Peter Beck[/caption]
While the statistics regarding Bible reading among evangelicals are disappointing, it’s likely that even fewer of us are reading anything substantive at all. According to a recent study, 46 percent of Americans haven’t read or attempted to read a single book in the last year. It seems that we have collectively forgotten what I remind my students of often: Books are our friends.
So, with the New Year and the promise of resolutions — noble and, as yet, unbroken — I encourage you to once more “take and read.” Read the Good Book, and read good books.
Where do you begin? Thousands of titles arrive in bookstores every year to join the millions already available. Some are good. Some not so much. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to start with the classics. Not the “Odyssey” or “Hamlet,” but the Christian classics, books whose messages have changed lives and, in some cases, the course of human history.
If you’re still not sure where to begin, I would like to suggest a few must-reads for 2017:
“Confessions,” by Augustine
If you can read only one new book this year, read this very old one. Outside of Scripture, arguably no figure looms as large in Christian history as Augustine. Protestants and Catholics alike lay claim to his legacy. And yet so few modern Christians seem to have read this ancient classic.
Worldview: Books That Are Our Friends (or Should Be)
“Tolle lege. Tolle lege.”
The sing-song words echoed in his ears: “Take and read. Take and read.” And read, he did. Augustine picked up his copy of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans and read. What he read changed what he believed.
The Bible has a way of doing that: changing lives. As Baptists, we know that intuitively. It’s ingrained in our minds from the cradle roll to the eulogy. We are, after all, a “people of the book.”
[caption id="attachment_36928" align="alignleft" width="165"] Peter Beck[/caption]
While the statistics regarding Bible reading among evangelicals are disappointing, it’s likely that even fewer of us are reading anything substantive at all. According to a recent study, 46 percent of Americans haven’t read or attempted to read a single book in the last year. It seems that we have collectively forgotten what I remind my students of often: Books are our friends.
So, with the New Year and the promise of resolutions — noble and, as yet, unbroken — I encourage you to once more “take and read.” Read the Good Book, and read good books.
Where do you begin? Thousands of titles arrive in bookstores every year to join the millions already available. Some are good. Some not so much. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to start with the classics. Not the “Odyssey” or “Hamlet,” but the Christian classics, books whose messages have changed lives and, in some cases, the course of human history.
If you’re still not sure where to begin, I would like to suggest a few must-reads for 2017:
“Confessions,” by Augustine
If you can read only one new book this year, read this very old one. Outside of Scripture, arguably no figure looms as large in Christian history as Augustine. Protestants and Catholics alike lay claim to his legacy. And yet so few modern Christians seem to have read this ancient classic.
Peter Beck[/caption]
While the statistics regarding Bible reading among evangelicals are disappointing, it’s likely that even fewer of us are reading anything substantive at all. According to a recent study, 46 percent of Americans haven’t read or attempted to read a single book in the last year. It seems that we have collectively forgotten what I remind my students of often: Books are our friends.
So, with the New Year and the promise of resolutions — noble and, as yet, unbroken — I encourage you to once more “take and read.” Read the Good Book, and read good books.
Where do you begin? Thousands of titles arrive in bookstores every year to join the millions already available. Some are good. Some not so much. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to start with the classics. Not the “Odyssey” or “Hamlet,” but the Christian classics, books whose messages have changed lives and, in some cases, the course of human history.
If you’re still not sure where to begin, I would like to suggest a few must-reads for 2017:
“Confessions,” by Augustine
If you can read only one new book this year, read this very old one. Outside of Scripture, arguably no figure looms as large in Christian history as Augustine. Protestants and Catholics alike lay claim to his legacy. And yet so few modern Christians seem to have read this ancient classic.