When I was little I loved the smell of books. My mom would come in and find me with my nose (literally) in a book inhaling deeply.
There is something thrilling to me about books, because they have the ability to change life. What I read changes how I think, which in turn changes how I act. So here are five books that have changed how I think and act. It was so hard to pick just five so I may do a sequel post!
Blue Like Jazz
This book must have been recommended by at least five different people. And when I read it, it blew my mind. This guy wrote about God in a way that I had never been able to articulate. He speaks like a poet but questions like a scientist. His honesty is overwhelming and so refreshing. All my questions and doubts were burst out of this book and took new life and inspired a renewed curiosity ion the God I'd grown up knowing about. My copy of the book is well-worn and underlined - I have read it at least five times. It has become like a teddy bear to me. It's a source of comfort to know that other people feel the same way I do.
Favorite Quotes: "Here's what I've started thinking: All the wonder of God happens right above our arithmetic and formula. The more I climb outside my pat answers, the more invigorating the view, the more my heart enters into worship."
Mister God This Is Anna
I picked this book up at a thrift for for fifteen cents. It was a small yellow paperback that fit perfectly in to the pocket of my purse. I remember curling into an armchair and reading this book. It's the true story of a little girl who befriends a man in London. This girl is incredibly unique. She was abandoned by her parents and has no one in the world but the one she calls "Mister God". She astounds her new friend with her knowledge of philosophy, theology, and the meaning of life. He documents their conversations in this little book. The book is rich with the flavor of England complete with British slang and accents. I saw the world in a way that I'd never seen before in my life. It gave me chills and when I looked away from the book for a moment, everything around me felt so beautiful. This challenged me to become more like a child and really look for the wonder in every-day things. I can't really do justice to how amazing this book is and how I wish I paid more than fifteen cents for it.
Favorite Quotes: "She tried out a smile but it didn't work too well, and with a sniff she continued, "I know what I see and I know what you see, but some people don't see nuffink and - and -." She threw herself into my arms and sobbed. ...Anna's misery was for others. They just could not see the beauty of that broken iron stump, the colors, the crystaline shapes; they could not see the possibilities there. Anna wanted them to join with her in this exciting new world but they could not imagine themselves to be so small that this jagged fracture could become a world of iron mountains, of iron plains with crystal trees. It was a new world to explore, a world of the imagination, a world where few people would or could follow her."
The Irresistible Revolution
This book, much like Blue Like Jazz was highly recommended and is now well-worn. There are some books that you read and it feels like they hit you in the heart - with a 2x4. This is one of those books for me. In it, a guy talks about how he grew up in a very evangelical upbringing and how he felt incredibly convicted of this. These convictions led him to places he never would've imagined; in Calcutta with Mother Teresa, in Iraq amidst bombings, and on Wall Street dumping $10,000 in coins and bills. He believes that Jesus calls us to something crazy. He believes that when Jesus says to give your money to the poor - He meant it. He believes in the power of community and love. This challenged everything I had grown up with. It has established within me a sense of being uncomfortable with money and politics and comfort.
Favorite Quotes: "I learned more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than any systematic theology ever taught me." "Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, "You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.""
The End of Religion
The guy who wrote this book speaks at a church that I have grown very fond of. His church publishes his talks as podcasts and I cannot begin to explain how much I've learned from them. So I found out that this guy had written a book and I got excited. And for good reason. This book is an approach to Jesus that was so different from how I understood Him. And I think it would be hard to find a book (other than the Bible) that talks about Jesus more and with as much passion as this one. This guy puts everything very simply and with humor and excitement. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who is sure of their religion or someone who really just wants to see religion end. I think both groups will be surprised by this book.
Favorite Quotes: "For too long, people have assumed that religion is how we connect with God and relationship is how we connect with people. The original lesson of the Bible is that our connection with God should be a lot more like our relationships with other people - intimate, unscripted, authentic."
The Great Divorce
When I was a little girl, I read all of the Narnia series. I loved it. Aslan was the most powerful and iconic figure in my little world of literature. Then when I was 14, I read CS Lewis' Mere Christianity. It was sort of a transition point to adolescence I suppose. While I didn't fully understand everything in the book what I did understand got me excited about theology. I began reading other works of CS Lewis and a year or two ago read this book. It is a small book only 160 pages long, but a beautiful masterpiece nonetheless. It is an allegory of heaven and hell as seen in the eyes of Lewis. I think of what is said in this book often. The imagery used is powerful and while some may disagree with his views on purgatory and his description of hell, his illustration of humanity is so very intriguing.
Favorite Quotes: "Hell is a state of mind — ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind — is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly."
No comments:
Post a Comment