Taking every thought captive

Like the Ten Commandments, Tim Challies’s Ten Tips to Read More and Read Better can be summarized by two: Read Widely and Read Wisely. Tim take it for granted we must read, and his correct. I don’t know where I heard it first, but I’ve always seen buying books as an essential purchase, not a luxury. There is much to be said for including an amount in the household budget for book acquisitions.

Of Tim’s ten tips, I found the most beneficial one to be Read Interactively (a Read Wisely one). Since I began to do this a number of years ago I have found I have retained and understood more of what I read. I tend to consolidate my notes in a word processed document.

I try to summarize the chapters as I read using pen and paper, as I find this aids my understanding. Typing them up afterwards helps retention and keeps the summaries short, since I know I will be typing afterwards. I include useful quotes with page references so I can find them again, or I can cite them accurately in blog posts and essays. I also also include my own questions and reflections. I find it helpful to have a template with suitable styles to make it easy to distinguish my comments from the basic book summary and quotations.

From a practical point of view I usually begin by typing out the table of contents of the book. That can be a little tiresome if you don’t type too fast and/or the table of contents is quite detailed. Now that many publishers make extracts available on their Web sites, it can often be possible to get the table of contents in PDF format from which to copy and paste to get started. I’ve also recently discovered  that some contents are available from the Library of Congress site in plain text if the publisher doesn’t make them available.

Ravi Zacharias mentions a guru whose mantra was “Your hands must be full and your head empty” (The Grand Weaver (Grand Rapids, Mi: Zondervan: 2007: p. 124)).

But Christians come empty-handed to the Lord of life. “Nothing in my hand I bring // simply to thy cross I cling” sums it up perfectly. Full hands are a great hindrance to life and salvation. The Christian gospel is not about what we can do to reconcile ourselves to God, but what he has done to reconcile us to himself.
The guru’s mantra is totally wrong, not just on the need for full hands, but al on the love of empty-headedness. The Christian Gospel is not a mind-emptying message, but a mind-enhancing and hand filling one. We do not come to Christ with empty heads. The Christian Gospel has real content: that Christ died for our sins and was raised for our justification.

If we do not have some understanding of our sinful condition and Christ’s sinless remedy, we will be unwilling or unable to accept it. We do not come with full heads, as if there is nothing more to it. We do come with the sufficient information the Bible gives us that we may be convinced that this is the truth of God. Thereafter, as we grow in the knowledge of God our heads will be filled constantly and more fully with him who is all in all. It will be our delight to be filled with him in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

If the Christian Gospel had a mantra it might be empty hands and non-empty heads. Anything less will open us to deception, deception to believe we can save ourselves, and deception to believe any nonsense we come across.

Thank God for a Gospel that requires empty hands and non-empty heads.

Earlier this year I watched the BBC television series Masterchef. I like my food, but I wouldn’t be as fanatical as the contestants or judges. What struck me, however, about the final banquet for the Michelin-starred chefs was not the high quality of the cooking or presentation, but the lack of thankfulness to the provider of the food. There was plenty of praise for the contestants, and deservedly so, for they were certainly accomplished chefs. But there was no thanks offered to the one who provided the food — the living God. No one offered audible thanks to him, either before, or during, or after the meal.

The fare in our home at meal time is certainly not Michelin-starred quality (I should know, I’m the chef!). But without fail, before we eat we thank Almighty God for his gracious provision. Without him we would have nothing. We ask him for our daily bread, the least we can do is thank him when he provides it. And yet, it is not merely the least we can do, but all we must do, for he provides our food, and all our needs.

This morning the postman delivered my copy of How Biblical Languages Work: A Student’s Guide to Learning Hebrew and Greek by Peter James Silzer and Thomas John Finley (Grand Rapids, Mi: Kregel, 2004). I’m hoping my reading for the course I’ve just started will allow me to start this soon. I thought it would help me brush up on my language skills. Mike Aubrey has a very positive review of it over at En Efeso. I’m sure he knows a whole lot more about this than I do, but if I get the time I may share a few nuggets or interactions when I get down to reading the book.

What should I read?

Should I read this book? Should I read that book?

There are many books I could read, but what should I read? Should I read a book because it is a best seller? or popular?

Choosing what to read is no longer easy when there is so much choice. But more important than availability or popularity is whether a book will be edifying. Will it build me up in my faith? Will it help me know God better, and live more faithfully as his servant? If it will help me, it will be faithful to Scripture. If it is not, then I should pass it by (unless I am seeking to evaluate it myself against Scripture).

Recommendations and reviews are so helpful in deciding what to read. Rather than continuing with a page of my current reading, which astute readers of this blog may have noticed disappeared a while back, I’ve decided to comment on some current and planned reading in the main body of the blog. I’m never organized enough to post proper reviews, so anything I post will either be short recommendations or interactions with passages.

I can’t promise anything too regular, as I sometimes get engrossed in my reading to the exclusion of blogging. As I find the time, I’ll try to post a few tidbits. That way I won’t have to avoid Colin when I meet him again!! Thanks for the encouragement to keep posting, Colin.

Reading Genesis 24 recently I was struck by the ending. Not the way Hollywood, or the BBC, would have portrayed it. We see Isaac take Rebekah, but not quite in the sense the movies use the phrase. This is quite a different taking. It’s the same taking, if not done in quite the same way today, as is done by every man and woman who desire marriage — “Do you take . . . to be your wife/husband?”

Isaac took Rebekah into the tent, but the camera stays outside. We do not need to enter the tent. Indeed, we ought not to enter the tent. What happens there is neither for us to share, or imagine. What is important is not the entering of the tent, or what happens there, but that Rebekah became his wife, and that Isaac loved her. Here is marriage as God intended, with all that those two phrases entail.

As divinely told, the story is as tender as when God introduced Adam to his wife. Yet, these are no Hollywood fantasies, endearingly romantic, but utterly unreal. The whole story is one of God’s careful and marvellous providence, not just the ending. How else could it end: “he loved her”? How could he not? Did we not love her the moment she stepped up to the well?

But more than that, we bowed our heads with Abraham’s servant and worshipped with him, did we not? For, as tender as the love Isaac had for Rebekah, more tender was the love that planned it all. That wise old servant saw it clearly when he said, “Blessed by the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master.” (Gen. 24:27)

This is the whole point of the story, is it not? With what relish and excitement must he have related everything to Isaac on his return, before Isaac took Rebekah. How could this not have been the highlight of his story? And what a perfect beginning to their marriage, to see and to know the hand of God so clearly in all the detail.

And as perfect as the story we read is, much more perfect is the providential love God still has for his people. Ought we not to stand by the well ourselves from time to time, and bow our heads and worship that selfsame God. Edith McNeill put it well in her paraphrase of Lam. 3:22-23:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning, new every morning:
great is Your faithfulness, O Lord,
great is Your faithfulness.