Pathetic

[MissBrattified]

Originally Posted by ReformedDave

I've read everything Chambers wrote. I know the man's writings fairly well and for devotional stuff it's not bad...Just too esoteric and subjective for my taste.

The vast majority of books on this list are sheer infamil!

I see a lot of excellent reading material on that list! But....what titles would you recommend instead?

[ReformedDave]

Originally Posted by Ronzo

With all due respect, Dave...

Have you ever heard the expression "You can't judge a book by its cover"?


Same is true of a book's title.


Have you read them all? Not the reviews... the actual books.

As I said before I'm familiar with many of the authors. Praxeas hit a home run with his comment.

[ReformedDave]

Originally Posted by MissBrattified

I see a lot of excellent reading material on that list! But....what titles would you recommend instead?

Try reading something by someone who has been dead for at least 200 years. For a start, try "Gospel Worship" by Jeremiah Burroughs. One of the 5 greatest books I've EVER read.

http://www.graceandtruthbooks.com/li...ils.asp?ID=583

[ReformedDave]

by C. S. Lewis- On Reading Old Books

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.
This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or M. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself.
Now this seems to me topsy-turvy. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you join at eleven o'clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why—the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed at some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance. The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity ("mere Christianity" as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.
I myself was first led into reading the Christian classics, almost accidentally, as a result of my English studies. Some, such as Hooker, Herbert, Traherne, Taylor and Bunyan, I read because they are themselves great English writers; others, such as Boethius, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Dante, because they were "influences." George Macdonald I had found for myself at the age of sixteen and never wavered in my allegiance, though I tried for a long time to ignore his Christianity. They are, you will note, a mixed bag, representative of many Churches, climates and ages. And that brings me to yet another reason for reading them. The divisions of Christendom are undeniable and are by some of these writers most fiercely expressed. But if any man is tempted to think—as one might be tempted who read only con- temporaries—that "Christianity" is a word of so many meanings that it means nothing at all, he can learn beyond all doubt, by stepping out of his own century, that this is not so. Measured against the ages "mere Christianity" turns out to be no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive, self-consistent, and inexhaustible. I know it, indeed, to my cost. In the days when I still hated Christianity, I learned to recognise, like some all too familiar smell, that almost unvarying something which met me, now in Puritan Bunyan, now in Anglican Hooker, now in Thomist Dante. It was there (honeyed and floral) in Francois de Sales; it was there (grave and homely) in Spenser and Walton; it was there (grim but manful) in Pascal and Johnson; there again, with a mild, frightening, Paradisial flavour, in Vaughan and Boehme and Traherne. In the urban sobriety of the eighteenth century one was not safe—Law and Butler were two lions in the path. The supposed "Paganism" of the Elizabethans could not keep it out; it lay in wait where a man might have supposed himself safest, in the very centre of The Faerie Queene and the Arcadia. It was, of course, varied; and yet—after all—so unmistakably the same; recognisable, not to be evaded, the odour which is death to us until we allow it to become life:

an air that kills
From yon far country blows.

We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. I know, for I saw it; and well our enemies know it. That unity any of us can find by going out of his own age. It is not enough, but it is more than you had thought till then. Once you are well soaked in it, if you then venture to speak, you will have an amusing experience. You will be thought a Papist when you are actually reproducing Bunyan, a Pantheist when you are quoting Aquinas, and so forth. For you have now got on to the great level viaduct which crosses the ages and which looks so high from the valleys, so low from the mountains, so narrow compared with the swamps, and so broad compared with the sheep-tracks.

[LaVonne]

Originally Posted by Praxeas

I think the issue is is this: What is the quality of that relationship? Not quantity, but quality. Anyone can have a relationship. An abusive husband and his wife have a relationship.

Is our relationship with God ,God centered or us centered? Is it about serving Him or is it about how to get more out of this relationship (Him serving us)

Is our closeness with God done on His terms or is it just us THINKING we are drawing closer to God. What are the motives.

See there is a right way and a wrong way to do anything, including serving God.

Now Im not saying this is true of the book you are reading because I have not read it

What I'm reading right now is (in the current chapter I'm in) dealing with how women will either be controlling or despondant in many areas in their life...we do this instead of trusting God either out of fear or vulnerability (there are many other reasons as well). I'm only on page 58 and I really don't want to take the time to recap everything.

My point is, if a book draws us closer to Jesus...or rather the thoughts do, what's wrong with that? No one person has all the answers and not everything you read in a book is going to be totally right. (Except the Bible) I think some of you guys are making an issue out of nothing.

[ReformedDave]

Originally Posted by CareyM

What I'm reading right now is (in the current chapter I'm in) dealing with how women will either be controlling or despondant in many areas in their life...we do this instead of trusting God either out of fear or vulnerability (there are many other reasons as well). I'm only on page 58 and I really don't want to take the time to recap everything.

My point is, if a book draws us closer to Jesus...or rather the thoughts do, what's wrong with that? No one person has all the answers and not everything you read in a book is going to be totally right. (Except the Bible) I think some of you guys are making an issue out of nothing.

When you've eaten Ruth Chris' steak it's hard to go back to Hamburger Helper!

The vast majority of Christian literature is not worthy of the time it takes to read it. If you ever take the time and effort to read something truly worthwhile you will know what I mean. Until then......

As Praxeas pointed out the vast majority of popular books are a reflection of society and it's humanistic at the core.

[LaVonne]

Originally Posted by ReformedDave

When you've eaten Ruth Chris' steak it's hard to go back to Hamburger Helper!

The vast majority of Christian literature is not worthy of the time it takes to read it. If you ever take the time and effort to read something truly worthwhile you will know what I mean. Until then......

As Praxeas pointed out the vast majority of popular books are a reflection of society and it's humanistic at the core.

I will then ask the question that Miss. Brattified asked...what would you recommend? Please be specific as your initial list is very specific.

[MissBrattified]

Originally Posted by ReformedDave

When you've eaten Ruth Chris' steak it's hard to go back to Hamburger Helper!

The vast majority of Christian literature is not worthy of the time it takes to read it. If you ever take the time and effort to read something truly worthwhile you will know what I mean. Until then......

As Praxeas pointed out the vast majority of popular books are a reflection of society and it's humanistic at the core.

I agree in a rather generic fashion...however, I don't think that material has to be particularly deep to be productive. In fact, some of the simplest literature is often the easiest to for Christians to read and then apply.

Examples would be Pilgrim's Progress, In His Steps, and others. Simple books, with really great application. C.S. Lewis is classic and always recommended, IMO. However, on the list you provided, I see several books (and authors) that I would recommend to others, among them:

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest (classic read, excellent)
Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages (easily understood theories, easy to apply to marriage)
Max Lucado, Facing Your Giants
Joanna Weaver, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World
Emerson Eggerichs, Love and Respect (excellent explanation of the husband/wife relationship and how it needs to be kept in balance)
Philip Yancey, Prayer
Stormie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Wife

I can recommend these because I've read them. I believe any reading that prompts me to live a life more wholly devoted to God, that points me in His direction, and that practically addresses family, marital and life issues from a biblical perspective is worth my time, and as a busy woman, I don't have a lot of time to spare.

Several of the books on that list are quite old, too...they aren't new authors or new titles.

I don't think you can adequately judge a book by its title, its author(necessarily), or even by its synopsis. Unless you've actually read the majority of the books on that list, I don't feel your assessment is valid.

[SDG]

Brother Dave ... there are various genres ... whether they be in books, music, etc ...that can inspire us about God ... some like devotionals ... some like inspirational .... some like personal testimonies ... bluegrass .... rap ...

some of it has elements of humanism ...

but if we follow Paul's advice we can cull a lot from what we encounter.

1 Thessalonians 5:

21
Test everything; retain what is good.
22
Refrain from every kind of evil.

[Praxeas]

Originally Posted by ReformedDave

I'm familiar with many of these authors and believe me it "all 'bout me" and an inch deep and a mile wide. About 5 years ago I started to read books written about God by men of God(and no not just systematic theologies). When you do it gets very lonely as you realize what you've been missing and very few understand where you are coming from.

Php 3:10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;