The Joy of Discovering a New Author

First, I have to add to John’s post that the Bolton Conference was a tremendous spiritual blessing to me this year.  It was definitely used of God to grow me in grace and knowledge.  Perhaps I’ll post some more about it some other time.

Next, I must express my child-like excitement and delight in all the brand, new books that John and I have bought or received in the last week.  It’s been like Christmas!  Actually it’s been better than Christmas, because at Christmas I inevitably get something I could care less about, like a sweater that doesn’t fit or a kitchen appliance I will never use.  But books!  Ahh!   Okay, so I admit we indulged a little at the conference ,though not quite as much as my dear friend, Christine, who informed me she might just need a part time job to cover her stash!    But along with the books we purchased at Bolton, John also received a gift from a friend in our care-group as a thank you.  The book was The Reason for God by Timothy Keller.  Well,I didn’t know where to begin with all our new books.  It was like letting Andrew loose in a candy store.   But, since John just so happened to be rather busy with all the other books he had going and I had no idea which of my new ones to start, I thought I’d read a book of his before he got to it.  So I picked up Keller’s, A Reason for God. What a wonderful surprise!  I am not always enthusiastic about modern authors, but in Keller I think I may have found a kindred spirit.  Why?  Well, first of all, he is a student of C.S. Lewis, as am I, and Lewis’s spirit hovers on practically every page.  Literally, for Keller quotes Lewis frequently and extensively.   Second of all,  Keller, like Lewis, has learned the art of engaging the mind, while still touching the heart.  This is very important to me.  When I read a book in which my whole purpose is that God may use it as a means of growth in my life, I want not only think deep thoughts, but to cry, even sometimes weep for wonder and joy.  I want my heart to ache with love and longing, and at the same time to know and understand why my heart aches and Who it aches for.    Reading Scripture, preaching – like the good preaching I am privileged to hear in my own church or that I heard at the Bolton conference, reading poetry or imaginative literature does this for me, but I must confess that depending on the author, many modern theology/Christian growth books do not.  Listening to preaching is very different than the visual experience of reading, so I attribute this to the fact that I must like books that read like someone is talking,  as if I can hear in my mind, the passion and expression in the very words.  Anyways, Keller does this in my opinion quite well, and as any bibliophile knows, one has to share the discovery of a new author.  So let me close with two quotes I read last night and perhaps you’ll get a glimpse of why I am enjoying my discovery.

“There may be no greater inner agony than the loss of a relationship we desperately want.  If a mild acquaintance turns on you, condemns and criticizes you, and says she never wants to see you again, it is painful.  If someone you’re dating does the same thing, it is qualitatively more painful.  But if your spouse does this to you, or if one of your parents does this to you when you’re still a child, the psychological damage is infinitely worse.  We cannot fathom, however, what it would be like to lose not just a spousal or parental love that has lasted several years, but the infinite love of the Father that Jesus had from all eternity.  Jesus’s sufferings would have been eternally unbearable.  Christian theology has always recognized that Jesus bore, as the substitute on our place, the endless exclusion from God that the human race has merited.”   From chapter two – How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?

” For a love relationship to be healthy there must be a mutual loss of independence.  It can’t be just one way.  Both sides must say to the other, ‘I will adjust to you.  I will change for you.  I’ll serve you even though it means a sacrifice for me.’  If only one party does all the sacrificing and giving, and the other does all the ordering and taking, the relationship will be exploitative and will oppresss and distort the lives of both people.  At first sight then, a relationship with God seems inherently dehumanizing.  Surely it will have to be ‘one way,’  God’s way…I must adjust to God, there is no way God could adjust to and serve me…it is not true in Christianity.  In the most radical way, God has adjusted to us – in his incarnation and atonement.  In Jesus Christ, he became a limited human being, vulnerable to suffering and death.  On the cross, he submitted to our condition -as sinners – and died in our place to forgive us.  In the most profound way, God has said to us in Christ, ‘I will adjust to you.  I will change for you.”  From Chapter 3, Christianity is a Straitjacket