How Do I Choose Good Books and Grow My Library?
00:00:00.000 | Today's question is about books and it comes from a listener named Roger.
00:00:07.940 | Hello, Pastor John, in your solid, joyous devotional, Ignorance Leads to Ungodliness,
00:00:13.420 | you exhorted us to "read, read, read, but beware of wasting your time on theological
00:00:20.060 | foam and suds, read rich doctrinal books about the one who called you to
00:00:25.400 | his glory and excellence."
00:00:28.100 | So could you please make some recommendations of the books you are referring to?
00:00:31.800 | How do I make the distinction between theological suds and theological substance
00:00:36.740 | as I build my personal library?
00:00:39.380 | Okay, this is really risky because I'm sure I'm going to forget some books that I
00:00:46.880 | myself regard as more important than the ones I'm going to mention here, because
00:00:51.380 | that's just the way my memory works.
00:00:54.520 | But it might be worth the risk anyway to get some people started.
00:00:59.360 | It's like a snowball.
00:01:00.660 | Reading is like a snowball, right?
00:01:02.540 | Going down a hill.
00:01:03.400 | When you read a few really good books, those books generally point you to others
00:01:11.300 | and those others to others, and pretty soon you're well on your way to a life of
00:01:16.860 | consistent personal growth.
00:01:19.480 | But let me stress at the outset, before I mention any books, that I don't think
00:01:25.220 | reading many books is important.
00:01:28.320 | Not for the average person anyway, maybe for the scholar, but not for the average
00:01:32.660 | person.
00:01:33.040 | Reading good books, solid books, non-sudsy books, but substantial books really well
00:01:41.620 | is important.
00:01:43.100 | And if you wonder what I mean by reading really well, one place to start is
00:01:48.340 | Mortimer Adler, that's the author, How to Read a Book.
00:01:52.620 | Not a new book.
00:01:53.660 | I read it for the first time after my college days.
00:01:57.760 | Ah, I wish I'd read that book earlier, but I'm so glad I read it in my early
00:02:02.340 | twenties.
00:02:03.260 | How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler.
00:02:05.700 | If you want to go deep with how you read, you'll be inspired and helped by that
00:02:12.300 | book.
00:02:12.500 | So let's begin by grouping some books, and I'll just name what came to my mind in
00:02:20.300 | some categories, and you can go from there.
00:02:23.420 | Let's start with biography.
00:02:24.900 | I love biography.
00:02:26.620 | I think biography is one of the most efficient ways to learn about history and
00:02:32.940 | theology and psychology, all the while in the form of a good story.
00:02:38.860 | At least the best biographies are amazing in this regard.
00:02:41.900 | So here are a few.
00:02:43.020 | Roland Bainton, Here I Stand, a biography of that epic-making Martin Luther in the
00:02:49.500 | 1500s.
00:02:50.260 | David Danielle, biography of William Tyndale, who translated the Bible from
00:02:56.980 | Greek into English for the first time in the 1500s and was killed for it.
00:03:01.380 | It's an amazing glimpse into the kind of Christianity that burns people alive for
00:03:08.500 | reading the English Bible.
00:03:10.700 | I mean, you've got a taste that we have had periods of history in which Christians
00:03:19.660 | burned Christians for reading the Bible.
00:03:22.660 | Oh, David Danielle, William Tyndale, great story.
00:03:26.700 | Ian Murray, biography of Jonathan Edwards.
00:03:30.020 | Ian Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon.
00:03:34.060 | Murray is an unusually effective storyteller because there is always life and
00:03:40.900 | there's always doctrine, and yet you never feel like he's just using the story to
00:03:46.180 | teach the doctrine, but the doctrine really does create amazing stories.
00:03:52.500 | One more biography.
00:03:54.860 | St. Augustine died 430, probably the most influential Christian in history outside
00:04:02.940 | the Bible, his Confessions.
00:04:05.780 | This is the longest prayer you will ever read.
00:04:09.860 | I thought, "I want to write a book that's 300 pages long that the whole thing is
00:04:17.220 | addressed to God."
00:04:18.060 | Well, taste and see what Augustine does there for the celebration of sovereign
00:04:24.460 | grace in his lecherous early life and what God made of him.
00:04:30.180 | Second category I would give is missions.
00:04:33.020 | I know it's a biography, but I'm putting in the missions to the Golden Shore, the
00:04:39.100 | life of Adoniram Judson, went out from America.
00:04:42.660 | I think the first, at least the first white American, I think there was a black
00:04:47.700 | woman who went to Hawaii before him as a missionary, but first white missionary to
00:04:54.700 | outside America, to Burma, where he almost went insane with grief and loneliness.
00:05:00.220 | What a great story of Adoniram Judson by, oh shoot, did I not, Courtney Anderson.
00:05:06.940 | Yeah, there it is.
00:05:07.660 | John Patton autobiography.
00:05:11.580 | This book is worth it just for the first few pages with his magnificent farewell
00:05:21.300 | scene from his father.
00:05:23.300 | Unforgettable, beautiful scene where a father loves a son, sends him off knowing,
00:05:29.980 | "I may never seen this boy again, and he's doing exactly what I want him to do."
00:05:34.180 | Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, written by his son and daughter-in-law.
00:05:43.620 | And here you get inside the founder of the China Inland Mission, and getting
00:05:48.220 | inside Hudson Taylor is a great place to get.
00:05:51.980 | Elizabeth Elliott's biography of Amy Carmichael called A Chance to Die.
00:05:58.660 | And this is good, not only because Amy Carmichael was a one of a kind woman and
00:06:04.180 | missionary, but because you get a taste of Elizabeth Elliott.
00:06:07.900 | Elliott was, to my mind, just almost in a class by herself in 20th century women
00:06:16.300 | because of the amazing combination of gifts that she brought.
00:06:19.780 | And if the women who are listening would like a longer list of books that are
00:06:27.340 | worthy about women, I would suggest you go to Nancy DeMoss Walgamuth's article
00:06:33.140 | at TGC.
00:06:33.980 | I think it's called On Your Shelf.
00:06:35.460 | There's a whole bunch of books there.
00:06:37.700 | I mean, a whole bunch of people there who they ask what books are on your shelf.
00:06:42.300 | And Nancy DeMoss Walgamuth has listed a lot of biographies of worthy women there.
00:06:50.300 | Here's another category, Reformed Theology or Reformed Vision of Reality.
00:06:56.260 | Go to J.I.
00:06:57.740 | Packer's Knowing God.
00:06:59.300 | Get J.I.
00:07:00.380 | Packer's Quest for Godliness, which is a collection of shorter writings.
00:07:04.260 | You don't have to read it.
00:07:04.940 | You don't have to read it straight through.
00:07:07.340 | In fact, in that book, John Owen's Death of Death and In the Death of God,
00:07:15.700 | Packer's introduction to John Owen's Death of Death is probably one of the most
00:07:23.420 | influential short essays in the contemporary Reformed resurgence,
00:07:28.660 | catapulting many of us from a fledgling love of God's sovereignty into a more
00:07:36.620 | full and robust appreciation for the truth of God's sovereign grace.
00:07:43.340 | Glory Road, edited by Anthony Carter, subtitled The Journeys of Ten African
00:07:53.220 | Americans into Reformed Christianity.
00:07:56.780 | This is valuable not only because the stories themselves are fascinating and
00:08:03.820 | helpful, but because these ten brothers become portals into African American
00:08:12.220 | authors that you may know nothing about and may be worthy of following up on.
00:08:17.980 | Jonathan Edwards' book, Religious Affections, in a class by itself, in my
00:08:24.340 | judgment, for elevating and clarifying the role of the affections or the
00:08:31.740 | emotions in the Christian life.
00:08:33.940 | It was a shocking and glorious read for me, sitting in a rocking chair on many
00:08:40.100 | Sunday evenings in Munich, Germany, years ago.
00:08:43.980 | If you want the best short thing that Jonathan Edwards has ever written, or the
00:08:48.420 | most seminal, I would say, A Divine and Supernatural Light.
00:08:54.300 | It was a sermon.
00:08:55.100 | You can read it in an hour or less, and you can find it online.
00:08:58.500 | A Divine and Supernatural Light immediately communicated to the soul.
00:09:02.300 | If there's one thing that Edwards wrote that I would recommend that's short,
00:09:07.540 | that's where I would go.
00:09:09.380 | The next category would be salvation, and I would point you to John Stott, Basic
00:09:15.020 | Christianity, John Stott's book on the cross, John Murray, Redemption Accomplished
00:09:22.140 | and Applied.
00:09:22.900 | Oh, I remember reading that in my early 30s, that just the title to understand
00:09:30.140 | what it means that there's redemption and an accomplished stage and an applied
00:09:34.180 | stage, what that means in God's sovereign way of working in our lives.
00:09:38.620 | And then I've got a category called Christian Life, and I would give you a
00:09:43.460 | Puritan, Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, as a
00:09:49.940 | sampling of all those Puritan paperbacks that Banner of Truth has done, all of
00:09:53.940 | them worthy of our attention.
00:09:55.860 | Spurgeon has written so much, you can't begin to read it all, but let me point to
00:10:02.260 | two essays in his lectures to his students, and they're probably available
00:10:06.820 | online separately, The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear, How to Handle and Survive
00:10:13.340 | Criticism in the Ministry or Anywhere.
00:10:15.380 | If you want to know how to navigate life when you are a controversial person, you
00:10:22.020 | need to have a blind eye and a deaf ear, and read what Spurgeon means by that.
00:10:25.740 | And the other one is The Minister's Fainting Fits, an old-fashioned title for
00:10:32.100 | how do you deal with depression and discouragement?
00:10:34.820 | I mean, you will be really encouraged by that short piece by Spurgeon called The
00:10:39.740 | Minister's Fainting Fits.
00:10:41.780 | And let me end maybe with a few fiction.
00:10:44.620 | John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, probably has sold more books than any
00:10:50.900 | other book outside the Bible.
00:10:52.060 | There may be one or two.
00:10:52.940 | I don't know how Harry Potter is doing in relation to John Bunyan, but
00:10:58.420 | historically, The Pilgrim's Progress is just off the charts, helpful and
00:11:04.740 | influential.
00:11:05.740 | If you've never read that classic, go there.
00:11:08.220 | C.S. Lewis, the Narnia children's books.
00:11:11.780 | I read them first in my mid-30s, believe it or not.
00:11:16.700 | I didn't grow up in a home that even knew about C.S.
00:11:19.460 | Lewis. I didn't read them as a kid, but oh, how we read them and our children loved
00:11:23.580 | them. And I loved them in my mid-30s.
00:11:26.020 | So the children's books called The Chronicles of Narnia.
00:11:29.020 | And then there's the Space Trilogy for an adult taste where you can see what Lewis
00:11:35.140 | does with science fiction in a contemporary cultural criticism.
00:11:38.500 | And then just one more, Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.
00:11:42.500 | And probably this is in my mind because I read it as a junior in high school.
00:11:49.620 | And I don't remember what impact it had, but I remember being riveted by it.
00:11:55.820 | Just recently, I listened to it again and found it.
00:12:00.420 | Oh, my, this is why Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist, is so compelling because of his
00:12:07.180 | penetrating insights into the human soul for its evil and its good and how those are all
00:12:12.180 | tangled up together.
00:12:14.140 | Let me close with another warning.
00:12:16.580 | Beware of reading for quantity to impress anyone.
00:12:21.820 | Read for your soul.
00:12:26.100 | If we could live a thousand years and experience a thousand relationships in the
00:12:34.220 | thousand times and places and cultures that offer themselves, perhaps we wouldn't need
00:12:40.300 | books in order to become wise.
00:12:42.660 | But our lives are short, and God has been merciful to give many places, many times,
00:12:51.740 | many cultures, many insights distilled into books.
00:12:56.020 | So find the ones that strengthen your faith and make you want to live all out for God.
00:13:01.980 | Amen.
00:13:02.980 | That's quite a library starter, Pastor John.
00:13:05.220 | Wow.
00:13:05.700 | Thanks for joining us today.
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00:13:27.180 | Well, Monday is Labor Day in the States, and we will be back fielding a question
00:13:31.540 | from a listener who wants to know how she can find joy in God each morning.
00:13:35.820 | What does it look like in the ordinary situations of daily life?
00:13:40.460 | That's a question on the table Monday.
00:13:42.100 | When we return, I'm your host, Tween Ranky.
00:13:44.220 | Enjoy the long weekend.
00:13:45.340 | We'll see you then.
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