God, What on Earth are You Doing?
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.
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
In his essay on Alexander the Great, the ancient Greek writer, Plutarch, said men’s character can many times be judged by the seemingly inconsequential like “a phrase or a jest.” These can tell you much about a man’s character.
I’ve been on hundreds, perhaps thousands of church web sites. Rare is the church that includes as much biographical information on the elders as it does on the pastors. What is that telling us? Does it show how we put the pastor in the place that only belongs to a group of men? Are we really surprised that there is a cult of personality in the American church?
A sound bite culture is hardly equipped to ferret out truth from error, especially when it comes to complex issues with a long history.
Lord have mercy! By your grace may we all be willing to do the hard and difficult work of addressing our country’s most vexing issues.
Do some of your light administrative duties or take some extended time on the treadmill with this:
http://www.c-span.org/video/?325287-1/conversation-cornel-west-robert-p-george
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.
