Category Archives: Christianity

WAVE YOUR WAND 5.0

I am asking a number of friends to answer the following question: If you could wave a magical wand which caused all Christians to read five books, what works would you pick? Here is the next installment.

John Scholl holds a PhD in Medieval History.  He was a Fulbright scholar and currently teaches at Trinity Classical School of Houston and at Houston Baptist University. 

Here is John’s list:

1) The Bible — probably that is assumed here, since I know you, but not every Christian assumes it, so I include it here.

 

2) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

 

3) Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place

 

4) Martyrdom of Polycarp

Ok, I could only think of 4, but its a tall order: five books “for all Christians.” I have been influenced by alot of novels and history books, but they would not be helpful for lots of people.

WAVE YOUR WAND 4.0

I am asking a number of friends to answer the following question: If you could wave a magical wand which caused all Christians to read five books, what works would you pick? Here is the next installment.

Today’s respondent is Dr. Lindsey Scholl.  Lindsey holds a PhD in Ancient History.  She is finishing the advocate trilogy (www.theadvocatetrilogy.com).

Lindsey’s picks:

The Republic
Augustine’s Confessions
Eusebius’s History of The Church
Candide – not because I think it’s the best thing ever, but because it gives the skeptic’s perspective
The Scientific Revolution by Thomas Kuhn

WAVE YOUR WAND 3.0

I am asking a number of friends to answer the following question: If you could wave a magical wand which caused all Christians to read five books, what works would you pick? Here is the next installment.

Dan Panetti is the worldview director at Prestonwood Christian Academy in Dallas, Texas.  Here is Dan’s list:

In addition to reading their Bible (not a given anymore), my top 5 would probably include the following:

Pilgrim’s Progress by Bunyan
The Normal Christian Life by Nee
Mere Christianity (or something) by Lewis
Holiness by Ryle
The Bruised Reed by Sibbes

WAVE YOUR WAND 2.0

I am asking a number of friends to answer the following question: If you could wave a magical wand which caused all Christians to read five books, what works would you pick? Here is the next installment.

Today’s respondent is well-known New Testament scholar and popular blogger, Dr. Scot McKnight.

Augustine, Confessions
Little Flowers of St Francis
Dante, Divine Comedy
J. Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
Martin Buber, I and Thou
A. Schmemann, For the Life of the World

WAVE YOUR WAND 1.0

I am asking a number of friends to answer the following question: If you could wave a magical wand which caused all Christians to read five books, what works would you pick?

We begin with Dr. Dave McCoy.  I met Dave over twenty years ago at the church I served as a pastor.  Dave is a gifted Bible teacher and artist.

Here are Dave’s picks:

Here’s a unique selection for you geared more for the common reader:
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Fee and Stuart
The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis
Decision Making and the Will of God by Garry Friesen
Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

SEARCHING FOR SUNDAY

And one can certainly agree the church is not supposed to be a museum for plastic saints, but rather a hospital for sick sinners. But the church should never never become just like an AA meeting (one suggestion in this book). Why not? Because while we need such meetings, the church should not be focusing on our own brokenness and mainly sharing about that. We should be focusing on His brokenness when he hung on the cross, precisely so we will get away from our self-centered fixation with our own flaws and foibles. The church needs to be relentlessly theocentric in its worship, fellowship, and praxis, not anthropocentric.

One of the things I really appreciate about Rachel and her writings is that she is honest, painfully honest about her own doubts, her own struggles. She longs for a church where it is o.k. to have questions and doubts and to discuss them. So do I. We have too little of that in the Evangelical world. The lust for certainty has led some pastors and congregations to simply silence any such meaningful probings and heart to heart honest talks. But let’s be clear— honesty and transparency are good things, but they are not ‘the truth’. One can be completely honest about one’s feelings, thoughts etc. and at the same time be completely wrong not only about Biblical truth, but even about oneself.

TWO TYPES OF STUPIDITY

Hey Christian: We are not off the hook here!

Felipe Cherubin: Given the constant threat of terrorism with which we now live, do you believe we are facing a cultural war? Is Samuel Huntington’s thesis that the world is divided into several civilisations based on religious ideals that can be fault lines for conflict still valid for the 21st century?

Roger Scruton: There is certainly some kind of clash of civilisations occurring. However, Islam seems to have forgotten its civilisation, and it is rare now to meet a Muslim who has ever heard of enlightened Islamic scholars like Ibn Sinna, or Rumi, or Hafiz, or who is even aware that a great civilisation once existed, built upon the revelation of the Koran. Western civilisation, too, is losing the memory of its religious inheritance. I am reminded of Matthew Arnold’s “On Dover Beach” in which he expresses his fear for a future in which “ignorant armies clash by night”. So yes, there is a clash—not of two civilizations but of two competing forms of stupidity: one given to violence and the other to self-indulgence. 

HT: Scot McKnight; emphasis added