by | Dec 22, 2023 | Uncategorized
Christians are comfortable with the classics. But reading contemporary literature can be a search for truth too.
In his introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, C. S. Lewis famously makes the case that believers should read “old books” just as often as new ones. “If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said,” he writes. While old books can help us make better sense of our present realities by offering contrasting perspectives of the past, a new book is “still on its trial,” he says, yet to be “tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages.”
Following Lewis, much has been written on how—and why—Christians should read classic literary fiction. Jessica Hooten Wilson (Reading for the Love of God), Leland Ryken (A Christian Guide to the Classics), and Karen Swallow Prior (On Reading Well) advocate for reading the great books, those by the likes of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens, for edification that is spiritual as much as intellectual.
“Reading,” Wilson says, “must be a daily spiritual practice for the Christian”—and not only the reading of Scripture. Unlike our often shallower engagement with screens, reading “asks something” of us, Wilson explains. It “cultivates” our imagination and “increases [our] vision of the world.”
Reading the classics is one way we can thus benefit from books. But is there also an advantage to reading new books? What spiritual value can we gain from the latest Pulitzer or Booker Prize winner or the works of the year’s Nobel laureate?
Coming in too late to a conversation is one way to miss out. But so also is choosing to hear …
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by | Dec 22, 2023 | Uncategorized
Politics had become a false idol, and I needed a deeper source of purpose and meaning.
People laugh when I admit this, but my conversion to Christianity resulted from two powerful forces: science and Donald Trump. But before that journey began, I needed distance from extreme religious trauma. I grew up within an offshoot Mormon cult, living with seven biological siblings in various motor homes, tents, houses, and sheds. Besides time spent in homeschooling, I attended 17 different public schools. When I took my ACT test, we lived in a shed with no running water in the Ozarks.
My father believed he was a Mormon prophet destined to become president. The LDS Church eventually excommunicated him for heresy. As a child, he was raped by a Mormon babysitter and witnessed the sudden death of a best friend. His children inherited the trauma. I have two siblings with schizophrenia, including one brother who tried to rape me and one who accused me of trying to seduce him. I’ve been hospitalized nine times for depression, fibromyalgia, suicidal ideation, and PTSD.
For years, I assumed I’d never return to belief in God or organized religion. My heart remained closed for over a decade because of the evil things I’d seen done in God’s name. To fill the void, I threw myself into work, schooling, dating, friends, and travel as ultimate sources of meaning. I studied business policy at Harvard and worked as an analyst for major Wall Street firms, earning unthinkable sums for a girl from a motor home. I launched a career in political journalism at outlets like Politico, The Hill, and the Washington Times.
Materially, I was well off. But spiritually, I felt poorer than ever. I couldn’t help comparing myself to people who appeared more successful. Over time, I discovered my earthly gifts and accomplishments …
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by | Dec 22, 2023 | Uncategorized
In new book, Jordanian pastor and academic says that if Muslims treat evidence for the Bible and Quran consistently, the gospel eyewitnesses authenticate Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
For 1,400 years, Christians have wrestled with how to defend their faith to Muslims. While Islam accepts Jesus as a prophet, it denies his divinity. And as for his sacrifice for sin on the cross, the Quran denies the crucifixion and by extension the resurrection, claiming instead that God took him directly to heaven.
Christian responses have often been polemical, seeking to invalidate the message and morality of Muhammad. They have also been apologetic, sometimes employing legal arguments that Muslims view as manmade and changeable—thus lacking authority to adjudicate matters of eternal significance.
Baptist pastor Suheil Madanat seeks instead to ground the authenticity of the gospel account within Islam itself. In Evidence for the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ Examined through Islamic Law, the former president of the Jordan Baptist Convention (2016–2022) consults expert sharia compendiums and relevant scholarly works to learn sharia’s criteria for validating relevant evidence—including eyewitness testimony, confession, expert opinion, and circumstantial evidence—and examines the New Testament accounts against it.
Endorsed by scholars at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary in Amman, the book is a new resource for Muslim apologetics and comparative religion. CT interviewed Madanat about liberal source criticism, the divergence in resurrection accounts, and his ultimate hope for Muslims who read his book.
How does traditional Islam look at the Bible?
In principle, they accept both the Old and New Testaments as the word of God, but they believe that they have been largely …
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by | Dec 22, 2023 | Uncategorized
Eight writers daydream about passion projects they will (realistically) never pursue.
Writers, in one sense, can write whatever they please. They can follow their creativity and curiosity wherever it carries them. They can ponder mysteries, investigate unknowns, and build narrative worlds, with possibilities as limitless as an empty page.
Real life, of course, imposes limits. Adult responsibilities pile up—kids to raise, bills to pay, chores to complete. Age, illness, and misfortune slow the mind and the pen.
And that’s before factoring in the dynamics of book publishing, which often funnel writers into familiar grooves rather than unleashing them to chase unpredictable muses. Some authors become experts in one thing, diminishing their bandwidth for writing about other things. Some gain a following among fans of one genre, who expect more of the same. And don’t forget the nontrifling matter of the reading public, who has to possess some appetite for what the world’s wordsmiths might wish to serve up.
Therefore, in the spirit of honoring dreams deferred though not forgotten—and also because we couldn’t help being a little nosy—CT asked eight authors, all with several books to their name, to outline writing projects that, for one reason or another, they’re unlikely to commit to print.
Philip Yancey
The Parkinson’s Perspective: An Uncertain Journey Through My Stages of Unhealth
When I wrote a memoir, Where the Light Fell, I chose an “emerging person” style. As much as possible, I wanted to reflect my perspectives and sensibilities during the time periods I was writing about. Readers encounter me as a timid, fearful kid who related more to dogs than to people. Then a smarty-pants in elementary school vying for the teachers’ attention. Then a do-gooder …
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by | Dec 21, 2023 | Uncategorized
Indian religious leaders on what they admire about Christianity’s scriptures.
India is marked by its “unity in diversity,” a term coined by its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. The nation is home to dozens of languages, cultures, traditions, and religions, and the founding leaders of the nation were careful to accentuate the celebration of this diversity. Though certain exclusivist ideologies that stress uniformity have come to the fore of India’s social life—deriving their validity from being politically empowered—Indians, by and large, remain not only tolerant of but revel in their diversity.
Christianity in India is as old as Christianity itself, or at least that is what is believed, and tradition says that the apostle Thomas arrived in India and established the first churches. For nearly 2,000 years, Indian Christians have had a dialogue of life with the adherents of the diverse faiths found in the Indian subcontinent and have largely had a peaceful coexistence. (This is in spite of the fact that colonial rule in India positioned Christianity as a foreign faith to the country, and Western missionaries actually faced opposition from Western leaders.)
Though Christians today only compose 2.3 percent of India’s total population, they have historically cultivated a reputation of service, largely through their work in education and healthcare. Yet increasingly this ministry has been questioned and viewed with suspicion and cynicism by hardliners who believe it is only an attempt to manipulate India’s most marginalized.
To illustrate the close relationship that Indian Christians have cultivated with Indians of a variety of faiths, CT spoke to Sikh, Bahá’í, Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu leaders, asking them to share Bible verses that inspired …
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