The 7 best books I read before I turned 25

Krish Kandiah has mandated 11 books every Christian should read before they turn 25, and Andy Goodliff responded with an alternative list. I will give you my own list. How can I resist?

Instead of legislating for the rest of Christendom though, I'll just tell you the most formative books I ever read as a handsome and hopeful youngster. I assume we're only interested here in theological-type reading, so I won't mention other formative literary experiences like reading Dr Seuss and Phantom comics and sci-fi novels and the articles in Playboy magazine.

1. The Psalms. Technically I didn't read this book but I sang it a lot in the church where I grew up, even before I learned to read. It was the best thing about charismatic/Pentecostal singing back in the 70s and 80s: most of the songs were direct quotations from the Psalms (often from the KJV). I never read the Psalms for the first time: even my first reading was already a re-reading of the things I'd heard and sung in church.

2. The Book of Proverbs. I went to a religious primary school where I was subjected to a regime of edifying and disciplinary verses from this book. I often read the book of Proverbs too, and hated it. Then, later in life, I loved it. (But by then it was too late: the book is addressed to the young, i.e. to those who cannot hear it.)

3. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress. We had a dramatised musical version of this called Enchanted Journey and I used to listen to it over and over on the old record player at home. My father taught me how to use the turntable and how to turn the record, which is how I got to nourish my young spirit on 1980s Bob Dylan and The Pilgrim's Progress. Later in primary school, the drama group did a production of Pilgrim's Progress. I was too young to get a part but I went to all the rehearsals and, I suppose out of sympathy, they let me be the Sound Effects Technician. What I still love about the book is the plain speech, the realistic dialogue, the journey narrative, and the lifelike novelistic characters. I think it was C. S. Lewis who said that other writers try to create people and end up with types, while Bunyan tried to create types and ended up with real people. In my opinion it is one of the most perfect books ever written in English; there's not a single thing you could change without diminishing it.

4. George Herbert, The Temple. I read and learned many of these poems during my early high school days. My mother was writing a PhD thesis on The Temple and she was always sharing some little morsel from Mr Herbert. I loved the poems because my mother loved them, and because of the plain style. Later I loved them because I discovered that they were true. The Temple is still the most precise and honest account I've ever come across about what the Christian life is really like (not what it's meant to be like: the problem with nearly all other books on this topic).

5. John Milton, Paradise Lost. Another 17th-century writer: you can see that it was a good century for me. After I finished high school I was given a Penguin paperback of Paradise Lost with a Blake illustration on the cover. I was told solemnly, "It's like an acid trip." I had been on some of those but they always left me feeling burnt out and disillusioned with the human race. Milton, who was himself burnt out and disillusioned, enlarged my vision of the human spirit and of the way history bears within itself the secret of divine providence. I liked the book so much I later wrote a PhD thesis about it. It's not my favourite book anymore, not like it used to be. The rhetoric is too high and holy. Really, Paradise Lost was written for angels, not mortals. Perhaps in the next world it will have the readers it deserves. As for me, I have gravitated back towards the plainer speech of Herbert and Bunyan, as well as other plain-style masters like Shakespeare and Hemingway and Julian of Norwich.

6. Augustine, Confessions. A few years after reading Milton for the first time, I read Augustine's Confessions. It produced a sudden change in me, more than than anything else I have ever read. Most books take years or decades to do their magic work upon the soul, but this one seemed to burn right through me and to change my view of everything. I left the Pentecostal church where I had grown up. I might easily have become Roman Catholic if anybody had suggested it to me at the time, of if it had occurred to me that Augustine was a Catholic. I thought of becoming a monk. I started reading theology, devouring thick books as if my life depended on it. I decided to go to university. I didn't really understand it at the time, but I had begun to dwell in the life of the mind (still today the only place I really feel at home).

7. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. This was one of the things I read after Augustine had made me hungry for books and learning. I had never even heard of Calvin, he came to me innocent and free of his own reputation. I chose the Institutes for one reason only: it was the biggest book on the shelf at the Christian bookstore, and I wanted as much knowledge as I could get my hands on. (It was the same thing that would later lead me to read Karl Barth, again an author whose name I had never heard.) I suppose because of all the 17th-century Protestant books I'd read, I found Calvin easy to understand. I could see where he was coming from. What impressed me most about the Institutes was its atmosphere. Calvin seemed to be forever poised in a kind of nervous tension between love and awe. With one hand he is grasped by majesty, with the other he is held by mercy. Calvin meant a lot to me: he was a help to me. He seemed to have an intuition for where the real problems lie. He had a knack for asking my questions before I had been able to put them into words myself. And although he didn't always claim to know the answers, he had a way of searching out the scriptures, opening up lines of inquiry, putting things into perspective and seeing everything in relation to the loving majesty of God.

A guide dog at holy communion

On the mountain where my parents live, deep in the rainforest, there is an unassuming red-brick chapel where the people go to pray. I went there one Sunday morning, following the winding way through the forest, past the winery and the empty cafés and the smoking chimneys where the villagers still slept nestled among the trees. I parked the car across the street near the old log sign. The organ was playing. A plump of ducks crossed the road in front of me, preening themselves and gossiping amiably like the clucking women who waddled their way into the church. High in the treetops the whipbirds sung their morning antiphons. I stepped over a puddle and went inside.

“The Lord be with you.” The service was led by a white-haired skeleton, profoundly old and happy, a long-retired priest who laboured over the prayerbook, scrupulously working at each syllable and then looking up and beaming deafly at the congregation whenever we replied. “And also with you!”

When we all came forward for Holy Communion I noticed a man I had not seen before. He stepped out from the pew right at the back. He was wearing sunglasses, which would have been strange enough in church, and he had with him a dog, a labrador, who led the man into the line and brought him step by step towards the altar. When they reached the front, the dog sat down and faced the altar while the priest put bread into the man’s hand and raised the cup for him to drink. As soon as the cup withdrew, the faithful dog was on his feet again, gravely leading his master back to the pew. He was a good dog, anyone could see that. He behaved with all the ceremony and propriety that you could ask of someone who has to go to church wearing a collar. He was not himself a believer, not exactly, but he respected the thing for what it was and loved it because he knew, by an unerring instinct, that his master loved it.

After church I met the blind man outside and asked about the dog. He loved the dog and told me how they went to church together every week. For ten years the dog had led him and they never missed a Sunday.

I told him how impressed I was by the dog’s behaviour at Holy Communion. “I have a labrador,” I said, “and he would never have the discretion to wait facing the altar while I took the bread. He would sit there, sure enough, but he would turn his face towards me and his eyes would silently implore me for a crumb of consecrated bread, and then, when I refused, his hopeful eyes would brim with mourning.”

“They are good dogs,” the man agreed. “Their respect for food is very deep. That is why he understands the eucharist. He grasps it not as an idea but in its real depths. It is food. He knows that.”

“Ten years,” I said. “That is five hundred times he has gone with you to the altar.”

“Sometimes,” the blind man said, “I have felt his hunger. There is a holiness in all God’s creatures. The bread is offered in thanksgiving for all that lives.”

I said, “Perhaps in heaven there will be a eucharist for him.”

But the man said, “No, I don’t believe it. There will be no eucharist on the other side, no church or priest, no bread or wine. We have these things now because we need them. But on that day, need will be no more. There will be no sun because the Lamb will be our light. No eucharist, because everything will be thanksgiving.”

Morning found its way belatedly through the trees and we stood there transfigured in the sunlight. The ducks went by again; the dog watched them coolly, with studied indifference. The old deaf priest shuffled up and greeted us one last time and went inside to close the church.

“Besides,” the blind man said as I turned to go. “He has gone five hundred times to church already. He is a working dog. It is the same with him as with a priest: church is work. Whatever else heaven might be for him, it will not be anything that includes spending another solitary second inside a church!”

Maybe he was right, I don’t know. There is no use dwelling on it now. All this was years ago. By now the dog will have retired from active life. By now he will have died. What God thinks of him, no one can say. But I will always remember the way he sat and waited, lovingly facing the altar, while beside him the one he loved stood blessed under the name of God and ate the world’s redemption.

Back Babylon Ben! - Kim Fabricius reports on Terror at Bible Study in Texas

Emergency services were at full stretch last night after a flurry of frantic 911 calls summoned police and paramedics to the Firstest Evangelical Church in Fishfaith, Texas. On arrival they discovered a score of the elect on the church steps, the men at the top and the womenfolk at the bottom, all weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth or dentures.

Inside the church, in the King James Room, there was a similar scene of trauma. Many had fainted, others were in shock. The paramedics managed to revive the former with a chorus of “Give Me That Old Time Religion”, while they were immensely relieved when they detected no signs of brain activity in the latter. “Normal readings,” said the chief paramedic. “A Dr Pepper and they’ll be just fine.”

The police arrested two men with Boston accents wearing PTS hoodies, and confiscated two books, one in Greek, one in German (apparently the Sound Literature Alarm System had failed), and immediately informed Immigration and Customs. Police Commissioner Billy Bob Winchester said the FBI will be investigating links with terrorist organisations. “After all,” he observed, “PTS is only a few letters different from ISIS.”

The church’s pastor, the Reverend Jedediah Jedediah, later said: “Our prayers are with those who have suffered from thoughts at tonight’s Bible Study on ‘Eternal Torment: the Soft Option’. When you consider that those two devils from New Jersey had the temerity to question damnation, cite the unsaved (Carol Bart? Tallbutt? Kongdon?), and befuddle the good folk of Fishfaith with words like ‘scatological’ and ‘apookatastasis’, well, firearms will now be mandatory at all Firstest services, scripture classes, and Sunday School.”

The inquisition continues.

The parables in rock songs

Matthew

• The Lamp under the Bushel (5:14-15): “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” (Pink Floyd)
• The Wise and Foolish Builders (7:24-27): “Shelter from the Storm” (Bob Dylan)
• New Patch on Old Cloth / New Wine in Old Wineskins (9:16-17): “Old Habits Die Hard” (Bon Jovi)
• The Strong Man (12:29): “Fun with Ropes” (The Go-Go’s)
• The Tares (13:24-30): “Farmer’s Blues” (Merle Haggard and Marty Stuart)
• The Mustard Seed (13:31-32): “Really Very Small” (Esperanza Spalding)
• The Leaven (13:33): “Rise Up” (Indigo Girls)
• The Hidden Treasure (13:44): “Give It All Up” (The Corrs)
• The Pearl (13:45-46): “You Can Get It If You Really Want” (Jimmy Cliff)
• The Net (13:47-50): “Talking Fishing Blues” (Woody Guthrie)
• The Unforgiving Servant (18:23-35): “Cold, Cold Heart” (Norah Jones)
• The Labourers in the Vineyard (20:1-16): “Best for Last” (Adele)
• The Two Sons (21:28-32): “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” (The Clash)
• The Wicked Husbandmen (21:33-41): “The Payback” (James Brown)
• The Great Banquet (22:1-14): “It’s My Party” (Lesley Gore)
• The Fig Tree (24:32-35): “Juicy” (The Notorious B.I.G.)
• The Faithful/Unfaithful Servant (24:45-51): “Wake Up Call” (Maroon 5)
• The Ten Virgins (25:1-13): “Stupid Girls” (Pink) 
• The Talents (25:14-30): “Work Me, Lord” (Janis Joplin)
• The Sheep and the Goats (25:31-46): “You Don’t Know Me” (Ray Charles)

Mark

• The Sower (4:1-9): “Fields of Gold” (Sting)
• Interpretation of the Sower (4:13-20): “Why Must I Always Explain?” (Van Morrison)
• The Seed Growing Secretly (4:26-29): “I Keep It Hid” (Alice Clark)

Luke

• The Two Debtors (7:41-43): “Bills, Bills, Bills” (Destiny’s Child)
• The Good Samaritan (10:25-37): “Walk on By” (Dionne Warwick)
• The Friend at Midnight (11:5-8): “He Woke Me Up Again” (Sufjan Stevens)
• The Rich Fool (12:16-21): “Give, Give, Give Me More, More, More” (The Wonder Stuff) 
• The Barren Fig Tree (13:6-9): “Chop ‘em Down” (Matisyahu)
• The Lost Sheep (15:1-7): “Can’t Find My Way Home” (Traffic)
• The Lost Coin (15:8-10): “The Search Is Over” (Survivor)
• The Prodigal Son (15:11-32): “Daddy Lessons” (Beyonce)
• The Unjust Steward (16:1-13): “Wise Up” (Aimee Mann) 
• The Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19-31): “Help!” (The Beatles)
• The Master and Servant (17:7-10): “No Thanks to You” (Emma Watson)
• The Unjust Judge (18:1-8): “Naggin’ Woman” (The Kinks)
• The Pharisee and the Tax Collector (18:9-14): “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” (The Temptations)

The disappearing thesis: on favoured literary forms

Those who knew G. K. Chesterton always knew how to find him. Wherever he went, he left a trail of essays behind him—often just little ruminations scribbled on scraps of wallpaper and old receipts that tipped out of his pockets as he rambled through the streets. And yet he was fully awake to the novelty of such a life. Montaigne was a mere few centuries dead, and the literary experiments bloomed and faded like flowers when compared to gothic walls of mediaeval literature that surrounded him. He was committed to the essay, but only as he was deeply concerned by it.

Such a profound shift in writing would necessarily produce a shift in thinking, a shift which he locates in his essay "On Essays". The essay is a wild thing, untamed and beautiful. Chesterton writes, “By its very nature it does not exactly explain what it is trying to do, and thus escapes a decisive judgement about whether it has really done it… It is always dealing with theoretical matters without the responsibility of being theoretical, or of propounding a theory.” Modern thought developed into wanton theorising without the commitment of extensive structured reasoning. “The mediaeval man thought in terms of the Thesis, where the modern man thinks in terms of the Essay.” Those who think only in essays think only in digressions.

Luther, he continues, was no revolutionary modernist, but a ponderous mediaevalist, nailing theses to be defended: “he was doing exactly what all the other mediaeval doctors had done since the twilight of the Dark Ages.” Luther made assertions with the intention to argue them for the remainder of his life. If Luther had been a mere essayist, we would all be Tetzelites.

And yet the essayist is no villain, but merely suffers a contagious form of intellectual ADHD. “The trouble is that the essayists have become the only ethical philosophers. The wandering thinkers have become the wandering preachers… After a certain amount of wandering the mind wants either to get there or get home.” Home for us cannot be the mediaeval cloisters; Chesterton desires only the survival of the thesis. A little intellectual meandering is good for the soul and cleanses the mind, but we need a thesis in order to depart from it here and there. Without a thesis, how will we ever know if we are truly on an excursion? 

“It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that the modern man only essays to think—or, in other words, makes a desperate attempt to think. But it would be true to say that the modern man often only essays, or attempts, to come to a conclusion.”

Whatever would he have made of Twitter? #GKC #newblogpost

Polly wolly doodlings

The cast of characters at the RNC was right out of Looney Tunes. I half expected Elmer Twump to delight the crowd by whispering, “Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting Hiwwary.”

Then Jesus and his disciples went away to the villages near Caesarea Philippi. “Who do you say I am?” he asked them. Trump, called The Donald, answered, “You’re a loser!” “Exactly!” replied Jesus. “So much for your Messiah crap, Peter.” Then he ordered them, “Go, tell everyone what The Donald just said” (Mark 8:27ff., Original Autograph).

Samuel Johnson was close but wrong: patriotism is the penultimate refuge of the scoundrel; his last refuge is “authenticity” (e.g., Donald Trump) and “sincerity” (e.g., Tony Blair).

On being accused of plagiarising Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 DNC, Melania Trump declared, “I don’t imitate, I steal.”

“I know I don't have his looks. I know I don't have his money. I know I don't have his connections, his knowledge of fine wines. I know sometimes when I eat I get this clicking sound in my jaw… First he screws me, then he screws you… Excellent.” —From Wayne Grudem’s endorsement of Donald Trump (Wayne’s World)

Just out is a new, pre-election edition of Daniel Kahneman’s masterpiece Thinking, Fast and Slow. It is entitled Thinking, Fast, Slow, and Orangutan, with a foreword by Bill Maher.

What do you call someone who orders a rib eye, gets an overcooked hamburger, and is so pissed off that he stomps into the kitchen and eats the slops? A Bernie supporter who votes for Trump.

 “The business of America is business”? No, Cal, the business of America is America.

Under felt threat, toads puff, bears rear, and cats bristle and yowl. So too politicians who, alas – so much for evolution – then declare states of emergency.

Do I think it’s okay for ministers, male or female, to wear other than black clerical shirts? Sure, as long as they’re charcoal, onyx, or ebony. Rainbow-coloured shirts are just plain naff, the sartorial equivalent of saying “Hi guys” at the start of worship.

It is ridiculous to suggest that Jesus was a Christian. More ridiculous still to suggest that God is a Christian. They are, of course, both Jews.

One thing the gospels don’t tell us about Jesus (though Isaiah 53 may suggest it) is that he walked with a limp. How else could the disciples have kept up with him?

Preachers, have you ever stumbled and fallen on the way to the pulpit? If not, why not?

If you’re a minister who prefers preaching to visiting, that’s probably because you prefer listening to yourself for half an hour than to somebody else. Or perhaps because the preparation is less onerous.

The bad news about being angry with God is that you don’t trust him. The good news about being angry with God is that you don’t trust him.

Let Kent’s words to Cordelia (King Lear, IV, vii) be the epigraph of your every engagement with Facebook and Twitter: “To be acknowledg’d, madam, is o’erpaid.”

Let’s get incarnational. The colonising of the mind by conventional images of the “beautiful” face and the “perfect” body is not only a cultural pathology, it is also just plain wrongheaded. For experience teaches that when it comes to physical attraction, looks comes a poor second to scent, not least in longevity of appeal. A thousand gazes aren’t worth a single sniff.

Blessed is the person who uses the subjunctive more than the indicative, for life will be full of surprises and the kingdom will always be near.

Yes, Karl, the Bible in one hand, the newspaper in the other. But you forgot to mention that after the sermon, depending on the newspaper, the preacher might have to wash and disinfect the latter appendage.

It’s becoming more and more fashionable for people to micromanage their own funerals. I recently attended a funeral where instead of honouring God through Myvanwy we honoured Myvanwy through God. Actually, though, it’s a quite venerable practice, going back to Pharaoh.

The decline of faith has left the West without a grammar of grief. Flowers (lots and lots of flowers), rainbow raiment, pop songs, Twitter tributes, and Kahil Gibran are among our more sententious solecisms of “celebration”.

It’s a fallacy to think that just because you’ve got a good pair of garden shears you’ll be able to cut hard branches: they might be non-secateurs.

New programme on the God Channel featuring the saved giving their testimonies: it’s called Corn Again!

Ecclesiastical Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: the pathologies, respectively, of liberal and traditionalist churches. The one has no memory and the other no mobility.

I suspect that the living don’t miss the dead half as much as the dead miss the living.