Yeah, I don’t read books too often but the wife and I have made it a new year’s resolution to try to read more. She’s already started on it by reading two books during our holiday break. I’ve also started trying to read this book again: Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis. I don’t know why this book hasn’t been more popular in Christian circles. Actually, I do know why—the book is extremely academic, dry and dense. It’s targeted more for seminarians than common lay people. Even so, I think a book like this is what the Church needs in responding to the cultural issues of the day. I haven’t gotten very far in it, but it supposedly presents a framework for knowing how to interpret what the Bible says about issues such as sexuality, slavery, etc. With a lot of current teaching from the pulpit about cultural and moral issues, it sometimes seems like the interpretation is just made out of thin air rather than coming to a particular conclusion after a rational, systematic process of interpretation. (e.g. A pastor might say “The Bible says X is an absolute moral truth, and while the Bible also says Y is wrong, it was really only meant for that cultural context.” Did he/she come to that conclusion just from what “feels” right or from a systematic process of interpretation?)
Anyway, again, I think the Church really needs more books like this in order to really know how to live faithfully in a world that is changing so fast. The worst thing to do would be to just say “The world was so much better X years ago. It’s just better if we assume things should never have changed and that we should live pretending that the world never changed.” Almost as bad would be to dismiss the Bible and church tradition as being almost completely irrelevant and to live completely according to the commonly accepted philosophy and worldview of present society. Where is the middle ground? How do we know where that middle ground is? Hopefully books like this will show us how to figure that out.
What do I plan on reading next?
Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul by Erwin McManus
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J.K. Rowling
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
Gastroanomalies: Questionable Culinary Creations from the Golden Age of American Cookery by James Lileks
Comments 2
too bad i gave away all my hp books to the library before dec.
and how can you read a book about cooking? i always found that so strange: cookbooks should be cookbooks, nothing more! (although i like the word “questionable” in that title)
Posted 03 Jan 2008 at 11:04 am ¶Would love to talk about that book with you (haven’t got it, but have heard about it.)
Posted 04 Jan 2008 at 1:38 pm ¶Post a Comment