Give Attendance to Reading

By Rick Shrader

     Paul left that instruction to Timothy at the end of his first letter (1 Tim 4:13).  In the second letter (2 Tim 4:13), the apostle instructs Timothy to bring him three things:  a coat; books; and “especially” the parchments.  It is humbling to think that, on death row, Paul would want his books!  It seems difficult enough for us to read when we have all the time and freedom in the world!  In this issue of Aletheia, I hope to give encouragement for us to take up and sustain this important task.

J. Sidlow Baxter wrote, “All of us are fond of reconnoitering among the shelves of evangelical bookstores.”¹  Our problem is doing something with what we find!  But regardless of what it takes, believers must not lose this important heritage.  In responding to our postmodern culture, Gene Veith wrote, “When we read, we cultivate a sustained attention span, an active imagination, a capacity for logical analysis and critical thinking, and a rich inner life.  Each of these qualities, which have proven themselves essential to free people, is under assault in our TV-dominated culture.  Christians, to maintain their Word-centered perspective in an image-driven world, must become readers.”²  Here are a few suggestions that have helped me.

1. Never sacrifice Bible reading for other reading.  Paul instructed Timothy to bring “especially the parchments.”  If he had to leave everything else, he wasn’t to leave the Scriptures!  No other book is living (1 Peter 1:23).  Only the Bible is illumined by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 2:14) in order to draw us closer to God.  Oswald Chambers lamented, “How one wishes that people who read books about the Bible would read the Bible itself.”³  We would all be more discerning readers of the world’s literature if we first were devoted readers of  God’s literature!

2. Read what interests you.  The most common excuse for not reading is lack of interest.  Most of us have to be kick-started by things that motivate us.  If we will start there, the exercise of our minds will broaden our horizons.  “Meddle not with strange writings; but read such things as may rather yield compunction to thy heart, than occupation to thy head.”⁴  Then we might be like Spurgeon, whose brother said of him, “Charles never did anything else but study.  I kept rabbits, chickens, pigs and a horse; he kept to books.”⁵  Lee Strobel recounted, “I found eighty-four-year-old Bruce Metzger on a Saturday afternoon at his usual hangout, the library at Princeton Theological Seminary, where, he says with a smile, ‘I like to dust off the books.’”⁶  When C.S. Lewis was injured and hospitalized during WWI, he wrote, “I had a weak chest ever since childhood and had very early learned to make a minor illness one of the pleasures of life, even in peacetime.  Now, as an alternative to the trenches, a bed and a book were 'very heaven’.”⁷

3. Read at your own speed.  Modern speed-reading techniques may have done as much to harm reading as to help it.  How can one be interested and engrossed in a book by seeing how fast one can turn pages?  Spurgeon said, “A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books he has merely skimmed.  Little learning and much pride come of hasty reading.”⁸  The best way to read faster is to read more.  I have found that reading requires a five speed transmission!  Some theology books I read require a slow gear if not a four-wheel drive!  Other kinds of books may allow me to cruise in over-drive.  Some books are like an over-land adventure requiring various speeds for various parts.  My mother taught High School English for 25 years, including a speed-reading course (which she never insisted I take).  She still taught that comprehension and retention are the only worthy goals of reading.

4. Read a good mixture of books.  If our interest is expanding as it should, we will find ourselves reading a variety of book types as well as a mixture of old and new.  School is so good for us because it forces us to read in areas that we probably would not on our own.  A little planning at the beginning of the year might help us lay out a schedule for a variety of topics.  In our day, reading the new books is an impossible task, much less the centuries of old ones.  Samuel Rogers said, “Every time a new book is published, read an old one.”⁹  Or, as I remember C.S. Lewis writing, for every two new books you read, read one old one.  After all, all the new books are only giving a single modern perspective.  From older ones you may choose from unlimited perspectives.

5. Have a retrieval system that works .  We can’t all be like Thomas Aquinas who said, “I have understood every page I ever read.”¹⁰  I mark books unmercifully and have volumes with the front flap covered in notes and page numbers.  But it was not until I devised my own method of retrieving quotations, illustrations and other facts that I could use any of it to some end.  Some men may have photographic memories, but the rest of us need good methodologies.  William James said that we all have equal retentive powers, we only differ in degrees of interest and methods of learning.¹¹  The earlier we develop interest in reading with a good methodology of cataloging information, the more use we will be to the Lord in this life.

And so . . . .  Let us continue to deal with the tension of a busy world and a desire for quiet time to read.  As William Sangster said of the ministry, “I hate the criticism I shall evoke and the painful chatter of some people.  Obscurity, quiet browsing among books, and the service of simple people is my taste -- but by the will of God, this is my task.  God help me.”¹² 

And God help us to “give attendance to reading.”

NOTES:

1.  J. Sidlow Baxter, His Deeper Work In Us (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977) 81.

2.  Gene Veith, Reading Between The Lines (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990) xiv.

3.  Oswald Chambers, Biblical Ethics (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 1998) 134.

4.  Thomas á Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (Chicago: Moody, 1984) 60.

5.  In a book of short biographies by William Petersen, C. S. Lewis had a Wife; Catherine Marshall had a Husband (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1985) 124.

6.  Lee Strobel, The Case For Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998) 57.

7.  C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (New York: HBJ, 1955) 189.

8.  Quoted by J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership (Chicago:  Moody, 1971) 101.

9.  Quoted by Benjamin Schwarz, ”News & Noteworthy” The Atlantic Monthly, March, 2003, page 95.

10.  G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas (New York: Doubleday, 1956) 21.

11.  Quoted by Richard Clearwaters, On The Upward Road (Maple Grove, MN: Nystrom, nd) 34.

12.  Sanders, Spiritual Leadership, 22.

The Bookshelf

The God Who Hears

By W. Bingham Hunter

1986 InterVarsity Press

Reviewed by Don Shrader

If ever I teach a class on prayer, this would be my textbook.  Of all the books I have read or perused on prayer, this was the most practical.  Hunter forthrightly addresses those issues surrounding prayer that all of us have that inhibits our prayers and our prayer time.  While his answers may not be equivalent to an advanced seminary level exegesis, they are practical yet theologically sound.  So, if you are looking for a basic book on prayer, I recommend this one over something like The Prayer of Jabez.

Breaking The DaVinci Code

By Darrell Bock

Reviewed by Rick Shrader

After reading and reviewing (see our web site) The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown, I have been reading various reviews and many refutations of the book.  As I noted in the review, this book (The DaVinci Code) is riddled with historical errors and a preconceived agenda which makes it ripe for the rewriting of history and also for duping many readers who don’t care.  Darrell Bock has been an outspoken critic of the book and has written reviews in various forms.  This book is detailed enough (and as a New Testament scholar could be even more so) to plainly show the errors without losing the reader in ancient textual criticism.  I recommend Bock’s book even if you haven’t had time to read The DaVinci Code.  The book is well known to the world even if it is not to you.

I Just Wanted More Land

By Gary Gilley

Reviewed by Rick Shrader

I met Gary Gilley recently and became acquainted with his writings.  He also wrote, This Little Church Went To Market: The church in the age of entertainment.  I Just Wanted More Land is a critique of The Prayer Of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson (see my short review on our web site).  Gilley is right in noting that Wilkinson’s book is nothing more than a wealth and prosperity gospel and helps in showing the hermeneutical problems with such an approach to an obscure Old Testament passage.  Gilley notes, for example, that it is shaky business to base one’s whole life (or prayer life) on something that is never mentioned by any other Bible writer or Bible character, good or bad.  This only shows America’s insatiable desire to win life’s lottery, even if it means prostituting our very approach to God in prayer. 

Why Us? 

By Warren Wiersbe

Reviewed by Rick Shrader

The sub-title of this book is:  When bad things happen to God’s people.  This book was written 20 years ago but is still one of the best on the subject, and carries the comfortable and yet scholarly style of its well-known author.  Books on the subject of pain or loss in the believer’s life can range from psychological babble to theological rabble.  This is a much more balanced approach.  The chapter on “Pictures of Pain” is worth the price of the book (which you can usually find in a used book store.)  Here Wiersbe uses biblical analogies to show how God comforts His people:  the furnace, the storm, warfare, the harvest, travail and birth, running the race, the judicial trial.  Also, in an earlier chapter titled “The Really Big Question,” Wiersbe does a great job of dealing with the philosophical question of evil in God’s world. 

Finding God in the Lord of the Rings

By Kurt Bruner & Jim Ware

Reviewed by Rebekah Shrader

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is one of my favorite works of fiction!  J.R.R. Tolkien left us a masterful story that has captured the imagination of yet another generation since its first publication.  However, I must disagree with these authors’ premise that one can “find God” therein.   Even though the authors carefully avoid calling the trilogy a “covert allegory of the Gospel,” I do not think it “can open the heart’s back door when the front door is locked.”

The trilogy does give us wonderful lessons of bravery, friendship, sacrifice, love, the nature of evil, and even the concept of Providence, all done with an incredible amount of imagination. The story does start with a Christian world-view, as opposed to Dualism (Star Wars) or outright Occultism (Harry Potter).  The story does have an “ultimate Creator-Being” who vaguely controls the direction of Middle Earth, and there are some Christian themes (the King returning, ultimate defeat of Evil, etc.).  But we ought not to equate these good morals with some sort of new method of spreading the Gospel.  The good lessons are not specific enough to give us a complete lesson in Christianity, much less to give us the whole Gospel.  I fear that we are going overboard in our pre-evangelism when a work of mere fiction is used in witnessing. Let us remember that Tolkien was a Catholic with a works-based view of salvation. 

Even C.S. Lewis said, "I do not think the resemblance between the Christian and the merely imaginative experience is accidental.  I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.  'Reflect' is the important word.  This lower life of the imagination is not a beginning of, nor a step toward, the higher life of the spirit, merely an image."  (C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy, 16.)

The Biblical Faith Of Baptists, vol III

Fundamental Baptist Congress, 1968

Reviewed by Rick Shrader

This congress was held in my home church, Landmark Baptist Temple, Cincinnati, Ohio, the year I graduated from high school, 1968.  The speakers were Tom Malone, James T. Jeremiah, Ernest Pickering, Noel Smith, Ed Nelson, Bryce Augsburger and others.  This is the third of five volumes that contain all the messages in printed form.  The subjects range from revival, church ordinances, inspiration, tongues speaking, ecumenicalism (by Noel Smith), Communism, soul winning, separation and others.  David L. Cummins spoke/wrote on “Our Baptist Heritage” and said, “I must admit to you that I am shocked and disappointed when I hear today of so-called Baptists who change their church affiliation to other denominations as easily as a man might change a suit of clothes.  The legacy of our forefathers is looked upon far too lightly by 20^th century Baptists.”  Some pretty pointed things were also said!

Genesis 1:1: Still the Last Word

By William Dembski

Reviewed by Debra Conley

Intelligent Design presents the idea as a whole new area of science wherein the researchers base findings on the premise that some form of design was the origin for empirical discoveries.  Author William Dembski clearly states that this is not the same as Creation science (faith based) or theistic evolution, which often includes the idea that God allowed evolution and shows how scientific naturalism is Hinduism recreated (no pun intended). The study of Intelligent Design is taking the evident observations and conclusions (empirical evidences) and discovering what intelligent plan might have put this evidence in place. Dembski lays out the case for how molecular biology does not fit into natural selection. Recent science has cemented a Complexity Theory that, in layman’s terms, says that there is a definite relationship between how complex an organism is compared to the probability of random event. Molecular biologists are just beginning to understand that the molecule is so complex a machine that the probability of assembling itself to this level of complexity through random selection is incredulous.

“Intelligent design properly formulated is a theory of information. Within such a theory, information becomes a reliable indicator of intelligent causation as well as a proper objective for scientific investigation,” states Dembski on page 106. “Within molecular science, the idea perpetuated by natural selection that slight, successive modifications produce the end result cannot be claimed. Molecules are such complex mechanisms that they are irreducible. They exhibit an irreducibly complex system such that to remove any one part renders the entire assembly nonfunctional. Since natural selection can only choose to modify systems that are already working, the assumption has to be made that if a biological system cannot be produced gradually, it must have had to arise as an integrated unit for natural selection to have anything to act on” (p. 148-149). Dembski also pleads for the inclusion of Specification, a method of scientific study whereby a pattern with sufficient complexity warrants a design inference. “Intelligent design is one intelligence determining what another intelligence has done. There is nothing mysterious (or religious) about this” (p. 109).

   The falling away from acceptance of only natural selection is fast and furious. Fewer than 10% of today’s scientists accept natural selection as the only explanation.¹   Why, then, is the theory of natural selection the only one used in texts? Dembski acknowledges what we all know: those are the 10% in academia (p. 114). Among scientists who really want to know the truth, the rise of other possibilities has grown immensely in the last decade.

   Dembski puts the narrow mind of the natural selection scientist into perspective:

“Throughout Scripture the fundamental divide separating humans is between those who can discern God’s action in the world and those who are blind to it. Those who discern God’s action in the world the Scripture (I Corinthians 2:14) calls “spiritual.” Those who cannot discern, the Scripture calls “natural” or “soulish.” For those who cannot discern God’s action in the world, the world is a self-contained, self-sufficient, self-explanatory, self-ordering system. They view themselves as autonomous and the world as independent of God. This severing of the world from God is the essence of idolatry and is, in the end, what keeps us from knowing God” (p. 99). 

1. Ronald Numbers, Darwinism Comes to America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998) pp. 9, 11

William Dembski holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago, is a two time recipient of the National Science Foundation Fellowship, is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute Center, and is currently doing post-doctoral studies at MIT, Princeton, and Northwestern University.