100 Authors (You Ought to Read)

In no particular order. Also, the appearance of an author on this list doesn't mean I necessarily condone all their ideas. Some of these authors should be read with caution, and all of them read with a critical eye and a good dose of discernment.

1. Francis Schaeffer
2. O.S. Guinness
3. Mark Twain
4. John Bunyan
5. William Shakespeare
6. Leo Tolstoy
7. Ayn Rand
8. Kurt Vonnegut
9. Douglas Wilson
10. P.G. Wodhouse
11. G.K. Chesterton
12. Robert A. Heinlein
13. Fyodor Dostoevsky
14. Bill Bryson
15. Greg Bahnsen
16. Cornelius Van Til
17. Jane Austen
18. Henry David Thoreau
19. Richard Baxter
20. Augustine
21. John Calvin
22. Daniel Defoe
23. James White
24. Arthur Conan Doyle
25. Elisabeth Elliot
26. Joshua Harris
27. Milton Friedman
28. Murray Rothbard
29. Douglas Groothuis
30. Aldous Huxley
31. Donald Knuth
32. Jack Kerouac
33. John Macarthur
34. Alister McGrath
35. Ludwig Von Mises
36. Leon Morris
37. John Stott
38. William Mounce
39. Ian Murray
40. John Piper
41. William Mitchell Ramsey
42. Bertrant Russell
43. Edith Schaeffer
44. Rafael Sabatini
45, Dr. Seuss
46. I.F. Stone
47. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
48. R.C. Sproul
49. Geerhardus Vos
50. C.H. Spurgeon
51. Samuel Waldron
52. H.G. Wells
53. R.J. Rushdoony
54. Sigmund Freud
55. Harold Bloom
56. Albert Martin
57. Frederic Bastiat
58. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
59. Francis Bacon
60. Mikhail Bulgakov
61. Nathan Wilson
62. Jim Rogers
63. Bram Stoker
64. Rudyard Kipling
65. Alan Jacobs
66. Peter Leithart
67. Eric S. Raymond
68. Plato
69. Gordon Korman
70. Robert Lord
71. Jack Hodgins
72. Johnathan Edwards
73. Jerome Tuccille
74. John Murray
75. Stewart Tendler
76. Robert Stone
77. J Gresham Machen
78. Ishmael Beah
79. John Owen
80. Gordon H. Clark
81. Albert Camus
82. R. B. Kuiper
83. Herbert Zim
84. George Grossmith
85. J. I. Packer
86. Fritz Molden
87. Rene Descartes
88. Sun Tzu
89. John Blanchard
90. Jon Steinbeck
91. Ray Bradbury
92. Immanuel Kant
93. Ian Wilson
94. George Orwell
95. Jim West
96. Alan Watts
97. Adrian Conan Doyle
98. Gracia Burnham
99. Ravi Zacharias
100. Jerry Bridges

Now I will sit back and wait for people to point out the glaring ommisions!

Review of "Letters of Francis Schaeffer"

Letters of Francis Schaeffer by Lane T. Dennis

Normally I don't enjoy books of letters. For instance, I've read a book with letters from D. Martyn Lloyd Jones. Though I greatly respect that man and his ministry, and the letters certainly didn't diminish my respect for him, the letters made for banal reading. But this book is quite different. The letters are compelling and rich with content, not just run-of-the-mill correspondence. Schaeffer answers people in thoughtful, penetrating, and sometimes quite controversial ways. The overall theme is "Spiritual Reality".

Part One is "The Reawakening of Spiritual Reality'. These letters deal mainly with the controversies of Presbyterianism in the 1950's and Schaeffer's growing disenchantment with much of the "separated movement". Schaeffer's own personal crises is also brought up in some of these letters.

Part Two is "Spiritual Reality in Daily Living". Here we find letters to people, mainly former L'Abri students, who are struggling with sin, psychological problems, spiritual growth, health issues, the meaning of life, etc.

Part Three is "Spiritual Reality in Marriage, Family, and Sexual Relations". Here, as the title implies, the letters focus on marriage, relationships, family, and sex.

I'm impressed with these letters and throughout them you will find great "take home" tidbits (although some of them may seem quite familiar to you if you've read more than a couple of Schaeffer's books). Some of the letters are dated to the times they were written in, but that is to be fully expected in a book of letters. I've also learned a lot from his method of corresponding, and I feel I'm better equipped to respond to different situations myself. For these and many other reasons, I highly suggest that you check out this book! I don't necessarily agree with every single thing Schaeffer said, but then again, if I did that would be scary! I found the letters helpful, challenging, and found I could agree with the vast majority of what he says.

I do have one complaint. The book is filled with Schaeffer's apologies for not writing in a timely manner. It gets tedious after a while. I realize they are a genuine part of his correspondence and removing them would make the letters choppy and incomplete. But, still, they slow down the reader. Understandably, Schaeffer was a very busy man. Sometimes I wonder how he was able to manage this extensive correspondence! He lived from 1912 to 1984. He wrote over 20 books. He directed films. He ran L'Abri, a very busy ministry in Switzerland. He toured Europe and America. He had cancer. He had children with health concerns. But thank God he wrote these letters (both for the sake of those to whom they were addressed and for the sake of the people who read them now). And thank you, Lane T. Dennis, for editing such a great book!

(And thank you Ian for lending me this book!)

The Mantra of Jabez

Canon Press has some full view books available via Google Books.

Finally, I can check out the intriguing
The Mantra of Jabez: Break on Through to the Other Side. After having read Right Behind, I still have an itch for good satire/parody.

The Revolution: A Manifesto

This book looks great: The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul. It is available for pre-order.

He Actually Reads?

This satirical news piece is simultaneously funny and sad. It makes light of the fact that the reading of good books is becoming so marginalized in this day and age.

If Libraries Were Invented Today..

This thoughtful post by Stephen J. Dubner at New York Times ponders the interesting idea of what would happen if libraries didn't already exist but were suddenly invented now.

The conclusion is basically this: Publishers and other groups would probably fight against this new invention, because economically it defintely "hurts" them. Think about it: 50 people can read a book with one purchase, instead of 50 reads with potentially up to 50 purchases. The concept of the library is the ultimate "try before you buy" sort of setup, and thankfully it became ingrained into our culture long before the current copyright/publisher-rights/licensing/etc. mania has reached its zenith.

Books I'm Currently Resisting

Here are some books I'm itching to check out. However, I'm stalling for now. I have enough books to last me for a while. I don't need more. Or, that is what I try to tell myself :)

The Call : Finding And Fulfilling The Central Purpose Of Your Life by Os Guinness
OS is a terrific author, so I have high hopes for this book.

Hole in Our Soul : The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music by Martha Bayles
Douglas Wilson has been quoting from this book frequently on his blog. Some of what is said there is intruiging, to say the least. I'm curious.

Prisoner of Woodstock by Dallas Taylor
The story of another "orphan of America" (drummer for CSNY) as he went through the darker moments of his generation. Now he helps other musicians recover.

Will it Liberate ? : Questions About Liberation Theology by Michael Novak
Sounds interesting.

God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley
This sounds interesting historically speaking.

From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act : A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America by Chris Finan
Sounds interesting.

Imagine : A Vision For Christians In The Arts by Steve Turner
Been eying this one for a while.

Trading with the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro's Cuba by Tom Miller
The title says it all.

Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty
I'm thinking this may be boring, but probably worth reading.

Her Hand in Marriage by Douglas Wilson
Don't worry.. its just for a friend.

A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking by Douglas Wilson
Had my eyes on this for a long time, and now Ian, you Book Pusher, you've awakened my longings for this volume by mentioning it to me. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Mind Performance Hacks : Tips & Tools for Overclocking Your Brain by Ron Hale-Evans
Those who know me well know I need a whole lot of this.

Of course, that is just a small sampling. Oh, I must resist the temptation to spend :)

The "If You..." Book List

Christianity

If you want to a better Biblical exegete:
Read "Exegetical Fallacies" by D.A. Carson

If you want to learn more about L'Abri:
Read "L'Abri" by Edith Schaeffer

If you want to share a pint with the Puritans:
Read "Drinking With Calvin and Luther!: A History of Alcohol in the Church" by Jim West

If you are having trouble accepting (or understanding) the doctrine of particular redemption:
Read "The Death of Death: in the Death of Jesus Christ" by John Owen

If you're not totally convinced about Reformed Theology:
Read "Easy Chairs, Hard Words: Conversations on the Liberty of God" by Douglas Wilson

If you want to read Bible studies by a famous computer scientist:
Read "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated" by Donald E. Knuth


The 1960's Counterculture

If you want a fair and balanced Christian perspective on 1960's counterculture:
Read "The Dust of Death: The Sixties Counterculture and How It Changed America Forever" by O.S. Guinness

If you want to know whether there ever was a real "Alice D. Millionare":
Read "Brotherhood of Eternal Love" by Stewart Tendler & David May

If you've ever wondered how psychedelic drugs were introduced to America:
Read "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control" by John Marks

If you wonder about the nitty-gritty details of the Mexican counterculture and music industry:
Read "Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture" by Eric Zolov


Wars And Rumors of Wars

If you think peace has prevailed:
Read "Representations of Violence: Art about the Sierra Leone Civil War" by Patrick K. Muana

If you want to know what a child solider thinks:
Read "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah

If you want to know whether you can trust a Serbian:
Read "Spy/counterspy;: The autobiography of Dusko Popov" by Dushko Popov

Computer Science

If you want to learn a bit about computer forensics:
Read "Forensic Discovery" by Dan Farmer

If you are a computer programmer:
Read "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell


Latin America

If you don't believe Fidel Castro once quoted John Calvin and refers to John Knox:
Read "History Will Absolve Me" by Fidel Castro

If you want to get a balanced perspective on the Cuban revolution:
Read "The Winds of December: The Cuban Revolution of 1958" by John Dorschner



Various

If you want to know whether 'James Bond' was for real:
Read "Spy/counterspy;: The autobiography of Dusko Popov" by Dushko Popov

If you wish your kids were more Cajun literate:
Read "Petite Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood" by Mike Artell

If you think blogging is just hype:
Read "We The Media" by Dan Gilmor

On Reading

Douglas Groothuis has a good post on reading. I think he has some great advise. I don't agree with everything, though. I figured I'd provide some commentary on some of his points.

3. Mark up your books, underlining key ideas and jotting ideas in the margins. Keep an index in the front of the book of the most important ideas. If the book is especially profound, take detailed notes on it.

This is a good idea. Regarding keeping notes, I must state that most notes people take are very ineffective. First of all, they are normally far too volumnious. Secondly, they are usual illegible anyways. A mind map would serve the purpose much better in being more clear, more visual, and more succinct.

5. Reread important books. This is a mark of the literary person, as CS Lewis notes in An Experiment in Criticism. I have been rereading much of Francis Schaeffer recently, a man I first read nearly 30 years ago as a young Christian. It is well worth it.

Very true!

6. Never get rid of a book you have read. I have thousands of books, but lament that I let go some I read (and some I didn't).

I disagree with this one. I believe getting rid of some of your book is a good practice. Here are many reasons why I say this:

1. It will make you evaluate which books you really liked and which ones you plan to re-read


2. Rather than holding a copy of a book that you may never read, giving away some of your books will recirculate them


3. You could give some books for free, helping out a friend


4. You can trade them and receive another unread book in its place (ie. Title Trader


5. The cycle of is good for helping to avoid being attached to books as objects. This helps you to realise that what is really important are the ideas, not the physical object. Collection-mongering, while not inherently wrong, is sometimes problematic when one collects for the sake of collecting :)


6. If you are really taking notes (or mind maps) of the key points of a book, you should be able to give it away because you've condensed the important/crucial points

Now that I've said this, I think I might have scored some major points with any serious theologian-husband's wife. She now has some points to provide in favor of getting rid of that pile of books! :) But, alas, I'm not advocating indiscriminate elimination. I keep many books and probably have some that I should get rid of. However, I just disagree with Doug's idea that books should never be gotten rid of.

A good book collection not only grows, but also shrinks. Shrinking is not ridiculous, it is refinement. Use shrinking to enhance your collection, not decimiate it.

7. Read and reread old books. Don't be taken captive by fashion. Savor the classics.

Yes! Yes! I'd just add that a good way to get to the old classics is to read the citations in modern books and read those authors. Then also see who those authors cite, and read them.

8. Ask smart people what their favorite books are and why. Then read them.

Great point!

10. Always look up and learn unfamiliar words you find in your reading. From 1976-1994 or so, I filled a blank book of over a 100 pages with such words. Use such words in conversation, even if the person you are conversing with may not know them.

Good vocabulary builder! One suggestion, though, if you always interrupt your reading to do vocabulary, you might find yourself slowing down too much. I suggest reading through the chapter, underlining words and looking up them all later together. If you write them down in a book you are losing the context. If you underline them, you can later flip through the chapter or the entire book and see them in their original context.

12. When in doubt, buy a book.

A questionable ending to a good list! :) I haven't bought a book yet in 2007. Why must we buy a book? Do we not have 100's unread sitting on the shelf?

Douglas, thank you for providing a thought-provoking list as you so often do!

Alan Watts on the Gaze of the Christian God

I'm reading a book by Alan Watts, "The Book". He was famous for doing a lot to bridge the gap between the new mysticism (Western counterculture) and the old mysticism (Eastern philosophy/religion).

As I read this book, I'm acutely aware that as a Christian I do not accept his conclusions and in fact find a number of them quite bizarre and off-the-wall. His view of "god" and our existence can not explain reality as it really is. I'm reading this book mainly because I like to know
something about the things I critique.

As I've been reading through the book, I found a statement of his that really jumped out of the page. While I neither agree with his overarching thesis nor his developing argument, something about this statement made me say "WOW":

"The image of God as a personal Being, somehow 'outside' or other than the world, had the merit of letting us feel that life is based on intelligence, that the laws of nature are everywhere consistent in that they proceed from one ruler, and that we could let our imaginations go to the limit in conceiving the sublime qualities of this supreme and perfect Being. The image also gave everyone a sense of importance and meaning. For this God is directly aware of every tiniest fragment of dust and vibration of energy, since it is just his awareness of it that enables it to be. This awareness is also love and, for angels and men at least, he has planned an everlasting life of the purest bliss which is to begin at the end of mortal time. But of course there are strings attached to this reward, and those who purposely and relentlessly deny or disobey the divine will must spend eternity in agonies as intense as the bliss of good and faithful subjects.

The problem of this image of God was that it became too much of a good thing. Children working on their desks in school are almost always put off when even a kindly and respected teacher watches over their shoulders. How much more disconcerting to realize that each single deed, thought, and feeling is watched by the Teachers of teachers, that nowhere on earth or in heaven is there any
hiding-place from that Eye which sees all and judges all."

For all his faults, there are two things in this excerpt that Alan gets right on the money:

1. He identifies (at least as a concession) that the Christian view of God is the foundation for importance, meaning in life, and consistency in the laws of nature.

2. He identifies why the unbeliever does not like the Christian concept of God, He's far too all-knowing, far too holy and just, etc. Humans who rebel against the "Teachers of teachers" can not hide from the eye of God, so naturally they would much rather want no God, or at least a "god" who can be fooled and avoided.

Indeed there is no "hiding place" for those who continue to defy the God who created them.
Many people innately know that a personal God is the very foundation for the things that they depend upon in their life, and yet they still rebel against Him and deny His existence simply because they come to the conclusion that Alan Watts reached: It is "disconcerting to realize that each single deed, thought, and feeling is watched by the Teachers of teachers". I agree that it is disconcerting to our independent spirit to know that God is omnipresent and omnipotent. Unfortunately, though, denying reality does not evade the necessity of dealing with it.

Top 50 Most Influential Books

Over at Tim Challie's blog, he refers to a Christianity Today feature, "The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals".

Of all those 50 books, I've read one of them and own two. And I thought I was an evangelical who reads lots of books :)

The list isn't all that bad, though. There are at least 5 books in there that I've considered picking up in the past and would like to read some time in the future.

More Hours In A Day?

I've been reading Brothers Karamazov for a long time, a VERY long time. It mainly has to do with the fact that I'm also reading a lot of other things simultaneously, but Brothers Karamazov is also a very long book!! (my copy is over 1000 pages)

After having read it for a few months at least, I've come to the realization that it is going to take me quite a bit longer to complete it. I figure that If I dedicate one hour per evening every day, it will still take me almost a month to complete it. Yikes! There is no way I'd keep up that sort of pace. Either I need to train myself to read faster or I need to find a way to stretch out more hours per day. This is just one of those books that you need to dedicate many huge blocks of time to complete. Oh the joy of being a Bibliophile :)

Saturday's Mini Codices

Here's today's fix:

• If you haven't checked out Mars Hill Audio Journal, you may want to. Their purpose is "assisting Christians who desire to move from thoughtless consumption of contemporary culture to a vantage point of thoughtful engagement"


• Google Book search normally only displays a small exerpt of copyrighted books. However, some books whose publishers allow it (or whose copyright is expired) are available in their totality. One can find them by checking off "Full View Books" when using Google's Book Search. In the near future I would like to read the following books from Google Books:




• The Rise of Nations in the Soviet Union: American Foreign Policy and the Disintegration of the USSR


• The Rich Single Life


• Letters of John Huss Written During His Exile and Imprisonment


• The Great Astronomers


• Benjamin Franklin in American Thought and Culture 1790-1990


• This Great Salvation


• Iran: Time for a New Approach

Review: Albert Camus and the Minister

"Albert Camus & the Minister" by Howard Mumma (ISBN: 1557252467)

I'm no stranger to reviewing books. I normally find it easy to write a brief one or two assesment of a book. But my feelings about "Albert Camus and the Minister" by Howard Mumma are very complex and I struggle to write a descent review of this book.

The first 90 pages which cover a growing friendship between Camus and Mumma is clearly the most interesting part of the book. The rest is a collection of life experiences that were meaningful to Mumma. These experiences are not dull, but I found them to be a bit disconnected from the first 90 pages. One of the most entertaining points of this book is where Camus asks for baptism, but Mumma rejects it on the grounds that (A) Camus had already been baptised as an infant and (B) he wasn't willing to join the church or make it a public event. He ends up regreting that stand a bit, especially on reflecting on the fact that it was his final meeting with Camus. It was also neat to read about Camus' enthusiasm in studying the Bible.

Mumma holds a view of the Bible which relegates The Fall to allegorical tale and he certainly doesn't have an evangelical view of the inspiration of scripture. While coming from that platform might have made agreement with Camus a bit easier, I believe Mumma would have had some more meaningful answers to Camus' questions if he actually had a view of the Bible which validates using it as an authorative source. In some senses, from a thoroughly evangelical Christian prespective, Mumma wasn't offering Camus something much better than he already had. Sure, Mumma presented some God talk, but did he present the gospel to Camus as something that is "true truth" not just "religious truth"?

I sympathise with the views of other reviewers on Amazon who are quite critical of this book. While I hope and trust Mumma has recorded things accurately, there are a few things which make me wonder. First, some of his recollections (he admits plainly that they are recollections and may not be 100% accurate) portray the conversations as rather simplistic--with most of the dialogs turning out to be more "gentle" and successful from Mumma's perspective than one would expect when an Existentialist and a Christian minister would get together. Second, I don't know enough about Camus to verify it, but some other reviewers bring up interesting comments that Mumma seems to have gotten some of Camus' biographical details wrong. Third, Camus seeking truth is quite believable, but requesting adult baptism? That seems a bit far fetched. As another reviewer noted, it is notable that the accuracy of first 90 pages of the books can not be verified. This problem is further compounded by the fact that Mumma shares that Camus was secretive about it--he requested specifically that his inquiries be kept secret (this make this book a betrayal of sorts).

I will not go to the length to say I think Mumma invented the dialogs (as some reviewers have suggested), but I think I reader should approach it with some caution and be prepared to accept that at the very least some of the dialogs may not have been recorded completely accurately.

So, if you have been following me so far, you should find that my response to this book is both positive and negative. I don't regret having read it, though. The first 90 pages are interesting even if we are to suppose that they are totally fictional. This book might be worth getting if the reviews so far intruige you. I'll just advise you that you shouldn't expect Mumma to be an evangelical nor should you expect any of the recollections in this book to be easily verifiable.

I'm left wondering what would be the outcome if Camus had spent this time with an evangelical (such as Francis Schaeffer or OS Guinness) instead of one who has accepted most of the doctrinal positions of the "liberal" movement.

More Condensed Book Reviews

Believe it or not, this is rather fun..

"The Stolen White Elephant" by Mark Twain
- Entertaining but not exceptional

"George C. Wallace: triumph of tragedy?" by Rodolphe J. A De Seife
- Sheer propaganda, a smear campaign in reverse

"Everybody's Business Is Nobody's Business" by Daniel Defoe
- A raging rant

"The Beekeeper's Apprentice" - Laurie R. King
- At last! A highly creative Sherlock knock-off

"The Gospel According to Rome" by James McCarthy
- Nice!

"Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman" by Richard Stallman
- Good introduction to Stallman, eccentricities to be expected

"We the Media : Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People" by Dan Gilmor
- Excellent

"KJV 1611: Perfect! A Conviction, Not a Preference" by Roy Branson
- Rubbish, and mean/uncharitable rubbish at that

"On Jesus" by Douglas Groothis
- Excellent

"Spirits In Bondage: A Cycle Of Lyrics" by C.S. Lewis
- Lewis in Angst mode

"Python Cookbook" by Alex Martelli
- Tasty

"L'Abri" by Edith Schaeffer
- Excellent

"Art and the Bible" by Francis Schaeffer
- Wonderful

"The Believer's Conditional Security" by Dan Corner
- A misguided rant in every regard, more bold type than good sense

"Diary of a Nobody" by George Grossmith
- Seemingly unsophisticated, but good!

"The Friendly Dictatorship" by Jeffry Simpson
- Not without faults, but interesting!

"The Negro revolt" by Louis Lomax
- Interesting

"A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" - Mark Twain
- Wonderfully humorous

"Behold the Man" by R. Kent Hughes
- Good

Condensed Book Reviews

I got this idea from Doug Wilson's book log. The idea is to give a review of a book in a few words or less.

"The Kingdom that Turned the World Upside Down" by David Bercot - Has a few good points, but also some rubbish.

"Fables For The Frivolous" by Guy Whitmore Carryl
- Hilarious.

"In the Presence of My Enemies" by Gracia Burnham
- Fascinating

"Easy Chairs, Hard Words: Converstions on the Liberty" of God by Douglas Wilson
- Brilliantly simple defense of Reformed theology

"Opposing Viewpoints Series - Technology and Society" by Auriana Ojeda
- The pinacle of editorial laziness, cut and paste with no interaction

"The Language of God" by Ron Julian
- Creative, but tedious and generally a failure

"Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life by John Calvin"
- Outstanding

"The Dust of Death" by OS Guinness
- Outstanding

"The Winds of December: The Cuban Revolution of 1958" by John Dorschner
- Oustanding and well rounded

"Exploits of Sherlock Holmes" by Adrian Conan Doyle
- Good spinoff

"A Lifetime Of Church" by Tom Speicher
- Rather long, but great!

"Tiananmen Diary: Thirteen Days in June" by Harrison Salisbury
- Short and fascinating

"The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud" by Said K. Aburish
- Outstanding

"Secure Architectures with OpenBSD"
- Good not great, title is a bit deceiving

"The Holy War" by John Bunyan
- Outstanding

Here, There, and Everywhere

1. For those who haven't heard, I've left the ACC, primarily over two doctrinal issues. I'll dearly miss worshiping regularly with the congregation that has been my home for almost my whole life. I'm seeking to join a local church that has a strong commitment to the gospel and has a strong Biblically sound preaching ministry.

2. Having to leave a church is not easy.

3. Especially the ACC.

4. I'm upgrading from SuSE Linux 10.0 to 10.1. I want to do a clean install, so I've spent a lot of time backing up loads of stuff. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted something I didn't want to, so I am missing some older files :(

5. The weather is great! How is it that in the last couple of weeks I've hardly been able to get outside and enjoy it!? That definately has to change.

6. If you are a pastor and haven't read "Reformed Pastor" by Richard Baxter, do yourself and your congregation a favor and please read it ASAP.

7. Foxmarks is very useful and cool. And now its a company! Its a service which allows you to sync bookmarks remotely in your various installations of Firefox. And beyond that, it gives you a private web interface to access your bookmarks from anywhere and any browser.

8. I need to stop ordering books until I've read more of them.

9. Israel is not joking about marching through Lebanon.

10. Random books from my wishlist:

"The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought?" by Ronald Nash
"The Bolivian Diary: Authorized Edition" by Che Guevara
"John Owen on Christian Life" by Sinclair B. Ferguson
"1776" by David McCullough
"The Birds Our Teachers" by John Stott
"Letters of Francis A. Schaeffer: Spiritual Reality in the Personal Christian Life" - Lane T. Dennis
"Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants" by Robert Sullivan
"Fugitive Game" by Jonathan Littman
"The Savage My Kinsman" by Elizabeth Elliot
"Finished Work of Christ" by Francis Schaeffer

11. I'm rediscovering BibleTime (a KDE client for the SWORD engine). It is actually not as bad as I initially thought it would be. I still feel its not as good as E-Sword (free product for Windows), but I think I'll be using it because Linux is my OS of choice.

12. I'm very ignorant about eschatology.

Well, well. I don't normally post like this. But it did feel good!

Counter Culture and The Dust of Death

In the early 70's, Christian Os Guinness published a tome entitled "the Dust of Death". On the back cover it says "With the dust of death slowly settling over all of Western culture, Os Guinness charts the journey of of a generation--out from the technological wasteland and into the Promised Land of radical politics, Eastern religion, psychedelic drugs and the occult. Rejecting both the technological society and the counter culture, he calls clearly for a Third Way".

To be properly digested, this nearly 400 page volume needs to be read from cover to cover.

In commenting on how Christians are to understand supernaturalism and mysticism, Guiness states: "..there are for the Christian two supernatural areas. The first is a genuine experience of God and the second is an experience of the occult powers, the devil and evil spirits. While both are real and supernatural, only the former is legitimate; the latter is real but wrong. Understanding this, we can see that for the Christian there are still two legitimate mystical experiences. The first is natural mysticism including nature mysticism and aesthetic mysticism; the second is supernatural mysticism, a genuine experience of God. Both are legitimate forms of mysticism, but it is common error to mistake the natural mysticism for the supernatural and give it connotations that are spiritual...It can not be stressed too strongly, especially in the climate of a growing and dangerous vogue for contentless religious experience, that the mystical experience is only a part of the Christians total experience."

Then, continuing, Os Guinness responds to Timothy Leary's charge that "Every religion in world history was founded on the basis of some flipped-out visionary trip". Guinness responds by saying that "the Christian's supernatural experience of God is always in terms of truth. This judgement runs counter to much current theology let alone mysticism..There was a content to [Apostle Paul's] experience. Paul did an about-face and headed in a direction totally antithetical to that in which he had been traveling before. Clearly his was no undefined experience...Paul mentions with fascinating attention to detail that Jesus had spoken to him 'in the Jewish language'...the biblical account clearly indicates an experience that was mystical; much of it was beyond words. But it was also personal and propositional."

The Christian worldview embraces the reality of the supernatural, but at the same time the Christian message is not centered around a "trip". Christianity, as Guinness clearly expounds, is not contentless mysticism, but embraces mystical elements in a proper perspective grounded in truth and reality, with personal and propositional revelation. This, when rightly understood, provides a robust answers to the dillemas faced by the rise (and fall) of the 60's counterculture and psychedelic movement. The "trip" did not provide answers, it only raised more questions and left its adherents without a solid base to stand on. Unfortunately, many times modernist Christians have done no better, only offering yet another 'trip' (ie. religion bathed in mysticism without any sort of concept of personal and propositional revelation). Humanity does not hunger for another "trip" bathed in religious language (contentless religion), but it needs to be presented the gospel, and a gospel with propositional content.

Guinness ends the book in a powerfuly way, saying:

"The present erosion of Christian culture means the removal of the last restraining influence of the Reformation. The striptease of humanism is simply the logic of the Renaissance held in check by the Reformation for four centures but now exposed in all the extremes of its consquences. If the last twenty-five years presuppose the tensions and questions of preceding centuries, it is little wonder that the counter culture [of the 60's] is not equal to its task. Christianity has proved itself a genuine counter culture once before. It is the hour for the Third Race once again.

The second reaction will be from thoes who will say, How come? All this is very well in theory, but how can it be translated into action? As Bertrant Russell remarked in one of his more tolerant moods, 'The Christian principle, _Love your enemies_ is good...There is nothing to be said against it except that it is too difficult for most of us to practice sincerely.' His emphasis was not strong enough. The Christian life is not juts difficult for man; it is impossible. But it is exactly here that humanism leaves off and Christianity begins.

That is also why this uniquely 'impossible' faith--with a God who is, with an Incarnation that is earthy and historical, with a salvation that is at cross-purposes with human nature, with a Resurrection that blasts apart the finality of death--is able to provide an alternative to the sifting, settling dust of death and through a new birth open the way to life."

This book (and the citations I give here) are definately not interesting to everyone. However, to anyone who, from a Christian perspective, wants to analyize where we (as a civillization) are right now, we need to understand some of these concepts. The 60's counter culture has had a large impact on where our society is at right now. When correctly understood, the counter culture should be seen to have been responding to REAL problems (injustice, violence, unchecked rationalism, materialism, 'plastic' culture, ossified traditionalism, etc.), however the response was launched from a WRONG basis (they provided no, or at least very few satisfactory answers to the problems they saw). We are left with the shadows of that turbulent era. Do we understand it? Are we seeking to respond to the dilemas that are facing our society in 2006? Are we prepared to communicate the gospel faithfully AND understandibly to those we rub shoulders with?

Too Many Books Too Little Time

As is listed on this page, I'm currently reading six books at a time. This, in my opinion, is a few too many to retain any sort of ideal concentration on any one of them. I really think anything more than three at a time is a bit overwhelming.

However now the dilema is now compounded. My Amazon.ca order has arrived. This promises to be tempting, as there are a number of books in that order that I REALLY want to get to.

So I'm trying to have enough patience to finish up with at least one or two of my current books before I start plowing through some of the new ones.

The order I speak of includes books such as "Easy Chair, Hard Words" by Doug Wilson, "Scripture Alone" by James White, "Surreal Numbers" by Donald Knuth, and "Manly Dominion" by Mark Chanski.