10 Books That Have Shaped My Thinking

I was challenged this last fall by a cherished mentor of mine on Facebook to list ten books that have had an exceptional impact on me and my thinking. I posted the list on Facebook, but I figured I should share it here as well. The idea here is identifying ten books that have really impacted me and brought me to where I am today intellectually. Being the intense book nut that I am, I jumped at the chance to go through my bookshelf and think about what I've been reading over the last few years.

These ten books are in no particular order, and are subject to change as soon as I finish future books. Here we go.

1. "Truman" by David McCullough: I'm nuts for presidential biographies, and this is the one that cemented Harry Truman as my favorite president. McCullough really highlights the Midwest attitude and personality of Truman and how that shaped his exceptionally virtuous and public life, including the many difficult decisions he had to make in office. Truman is undoubtedly the most "regular guy" and relatable president we had in the 20th century, and it shines forth in this great book. A must read for Presidential history buffs like myself.

2. "The Dark Side" by Jane Mayer: I read this book right after I started the
political science program at OCU and began becoming more politically aware. It is a detailed and engrossing account of the Bush Administration's war on terror, and specifically how they decided to pursue and treat those they identified as terrorists. The passages describing torture and those within the administration who pushed back against the immoral actions are particularly harrowing. This book really is the one that woke me up to the real-world consequences and nature of politics.

3. "Jesus for President" by Shane Claiborne: This book totally blew my mind. I
read it about three years, as I slowly began my journey into a more theologically-tinged political awareness. Shane asks the really hard questions, and makes really tough points about patriotism, American exceptionalism and Christianity, points that would never be tolerated from a political candidate, or a preacher in many churches, but which are nevertheless true. In the end, the book explores how to really, really follow Jesus while being politically aware and involved.

4. "Saving Jesus from the Church" by Dr. Robin Rex Meyers: another book that blew my mind as I matured theologically. The way I approach my relationship to Jesus and what I expect the church to be is deeply indebted to this book. I learned a lot, and also developed a lot of questions that caused me dig even deeper, as a result of reading this book.

5. "Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky" by Noam Chomsky:  Along with "The Dark Side", this is a book that really woke me up to the real world consequences and effects of American foreign policy. Chomsky still has, and always will have, a strong effect on my thinking. Passages of this book were required reading for a Political Philosophy course I took at OCU.

6. "Love Wins" by Rob Bell: My wife Arianna read this book aloud to me as we drove to Las Vegas last summer. I was at a point in my faith where I was really struggling with the idea of a loving, merciful God who would send people to Hell to suffer eternally. Rob lays out a great argument in this book about why this idea of a "punishing hell" is in no way Biblical and how we should view our faith in a way that keeps us accountable to God without eternal punishment. For further reading on this subject, Benjamin L. Corey has been much help on his blog.

7. "Rubicon" by Tom Holland: I'm slightly obsessed with Roman history, and especially the era around Marius, Sulla, Caesar, Pompey, and Augustus. I love learning about the fall of the Republic, the rise of the Empire and most of all, the fascinating personalities who powered the biggest political shake-up in classical history. Tom's book is a great place to start that learning. Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series (which I'm currently re-reading) is another great source.

8. "A Black Theology of Liberation" by Dr. James Cone: I actually just finished this book recently. If there is any one book that has both challenged me and infuriated me and educated me all at the same time, this is the one. (Arianna can confirm that series of reactions.) I certainly don't agree with everything Dr. Cone says, but I definitely sympathize with his arguments, and I found my own thinking continually challenged and changed as a result of reading this, especially in light of current events around race and authority in the United States. I love anything Liberation Theology, and along with Gustavo Gutierrez and Oscar Romero and Howard Thurman, James Cone will always been prominently placed on my bookshelf as a minister.

9. "Social Principles of the United Methodist Church" No, I'm serious. Don't laugh, this counts as a book. At a time when I was feeling that there was no church that addressed the issues important to me in a way that embodied justice and mercy, the Social Principles knocked me onto a collision course with ministry. I was so relieved to find a church that not only held these things important, but also took the time every four years to think about and discuss and debate and pray and write them down. As long as we have our Social Principles, and we work hard to live them, I will always be a United Methodist.

10. "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien: The only piece of fiction on my list. I first read it in the 5th grade. Our library at Benton Grade School had a large, hard-bound copy with big, painted illustrations by Michael Hague that I must have checked out most of the year and read over and over. From hence came my love of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and all the other fantasy books I reread over and over and over again.






That's my list. Share yours below!

Romans 4-6: God the Cosmic Actor #30daysofPaul

I used to think of God as a fairly passive presence in the universe.

I had a "clockmaker", slightly

Deist view of God. God cranked this whole thing into motion, and then sat back and observed, not interfering in the world.

I still have some leanings this way.

I'm definitely not a believer in miracles, or in God playing a role in personal or natural disasters and outcomes. I think the universe is an orderly, rational place that God did in fact set into motion, but that he allows to run by the laws of science for our sake, that we might understand and navigate the way things work.

But I've evolved in my thinking. I have a more open mind towards how God interacts with creation. I wrote a blog post on the subject around this time last year, saying:

I was created and born with certain gifts and abilities. As I grow and learn and realize who I am, I awaken to those gifts and abilities and recognize my proper place in the world. And that has lead me to ministry.
To say that God played no active part in this guidance is to deny the existence of God.
God may not have reached into people's bank account and moved money. He didn't whisper in my ear saying "You should go into ministry." But God's mark is all over my journey. And that is the true essence of a "Great Clockmaker." Even in things that seems completely disassociated from any mention of God, God's touch is still present in the very existence of those things.

I think that these three chapters from Paul's letter to the Romans really affirm that. Paul is still making an argument for justification by faith and why it is necessary that God provided salvation in that way. He ties it back to Jewish tradition by expounding on Abraham and Adam and how God acted in their stories.

And that's really the key here: God was, and is, and always will be, acting.

Justification by faith, the idea that we are reconciled to God by God's act of grace, is the ultimate proof of God's agency in the universe.

As Paul explains, Abraham didn't receive God's blessing because of his preexisting righteousness and good deeds; he was blessed because of his faith in God. He trusted that God would act, that God would make good on God's promise to give him a son in his old age. Paul uses Abraham as the quintessential example of faith.

Paul moves on to Adam, and compares him to Jesus, as the two men standing athwart history in a sense, one succumbing to death, the other overcoming it. Again, God acts through the example of Jesus, affirming that those who have faith even to point of suffering and death are not doomed, a la Adam, but instead are resurrected through reconciliation.

God is not a passive deity, sitting high above us, watching us scurry about. But neither is God reaching a cosmic finger into our world, pushing cars out of the way or misdirecting bullets. God has acted in the most perfect and necessary way, and has in consequence left us free to act and make choices on our own. Paul summarizes his thought process in the beautiful opening to chapter 5:

"Therefore, 

since we are justified by faith, 

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 

through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; 

and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.  

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, 

knowing that suffering produces endurance,  

  and endurance produces character, 

    and character produces hope, 

      and hope does not disappoint us, 

because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."

Again, the action of God, spurring us onto a life of lived enveloped in love.

The wondrous thing about God is, God doesn't act to exert power.

God doesn't need to control.

God doesn't need to show us who's boss.

God acts from love, not power.

God acts with mercy, not condemnation.

Grace showers grace freely, 

  wildly, 

    wastefully, 

      irrationally, 

        inexplicably, 

on every 

single 

person.

None of this makes sense. Gods are supposed to be the embodiment of power, of control. Gods are like absolute monarchs, acting in ways that showcase their power.

Our God is not that kind of God.

Our God is a God standing in opposition to the ideas of deity throughout history. 

Our God is a God who exists in contradictions. 

A God who chooses to identify with the weak and the small and the oppressed. 

Our God is a God who picks a 100-year old man and his wife to father the chosen people. 

Who picks a stutterer to lead the people out of captivity. 

Who picks the youngest son to be the greatest king. 

Who chooses an single teenage mother to bear the ultimate expression of God amongst humanity.

Our God makes no sense, at least as far as the world is concerned. And that's the best kind of God.

It's like Rob Bell says in Velvet Elvis:

"The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. We are dealing with somebody we made up. And if we made him up, then we are in control. And so in passage after passage, we find God reminding people that he is beyond and bigger and more."

Paul wants us to understand that this is all about God, not us. God is reconciling us, and we are acting in response to God. God is in charge, even if God doesn't feel the need to flaunt it.

And we should emulate the example of Godliness we see in Jesus, in order to bring the Kingdom here, every day, in a little way.

Next: Romans 7-9

For a PDF of the 30 Days of Paul reading plan, click here.

For more info on 30 Days of Paul, click here for my intro, or here for Cassandra Farrin's explanation.

Click Here for Cassandra Farrin's take on today's reading.

1 Corinthians 11-12: This Table is Open to All #30daysofPaul

Rob Bell and your humble blogger

I had the incredible opportunity to attend Rob Bell's "Everything is Spiritual" show when it was here in Tulsa last week. I've been a Rob Bell for a while, ever since I read his paradigm-shifting book "Love Wins," and his stage show is absolutely mind-blowing. If you get a chance, go. Cancel everything and go and take a notepad and just listen to him talk. It's really mind-blowing.

The stuff he talked about fits right in with what we are experiencing here in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. Today's chapters move us back into Paul's overarching theme in this letter of Christian unity.

In the talk, Rob described the fundamental progress of the universe towards greater complexity, depth and unity. He spoke of how evolutionary processes have caused all living things, including humans, to defy all expectations by becoming more complex by coming together to create something bigger. Particles combine to become atoms, atoms combine to become molecules, molecules combine to become cells, cells combine to become planets and rocks and plants and animals and us.

He asked, near the end, "what is the thing we are being invited to create together?" What is that thing in the future that humans are to come together and make, that thing that may be inconceivable and unimaginable to us now, but is nevertheless real and desirable and damn near inevitable?

One of the most moving statements he made was about racism and the way it works against the progress of nature. "Racism," he said, "defies the essential unity of the universe." Things like racism and bigotry and hate tear us apart, instead of building community. 13.8 billion years of history show an undeniable story of progress, one that some humans work so hard to push back against.

We Christians have a long, rich history of unity, interwoven with a tendency to build walls and tear apart communities and segregate ourselves. Paul, in chapters 11 and 12, ties the essential unity of Christianity, how it is like a body made up of many parts working towards a common goal, to the practice of communion, that brings all Christians together around one table, equally valued and equally important.

Communion is at the center of the Christian tradition. The earliest Christian believers gathered not for worship services and praise bands and prayers of the people, but to share meals, to be a community gathered around the most universal of human needs, the need to be nourished and fed. Communion is at  it's best when all are welcome, when it reflects the example of the Jesus who ate with everyone - tax collectors, prostitutes, thieves, everyone.

Too many denominations and Christians place conditions around the common table. They have requirements to join in communion, to be a part of the community gathering together. I've long rejected these traditions and found my home in the denominations that practice an open, inclusive table. My church homes- the United Methodist Church and the Disciples of Christ-place no restrictions to who can join our communion tradition. This creates a beautiful practice whenever communion is had, as all identifiers and categories are left behind like one's coat and hat as all are given the bread and the cup. No matter the struggles and sins and suffering in one's life, everyone is welcomed in and loved in this most basic of Christian traditions.

Through the Lord's Table, we are able to serve one another every time we are together, making a habit of the art of service. Rob described serving as "when you intentionally decide to align yourself beyond yourself." What a beautiful way of reminding ourselves why we live with ultimate regard for the Other. he also said, "suffering is not an intellectual exercise," meaning that suffering is one of the most intense of human experiences and only by identifying and unifying ourselves with others can we join in their suffering, understand, and then work to liberate them from it.

The last Rob Bell quote I want to share: "Line yourself up with the fundamental direction of the universe." He repeated this mantra over and over. The universe for 13.8 billion years has been moving inevitably towards complexity, depth, and unity. In a word, it has been making constant progress. As Christians, may we always line our selves up with that progress, by practicing the unity of One Church, One Body, One faith.

Next: 1 Corinthians 13-14

For a PDF of the 30 Days of Paul reading plan, click here.

For more info on 30 Days of Paul, click here for my intro, or here for Cassandra Farrin's explanation.

Click Here for Cassandra Farrin's take on today's reading.