Categories
Christian Living

Good Books versus Great Books. What Else Should I Read?

There are many books out there. Some of them are worthless and just plain bad. But others are good. And some can even be classified as great books. The first one you need to know about is the Most Important Book ever written. You can read about it in my post from earlier this week. But After reading the Most Important Book, what else should you read?

A photo of a wall of books, symbolizing the need for us to read great books
And I thought I had a lot of books!

There is plenty of junk out there to fill your time. If you are going to read, shouldn’t you want to read great books that can have an enormous impact on your thinking and on your life?

Charlie Jones: “You will be the same person you are today in five years but for two things:
1) the people you meet and
2) the books you read.”

So, follow the advice of Henry David Thoreau:
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”

There are bad books,
decent books,
good books, and
great books.

However, even if we throw out the bad and decent books, there are still so many good books that we can’t get to them all. Life is too short for me to spend it reading only good books. I want to read the great ones.
So what would those be?

Some great resources from Christianity Today for finding Great Books to consider:
The 100 Christian Books of the Century
The Top 50 Books that Have Shaped Evangelicals
CT’s Yearly Book Award List
These are some great places to start.

I have been going through those first two lists the past few years and have enjoyed reading many of them. Some of my favorites have been:

Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Rosalind Rinker, Prayer: Conversing With God
J. I. Packer, Knowing God
Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
Catherine Marshall, Christy
Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place
Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial
Rebecca Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker and into the World

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” –Haruki Murakami

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don’t just read good books (and certainly don’t read bad or decent books).
Go for the great ones.

Read great books, because:
“The things you read will fashion you by slowly conditioning your mind.” –A. W. Tozer

What books have you read would you consider putting into the “great books” category?

Categories
Bible

The Most Important Book You Could Ever Read

The Most Important Book you could ever read is one that has influenced more people over more time than any other book in existence. It has influenced more literature, more morals, and more life-changes than any other book ever written. And of course, you know I am talking about the Bible.

The Bible is the most widely-read book. It is the best-selling book of all time. It remains the best-selling book every year. It has influenced literature, history, and lives. I won’t go into all the reasons for trusting the reliability of the Bible, but many skeptics have done so and have discovered the Bible to be the reliable document that Christianity has claimed it to be for 2000 years. There are many good apologetics websites (and people) that can help guide someone who wants to study more in this area. The ministries of Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, and Ravi Zacharias are all great places to start.
picture of the Bible - the Most Important Book ever written
I’m going to assume that you believe that the Bible is God’s Word to humanity to reveal Himself to us. That makes the Bible the Most Important Book you could ever read. The question is, “Are you spending any time reading this Most Important Book?”

I continue talking about the importance of reading the Bible to people around me, including my church family. But for some people, the idea of delving into the Bible seems a bit daunting.

I’m not quite sure why we have this feeling of inadequacy. Certainly, many of us read multiple novels, autobiographies, and history books over the course of a year. Adding up all the pages for most people will probably exceed the number of pages in the Bible. But perhaps you want a bit more hard data on what it takes to read the Most Important Book …

Well, most of us read at about the same rate that it takes to read out loud. So an audio Bible program that tells us how many hours it lasts will give us the amount of time it takes to speak the entire Bible out loud. The ESV audio Bible is just under 75 hours. An NIV one I saw was just over 79 hours. If we divide these out by 365 days, then that is between 12.3 and 13 minutes per day to read through the whole Bible.

Do you have 13 minutes a day this next year to learn what God has to say to you from His Word?
Do you have 13 minutes a day to read from the Most Important Book ever written?

Or if you haven’t read the New Testament through before, then how about making that your plan for this year? If you would give 5.5 minutes a day, you’d read through the entire New Testament in 6 months!

Isn’t that remarkable? That if you’d commit to six minutes a day, you could read through the entire New Testament twice in a year!

If you have never read the New Testament, it is time to do it. Start today!
And if you have already read the complete New Testament but you haven’t yet completed the whole Bible, then make the commitment to give 13 minutes a day to hear directly from God as you read His Inspired Word!

You won’t be sorry that you spent time studying the Most Important Book ever written.

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Categories
Bible

The Minimum Requirements of Being a Christian (Another Examination of the Nine Essentials)

So in my last post, I indicated that there are 9 Essentials of Christianity. These are the minimum requirements one must believe to be a Christian. Here is the list again:

1. Our Bible as Inspired
2. Monotheism (There is only One God)
3. the Trinity
4. the Deity of Christ (Jesus is God)
5. the Virgin Birth (Jesus is Man)
6. the Death of Christ for the payment of sins
7. the Resurrection of Christ
8. Salvation by Grace thru faith (Not by works)
9. Salvation is only thru Jesus

Non-Christian religions deny one or more of these essential doctrines. And because these are Essentials, then if a group or a person holds to all but one, then they are not Christian. Really? Just missing one knocks them out? That seems so exclusive.

True, but let’s think about something else to make the point. This isn’t a perfect analogy, but I think it will make the point about minimum requirements …
      What makes a fish a fish? A fish is defined by a number of essentials: cold-blooded, vertebrates (having an inner skeletal system), aquatic respiration (extracting oxygen from water), that primarily live in water. We can’t reduce it further (and we might even have to add a few more). But if an animal is missing just 1 of these essentials, then that animal is not a fish.

An animal might live in the water, but if it is warm-blooded, it is a mammal such as a dolphin or a whale. An animal might breath through gills, but if it does not have a vertebrate inner skeleton, it will be something such as a snail or a crab. For an animal to be a fish, they must meet some minimum number of essentials – which dolphins, crabs, and turtles do not meet. They live like fish in some ways, but they are not fish.

In the same way, there are people who have some of the beliefs of Christians, but who reject one or more essentials. But to be a Christian requires that you meet some minimum number of essentials. I have listed nine.

a photo of a boy reading the Holy Bible as a reminder that there is a minimum number of essential requirements to be a ChristianSomeone asked me about the necessity of the “Bible as Inspired” as an Essential of Christianity. The reason I provide this one as the first essential doctrine of Christianity is that if we do not believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God, then any “essentials” that we draw from the Bible cannot be held to as absolutely essential, because we wouldn’t be able to know if they are God’s Word or just fabricated by man. Therefore, the first essential is to declare our standard, our guide. A Christian holds to the essential standard that the Scriptures we hold as “The Holy Bible” are God’s revelation of Himself to man, written down by divinely-inspired men. Otherwise, I do not think we can logically have any discussion about the other essentials.

Certainly there are other important doctrines that teach us what to believe and how to live, but these are the ones that are indicated by Scripture to be essential requirements. Non-Christian religions and cults will deny one or more of these essential doctrines. If we can hold these 9 essentials in our minds, then we will be able to test other belief systems to find out if they are Christian or not.

And if you would like to look up some Bible verses that relate to the different essential requirements, here are a few to get you started:
1. Our Bible as Inspired (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:19-21)
2. Monotheism (Gen. 1:1; Deut. 4:35; Isa. 43:10-11)
3. the Trinity (Gen. 1:26; Gal. 4:4-6; Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14)
4. the Deity of Christ (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23; John 1:1-36, 8:58, 10:30-38)
5. the Virgin Birth (Matt. 1:18-25; Phil. 2:5-8; 1 Cor. 15:21-22; Heb 2:16-17)
6. the Death of Christ for the payment of sins (Rom. 5:12-21; Heb. 10:4; Ps. 51:5; Rom. 3:23, 6:23)
7. the Resurrection of Christ (1 Cor. 15:1-19; Rom. 10:9; Matt. 28:1-10)
8. Salvation by Grace thru faith (Eph. 2:1-10; Luke 18:26-27)
9. Salvation is only thru Jesus (John 14:4-6; Acts 4:1-12)

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Categories
Bible

The Essentials of Christianity: Examining Christianity’s Differences from other Religions

a photo of the page from a dictionary for the word "definition" to point out the need for knowing the essentials of ChristianityWhat defines Christianity? What are the essentials? And if we can determine them, what should we do with them? Well, if you make up your mind about any given issue and then you encounter a Biblical truth that is contrary to what you believe, then you have a choice to make: 1) reject the Bible and cling to your belief, or 2) cling to the Bible and change your mind. What do you do when this happens in your life? When this happens, many people determine some way to justify their own beliefs and therefore reject what the Bible says.

It certainly sounds nice to say things like, “If God is love, then a loving God wouldn’t send anyone to hell.” But that isn’t what the Bible says. What should we believe? Our feelings or the actual words in the Bible? Which do you think is more trustworthy?

It sounds more pleasing to the ear to hear something like, “If God is love, then there must be many ways to God, and Christianity is just one of the ways. It can’t be the only way.” But that isn’t what the Bible says. Again, what should we believe? Our feelings which can change with the wind or the Bible that has remained constant?

Jesus said that He was the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one could come to the Father, except through faith and belief in Him. If that is the case, then Christianity is an exclusive religion. It excludes all of those who will not come to God through Jesus. Therefore, the Christian religion clearly states that belief in Jesus is the only way to salvation. And if our religion is the only way because Jesus is the only way, then we need to know what is so unique about Jesus so that we can explain it to others.

So, what makes Christianity unique? What are the essential aspects of Christianity that set it apart from other religions?

My last two posts led up to this post, as they dealt with: “how do you know what is right theology?”
(If you missed them, you can click on them here:
      Doubt: How Do I Know that Christianity is True and Right?
      How do you know that what you are hearing and being taught is truth? )
Jumping off from what we began in those posts, let me now share with you the Christian Essentials.

The original lists that I worked from were found at CARM.org and GotQuestions.org, as well as from a fellow pastor.

Nine Essentials of Christianity
1. The Bible as Inspired
2. Monotheism (There is only One God)
3. the Trinity (God in Three Persons)
4. the Deity of Christ (Jesus is Fully God)
5. the Virgin Birth (Jesus is Fully Man)
6. the Death of Christ for the payment of sins
7. the Resurrection of Christ
8. Salvation by Grace thru faith, and Not by works
9. Salvation is only thru Jesus

I’ll share a bit more about this next time.
And while you wait for the next post, maybe you can look over this list and see if you think there is something else missing from the Essentials? Certainly there are other important truths in the Bible, but is there anything else that is Essential to being a Christian?

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Categories
Bible

How do you know that what you are hearing and being taught is truth?

In my previous post I shared that I had received this question:
How can a person know that what they are hearing and being taught is truth?
I also asked you to consider how you would have responded. But here is the response I sent to them:

My simple answer to your question is this:
Through time in God’s Word studying and meditating on the meaning of the Scriptures.

We can say… “Well many people are reading the Bible and getting different ideas.”
But I would actually disagree with that premise. I believe that a straightforward reading of the scriptures leads a majority of us all to the same place (at least on the major matters).
a photo of the front cover of a Bible, reminding us that truth is within its pages
It would take a lot of linguistic acrobatics to say that the sin of lying, adultery, homosexuality, murder, or theft is okay in God’s eyes. In fact, a straightforward reading of the Word does not leave any room for doubt for any of these issues. It would be difficult to read the New Testament and not be able to say that Jesus loves us and calls us to love others. It would take even more linguistic acrobatics to say that many roads lead to heaven. A straightforward reading of the New Testament does not leave room for any way but one: faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord. Any honest reader of the Bible will come to these same clear ideas. That is why we have can have solidarity among denominations among the essentials of the faith, while still having differences regarding church governance and worship style practices.

But what about those things that have changed in church practice, such as dancing or the use of alcohol? Again, I think that by us not taking a straightforward approach to such items, we have come up with differing views at different times. A straightforward approach to the Word does not condemn dancing. David danced before the Lord as they moved the Ark into Jerusalem. A straightforward approach does not condemn drinking, though it clearly does warn against the sin of drunkenness.

A straightforward approach allowed Martin Luther to read the Word and discover that many of the practices by the Catholic Church were not biblically-based. This same honest approach allows me to read the same Word hundreds of years later and agree with a German on the major issues.

So, How do we know? We have to read it for ourselves and allow God to show us His truth. If we are not willing to spend time reading it ourselves, then we will be in danger of being led astray by those who are doing linguistic and intellectual acrobatics to have the Word say what they want it to say. Most Pastors of solid churches, no matter the denomination, are all saying the same things due to a straightforward reading of the Word. When you hear someone who is not… Beware! They very likely will say things that “tickle” the ears and sound good, because doing so makes more of what we do as sinful humans permissible!

Adrian Rogers said, “We don’t need a new and a modern gospel for a new and a modern age. Friend, if it’s new it’s not true.”

Ha! Exactly right – If it’s new, it’s not true. And if it’s true, then it’s not new! It has been in the Bible for about 2000 years or more!

The Bible hasn’t changed since the moment it was penned. The primary understanding of its doctrines also hasn’t changed. The way some do mental acrobatics to change the meaning to fit their sins… that continues to change with the times!