despite enjoying the book. (The reading voice would constantly whisper, feign emotion, and was inconsistent in speed, making it practically impossible to compete with road noise.) Anyhow, I had maxed out my monthly borrows for November, and saw that this was a free download on Audible.

Why I Recommend It:
Lewis shares his thoughts on the literary form and deeper meaning of the Psalms — not as a biblical scholar or apologist, but as a critic of great literature. He writes as one who loves the scriptures, and wants you to share in his enjoyment.

Notable Quote:
But of course these conjectures as to why God does what He does are probably of no more value than my dog’s ideas of what I am up to when I sit and read. But though we can only guess the reasons, we can at least observe the consistency, of His ways. We read in Genesis (2, 7) that God formed man of the dust and breathed life into him. For all the first writer knew of it, this passage might merely illustrate the survival, even in a truly creational story, of the Pagan inability to conceive true Creation, the savage, pictorial tendency to imagine God making things “out of” something as the potter or the carpenter does. Nevertheless, whether by lucky accident or (as I think) by God’s guidance, it embodies a profound principle. For on any view man is in one sense clearly made “out of” something else. He is an animal; but an animal called to be, or raised to be, or (if you like) doomed to be, something more than an animal. On the ordinary biological view (what difficulties I have about evolution are not religious) one of the primates is changed so that he becomes man; but he remains still a primate and an animal. He is taken up into a new life without relinquishing the old. In the same way, all organic life takes up and uses processes merely chemical. But we can trace the principle higher as well as lower. For we are taught that the Incarnation itself proceeded “not by the conversion of the god-head into flesh, but by taking of (the) manhood into God”; in it human life becomes the vehicle of Divine life. If the Scriptures proceed not by conversion of God’s word into a literature but by taking up of a literature to be the vehicle of God’s word, this is not anomalous.

Of course, on almost all levels, that method seems to us precarious or, as I have said, leaky. None of these up-gradings is, as we should have wished, self-evident. Because the lower nature, in being taken up and loaded with a new burden and advanced to a new privilege, remains, and is not annihilated, it will always be possible to ignore the up-grading and see nothing but the lower. Thus men can read the life of Our Lord (because it is a human life) as nothing but a human life. Many, perhaps most, modern philosophies read human life merely as an animal life of unusual complexity. The Cartesians read animal life as mechanism. Just in the same way Scripture can be read as merely human literature. No new discovery, no new method, will ever give a final victory to either interpretation. For what is required, on all these levels alike, is not merely knowledge but a certain insight; getting the focus right. Those who can see in each of these instances only the lower will always be plausible. One who contended that a poem was nothing but black marks on white paper would be unanswerable if he addressed an audience who couldn’t read. Look at it through microscopes, analyse the printer’s ink and the paper, study it (in that way) as long as you like; you will never find something over and above all the products of analysis whereof you can say “This is the poem”. Those who can read, however, will continue to say the poem exists.

If the Old Testament is a literature thus “taken up”, made the vehicle of what is more than human, we can of course set no limit to the weight or multiplicity of meanings which may have been laid upon it. If any writer may say more than he knows and mean more than he meant, then these writers will be especially likely to do so. And not by accident.

Bullies And Saints

John Dickson

When I Read It: December 2021

Why I Read It:
I had heard the author give an interview on a podcast, and I was intrigued by his approach of taking an honest look at the ugly parts of church history.

Why I Recommend It:
The entire history of the church has been plagued with the evils of racism, violence, and sexual scandal. At the same time, she has been faithful to clothe the naked, feed the poor, and love her enemies. Dixon likens this paradox to a symphony — suggesting that the teachings of Jesus (specifically, humans as imago dei & enemy love) are the written music while the musicians (church) perform a simultaneous mix of insufferable noise and instrumental mastery.

The author cites reputable sources, and makes persuasive arguments for the church’s positive contributions. Obviously, I’m biased in that regard. That said, I doubt a non-believer would be convinced by the delivery of his arguments. On the other hand, he does suggest the complex reality that the bully and saint are often (if not always) found in the same person. I know that’s true of me.

Notable Quote:
“Jesus Christ wrote a beautiful composition. Christians have not performed it consistently well. Sometimes they were badly out of tune. But the problem with a hateful Christian is not their Christianity but their departure from it.

…

It was the Master of the church himself who said I should worry more about my own sins than the sins of others. The same Lord who called his followers to pursue love, peacemaking, purity, and all the rest also insisted, in the same sermon, that Christians should be quick to admit personal fault and slow to condemn the faults of others.

The Holy Bible
New American Standard Version (1995)

When I Read It:
Ever since I learned to read. In adulthood, I’ve developed a daily ritual, and have read the entire Bible twice this year (and have read it twice a year for the last few years). I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t mention reading it in last year’s post. Perhaps I assumed my friends knew that about me? Perhaps I didn’t want to look arrogant? I don’t remember now. Anyhow, I’m specifically mentioning it now.

Why I Read It:
I grew up reading the NIV, and a couple years ago I picked up the ESV and read through it a few times. This year, I wanted to try the NASB (1995) to further understand the nuance of language.

Why I Recommend It:
Simply put, because I am a Christian and I believe it has authority. God chose to reveal himself to humanity through the law and the prophets, and more completely in the person of Jesus. The faithful have been studying the written word as an act of devotion ever since. Personally, I find it more encouraging, inspiring, convicting, challenging, thought provoking, or paradigm shifting than anything else I’ve ever encountered. I believe it has the best explanation for the nature of humanity, the depths of our problems, and the ultimate path to our restoration.

Notable Quote:
“But where can wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
Mankind does not know its value,
Nor is it found in the land of the living.
The ocean depth says, ‘It is not in me’;
And the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’
Pure gold cannot be given in exchange for it,
Nor can silver be weighed as its price.
It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir,
In precious onyx, or sapphire.
Gold or glass cannot equal it,
Nor can it be exchanged for articles of pure gold.
Coral and crystal are not to be mentioned;
And the acquisition of wisdom is more valuable than pearls.
The topaz of Cush cannot equal it,
Nor can it be valued in pure gold.
Where then does wisdom come from?
And where is this place of understanding?
It is hidden from the eyes of every living creature,
And concealed from the birds of the sky.
Abaddon and Death say,
‘With our ears we have heard a report of it.’

“God understands its way,
And He knows its place.
For He looks to the ends of the earth;
He sees everything under the heavens.
When He imparted weight to the wind,
And assessed the waters by measure,
When He made a limit for the rain,
And a course for the thunderbolt,
Then He saw it and declared it;
He established it and also searched it out.
And to mankind He said, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom;
And to turn away from evil is understanding.’

Here is a full list of the books I read this year.

Find last year’s recommendations here.