Six-Week Roundup

Well, as life goes, I’ve been swept up and whisked away again. I missed posting last week altogether—but busy or no, I’ve had a good two weeks. I am slowly acclimating to the life of a student, and even working in—at a scaled-back level—some of my own writing projects.

Today…ahem…I begin a new tradition. Every six weeks or so, from the things I’ve read and learned in the past month, I will share a few recommendations.

This month, I recommend:

A Website:

One of our assignments in Overview of the Old and New Testament is to watch the Bible Project’s Explore the Bible series. I highly recommend them. Fast paced and captivating, these 5-10 minute videos lay out each book of the Bible in a concise, visually engaging, and Christocentric way.

A blog post:

On the usually unspoken conflict between being human and being “a good witness,” I recommend Shari Zook’s “On a Train Bound for Nowhere.” She will grab your imagination, bend your ear, stimulate your mind.

Two books:

Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy, by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Think Ann Voskamp, only more practical and an easier read. I enjoyed Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, but I spent as much time admiring her literary art as I did learning from her. In a busy life (like my current college one) a book with that amount of density feels intimidating to pick up and lay down. In Choosing Gratitude, DeMoss calls me to thanksgiving in a way that is straightforward as well as engaging.

Canon Revisited, by Michael J. Kruger. In the past I’ve spent quite a lot of brain cells puzzling over whether the Bible is truly inspired by God and whether or not it is the ultimate answer to every human question. The answer I came to went something like this:

A. The books that make up the New Testament in the Bible were written by men who claimed to have walked and talked with Jesus.

B. We have an incredible amount of historical evidence that the New Testament we now use is virtually identical to the original documents written by these men.

C. Therefore, whether or not you believe in the reliability of the New Testament shakes down to whether or not you believe the men who wrote it were telling the truth.

D. Whether or not you believe the Old Testament shakes down to that same question because everything the apostles taught, and everything Jesus taught, is based in the Old Testament.

E. I do believe what these men said about Jesus because of what I’ve experienced of him in my own life. Therefore, I believe the New Testament, and therefore, I also believe the Old.

My model of reasoning, I learned from Kruger, falls into the historical-critical method of analyzing the Bible (in my case undergirded by an experiential foundation). While this model is not completely illegitimate, it has a key weakness: using historical evidence and human reason as the primary proof of the Bible’s authority contradicts its own claim. What I am really saying, when I reason this way, is that historical evidence and human reason are the ultimate authority, not the Bible.

Kruger helped me to think through that contradiction and to give reason and historical evidence their proper place within a larger and more integrated model he calls self-authenticating. I have been amazed to realize the depth to which the Bible substantiates its own authority. If the authority of the Bible is ever a subject you have wrestled with, Canon Revisited is well worth your time.

Life Lesson: 

This month I learned from Dr. Kuruvilla, during a student tea time, the importance of saying no. Every time we say “no” to one thing—like maybe staying up late—we are really saying “yes” to something else—like maybe an awesome, rejuvenated morning. I came back to my dorm later and made this little sign to hang above my desk:

Grades to me are about performance and competition. I hate NOT to get good grades because I think they prove I’m smart. But when I focus on grades, I exclude other more important things: my friendships, my long-term writing projects, my enjoyment of life. I want to change my perspective and begin to prioritize long term goals, not what makes me look good.

Charley of the Month:

Pictured with me in the feature photo at the top of the post (email readers will have to click through to the blog) is my travel buddy Charley. This month, we visited New Hampshire, where we got to see the autumn leaves and the cliff that used to host Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Great Stone Face.”  Unfortunately, the Old Man collapsed in 2003, so Charley and I saw only a cliff. Still, it was a nice cliff.

And that ends the round up for this month. From Charley and I, have an awesome November.