Have been enjoying a number of books lately (keeping my nose in too many at one time!). Here are some thoughts thus far:
1. Spurgeon’s Sermons. I got a set of 20 old volumes of his sermons off of ebay. I love Spurgeon’s preaching. While in Peru I read a sermon that he hesitated to have printed as he delivered it to thousands of people outside on a crowded field by King Edwards Road in Hackney, preaching the gospel to them with all his heart from Matt 8:11-12, “Heaven and Hell.” Amazing.
2. George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life. Marsden does not hesitate to deal with Edwards for good and for ill. Biographies can be discouraging if the author refuses to admit the sinful flaws of his subject. Not so with Marsden. The real Edwards, however, did spend 13 hours a day in his study, and would come home from a ride with paper notes containing his many brilliant thoughts pinned all over him. The real Edwards is convicting enough!
3. James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door. Excellent work dealing with different worldviews. Part of our evangelism is apologetics; and a big part of our apologetics is taking every thought captive. Sire helps a lot here.
4. Edward T. Welch, Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave. Welch is a biblical counselor with wonderful insight. He says that our problem with addiction is really a problem of worship, exchanging the worship of our Creator for that of the created (both our substance and our selves).
5. Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will (trans. J.I. Packer, O.R. Johnston). This is a classic, and it has been very thought provoking (as all the good ones are). Greg Beale first helped me see how Erasmus really anticipates the postmodern mindset in almost a prophetic way. Erasmus hated theology, assertions, dogma, and seemed to relegate it to the field of needless speculation. Not so with Luther! He knew the practical nature of theology, that it affects all that we do. Thus for him “free-will” is the heart of the gospel. In other words the doctrine that we are totally inable to save ourselves and that God must do every bit of it was not speculative to Luther, but was the gospel itself!
6. Pat Conroy, My Losing Season. Have always wanted to read Conroy as he is a native South Carolinian (Citadel grad), and a great southern writer. He is very insightful at times, very narcissistic at others. The man loved basketball, and the book is about his miserable senior season with the Citadel Bulldogs. The main point is that we learn much more from the losing, suffering seasons of life than we do from the winning, pampering ones. Biblical? I think so. Trite? Maybe.
7. Shakespeare, Macbeth. Seriously. I need to read more classics. What is more classic than Shakespeare, and universally so? I’m struck thus far by how insightful his work is on the internal struggle of man. “False face must hide what the false heart doth know,” Macbeth, Act 1.7.
