As the school year starts to wind down a bit for me, I’m expecting to find myself with a lot more free time on my hands. Not wanting to squander such a resource as my time (and hoping to build my reason for believing even more, especially at a brief moment in time where I’m having worse doubts than usually following an accidental stumbling of another atheist(?) online account), I was wondering what books you would recommend for a good reading. This can be anything from analysis of the life of Jesus to Evolutionary Creationist views of creation. If you know of some books outside of the realm of non-fiction to recommend, I would appreciate that too.
P.S. Thank you everyone for the support you have provided in the month since I have joined!
One of the specialists in my health system, a wise man about 20 years older than me, told me, “Randy, slow down, the race is long.” Please take your time so as not to burn out.. When I was 20, I went into a bit of a slump as I kept furiously trying to find reasons to answer my skeptical profs, and then even worried about my salvation and whether I had sinned against the Holy Spirit (Randal Rauser’s book, “What’s So Confusing About Grace,” fits right into that groove.
My own favorites are the course by Dr Lamoureux at Coursera(free) @DOL , some of his own books (I own several), the Counterpoints series on biblical struggles (historical Adam, etc), Pete Enns’ “Evolution of Adam,” Rachel Held Evans’ : “Faith Unraveled,” which is really compassionate, “Benefit of the Doubt”and “Cross Vision” by Greg Boyd, “Justice” and “The Fisherman’s Lady” by George Macdonald (he was a huge influence on Lewis, and his books just demonstrate goodness I can’t find almost anywhere else)–and there are a ton more that I am still hoping to re read and learn from. I’m sure you can teach me some, too.
Hey, @BuffaloMax17!
I think N.T. Wright’s article on the scripture and the authority of God is worth spending some real time on. Really work it over and consider how his proposal is similar and different from what you are used to.
What Wright is proposing is more flexible that what my church and probably your church are. And I think reflects a better understanding of what Scripture really is and does. I find Wright’s view much more able to sustain and support faith.
You could make this single article a summer project and greatly benefit from it.
If you’re ever in the Indianapolis area, I recommend their amazing fossil collection at their state museum. It’s like 5 hours from me and worth the drive. Some other similar exhibit would probably be just as good, maybe better, but that’s hard for me to imagine. And I’m not from Indiana.
I’ll throw in my current read, Esau McCulley’s Reading While Black. It has nothing to do with creation or science. It has to do with the Black ecclesial interpretive tradition and how biblical hermeneutics are formed through human cultural experiences. McCaulley’s book is a precious tool to help you (and me) see better how huge the idea of Christianity and the church are, and how much bigger the scope of God’s project is than our little areas of focus.
Finally, N. T. Wright’s book Surprised by Hope. Again, not about science at all. It’s about what is meant by the term “The Kingdom of God” and what that means for Christians right now, today, as in on this very date. I add this one in, because, really, what is the point of faith, or struggling for it, if it is meaningless except for some unprovable future state. That view is way too small. According to Wright, we have work to do, and it isn’t worrying about science.
It’s good to look up from our fox holes now and then.
We’ve got a job to do.
To tag onto Randy’s and Kendel’s already excellent suggestions above, I also want to affirm your itch to maybe look into some fiction. I don’t read enough of it myself - and when I do I almost always feel richly rewarded in certain ways that are hard for non-fiction to rival. There is a lot of Truth and reflection on the human condition to be had through good fiction work. If you’re ever in the mood for just some relaxing (and somewhat pious, though also irreverent and edgy) humor, try any of Philip Gulley’s work. He’s just fun to read - and as a Quaker pastor he makes good fun of all our churchy hangups and prudery, but from the inside. And he’ll be considered a heretic for it by all the same, but he’s not anti-religious, not by a long shot. His “Harmony” series is a more churchy version of Keillor’s “Lake Wobegon”. Just fun reading - if a bit preachy at times. Or read any of his devotional books like “Front Porch Tales” for some excellent and humorous devotional reading that is preachy in quite healthy ways and directions (in my opinion).
Or try some sci-fi like the classic “Canticle for Leibowitz” by Paul Miller, which gives an interesting perspective on evolutionary views, or the more recent sci-fi like “The Sparrow” (Mary Doria Russell) for a gripping tale of the Vatican spear-heading a “first contact” mission to a nearby star. (You can find extended commentary on that book in a past thread devoted to it in this very forum!)
Sometimes I find that the best antidote to all the sciency culture wars is to approach them very indirectly (or even seemingly not at all) by just immersing yourself in the sorts of characters and authors that have a healthy sense of self-reflection about themselves and about humanity more widely. After immersing myself in their points of view, I suddenly find that any of my unhealthy obsessions with unanswered science/religious questions just become less important - as in they just recede and get put in their proper place rather than getting “answered” or “dismissed”.
And I definitely ditto onto Randy’s mention of George MacDonald - his fiction, while preachy in the extreme, is one of those things that powerfully brings one to the feet of Christ, and in doing so, has a way of making all our other churchy tempests just get stilled in the presence of the Spirit. One definitely can see how figures such as Lewis and many others were shaped by that influence.
I am currently reading Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis. It does not discuss evolution as such, but gives a framework of Genesis that is enlightening. Robinson’s earlier books in the Gilead series are what I consider to be some the greatest Christian fiction around, even though written as secular books. She is getting on in years, but her interview on the Biologos podcast was interesting recently.