Classic Education

A very good article on self-education by reading, and how to read well.

Book Reading Progress Report

I knew it would be more difficult than it seemed to read and review one book every two weeks. So far, I've stayed somewhat on pace (reading A Praying Life and Family Driven Faith in January), though I've always got to weigh priorities carefully. Often the most important use of my time is not reading a book, but completing some other task or spending quality time with my wife and kids. There is honestly precious little time to devote to reading at home, and so many books I long to read. Right now I've started or am close to midway through the following books:

• God, Marriage, and Family by Andreas J. Kostenberger
• Seeing With New Eyes by David Powlison
• The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne
• How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler

At this point, I think that in order to make some real headway I need to put all of the books but one on the shelf, and that one should probably be God, Marriage, and Family, since it's been next on the list for quite a while, and because it's a slower read due to its "theological density". It's been a very good book, but I don't want to be reading it for the next year!

So I'm going to try to make a little more headway tonight and hopefully have God, Marriage, and Family done by the end of the week.

Trevin Wax's Top 10 Books

Check them out here and have a chance to win them all, plus an ESV Study Bible!

On reading books...

For probably many reasons, my passion for reading books-- particularly nonfiction-- has dramatically increased over the past few years. It is simply an incredible way to interact with the world's greatest teachers, and to glean wisdom and understanding from great men of faith.

The only problem is that:

1. I'm a slow reader
2. I read too many books at the same time, thus rarely "finishing" them
3. I have higher priorities that demand time away from reading
4. I don't really have a lot of training in how to really "read" a book, how to interact with it and ultimately be able to reconstruct the main arguments to the satisfaction of the book's author, and I don't know how to make helpful notes for future reference. Things like this...
   

So I have begun a project of sorts to reform my reading habits. I'll have a great opportunity to improve, as I have a lot of reading material to work through. Here is a growing list of books which I plan to read through next year, in no particular order:

1. Peace Like a River; Leif Enger (A fiction book, I'm almost done with this one)
2. God, Marriage, and Family; Andreas J. Kostenberger
3. Christless Christianity; Michael Horton
4. War of Words; Paul Tripp
5. Future Men; Douglas Wilson
6. How to Read a Book; Mortimer Adler. (I'll read this as soon as it's available from the library!)
7. Heaven; Randy Alcorn
8. Worship Matters; Bob Kauflin
9. The Cross Centered Life; C.J. Mahaney
10. Successful Christian Parenting; John MacArthur
11. Grace-Based Parenting; Tim Kimmel
12. Tactics: A game-plan for discussing your Christian convictions; Gregory Koukl
13. Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition through the Lens of Scripture; David Powlison
14. Lectures to my Students; C.H. Spurgeon
15. Speaking the Truth in Love; David Powlison
    
16. The Treasure Principal; Randy Alcorn
17. The Pursuit of Holiness; Jerry Bridges
18. Respectable Sins; Jerry Bridges
19. How People Change; Paul Tripp
20. Desiring God; John Piper
21. The Momentary Marriage; John Piper
    

So here's the plan. For the first time ever, I'm going to read each book, one at a time. And I'm going to make it a goal to read one book every two weeks. This means that with the current list I should be able to finish all of the books by late October of 2010... I've got a good start right now with the first book, Peace Like a River, which should be finished sometime in the next couple of days.

The second part of the plan is that I will write some sort of a review of each book I read and post it on this blog.

I'll end with an encouragement to all of you out there, to look at your own reading habits. Are there any adjustments are resolutions you'd wish to make for the upcoming year?...

Christian Classics: The Duties of Parents

The Duties of Parents by J.C. Ryle.

This was one of about 15 outstanding classic short books I received via mail from the Chapel Library, which offers all of its materials free of charge. This particular work has proven very timely as our 2-year-old son, Cameron, is in a season of exhibiting both humble obedience and foolish rebellion. Kerry and I are often finding ourselves in challenging situations that demand a quick response, but we often encounter situations that are difficult to discern, and in general had lacked a vision for what godly training of our children looks like.

For this reason, I have found "The Duties of Parents", written nearly 150 years ago by pastor J.C. Ryle, to be a timeless and exceedingly helpful resource, and would recommend it to any Christian parent as a clear framework for developing a vision for "training" your children. The booklet is relatively short and describes 17 areas of "training" for parents to prayerfully consider. The book is easy to read and my copy was only 35 pages long, so it can be read in one sitting. You can also read it for free here. Here's a few highlights from the book:


The foundational verse of the book is:

"Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." -- Prov. 22:6

Ryle begins with the argument that this text, though well known among most Christians, is not heeded. Thus the Lord's promise "when he is old, he will not depart from it", he argues, is not fulfilled. He asks the reader to ask himself, "Am I in this matter doing what I can?"

The 17 key principles/exhortations of Ryle directed toward parents are as follows:

1. First, then, if you would train your children rightly, train them in the way they should go, and not in the way that they would.
2. Train up your child with all tenderness, affection, and patience
3. Train your children with an abiding persuasion on your mind that much depends upon you
4. Train with this thought continually before your eyes-- that the soul of your child is the first thing to be considered.
5. Train your child to a knowledge of the Bible
6. Train them to a habit of prayer
7. Train them to habits of diligence, and regularity about public means of grace
8. Train them to a habit of faith
9. Train them to a habit of obedience
10. Train them to a habit of always speaking the truth
11. Train them to a habit of always redeeming the time
12. Train them with a constant fear of over-indulgence
13. Train them remembering continually how God trains His children.
14. Train them remembering continually the influence; of your example
15. Train them remembering continually the power of sin.
16. Train them remembering continually the promises of Scripture.
17. Train them, lastly, with continual prayer for a blessing on all you do.
    

Some brief comments:

-On #1: Followers of "Love and Logic" parenting strategies will conflict with this first point

-On #2: I find this point exceeding important and one of the most difficult. Ryle compares a child's mind to a lump of metal-- "not to be forged and made useful at once, but only by a succession of little blows." And, "their understandings are like narrow-necked vessels: we must pour in the wine of knowledge gradually, or much of it will be spilled and lost. 'Line upon line, and precept upon precept, here a little and there a little.'" He urges the parent to "try hard to keep up a hold on your child's affections", for "it is a dangerous thing to make your children afraid of you."

-On #3: A good point on the fact that we can't "convert" child. Ryle concedes this is absolutely true, but that God also expressly says,"Train up a child in the way he should go", and "He never laid a command on man which He would not give man grace to perform," and that "our duty is not to stand still and dispute, but to go forward and obey".

-On # 4: The idea of training your child for heaven, not for earth, has been impactful. This overlaps with other points, but gives meaning to witholding pleasures and comforts in this world.

-On #5: "Fill their minds with Scripture. Let the Word dwell in them richly. Give them the Bible, the whole Bible, even while they are young". I plan to give my son an ESV Study Bible as soon as he's able to read.

-On #6: This chapter could stand alone as an exhortation to pray:

"Prayer is the simplest means that man can use in coming to God."

"Prayer is on great secret of spiritual prosperity. When there is much private communion with God, your soul will grow like the grass after rain; when there is little, all will be at a standstill, you will barely keep your soul alive. Show me a growing Christian, a going forward Christian, a strong Christian, a flourishing Christian, and sure am I, he is one that speaks often with his Lord. He asks much, and he has much."

"Prayer is the mightiest engine God has placed in our hands. It is the best weapon to use in every difficulty, and the surest remedy in every trouble. It is the key that unlocks the treasury of promises, and the hand that draws forth grace and help in time of need. It is the silver trumpet God commands us to sound in all our necessity, and it is the cry He has promised always to attend to, even as a loving mother to the voice of her child."

"This, remember, is the first step in religion which a child is able to take."

On #8: Train your child to be content to obey without having full understanding of "why"

On #9: On the importance of teaching your children that obedience is of the highest importance (this will clash greatly with our culture):

"Parents, do you wish to see your children happy? Take care, then, that you train them to obey when they are spoken to, --to do as they are bid. Believe me, we are not made for entire independence, -- we are not fit for it".

On #11: Ryle says, "Idleness is the devil's best friend. It is the surest way to give him an opportunity of doing us harm."

On #12: Scriptures sited are Prov 13:24, Prov 22:15, Prov 23:13-14, Prov 29:15,17.

"Reader, if there be any point which deserves your attention, believe me, it is this one. It is one that will give you trouble, I know. But if you do not take trouble with your children when they are young, they will give you trouble when they are old. Choose which you prefer."

On # 13: See Exod. 13:17, Num. 21:4, 2 Cor 12:8,9

On # 14: "Fathers and mothers, do not forget that children learn more by the eye than they do by the ear. No school will make such deep marks on characters as home."

Free Audio Books!

Christianaudio.com features a new free download every month. This month's audio book (normally $14.98) is C.H. Spurgeon's All of Grace. It works!

Does Being Loved Mean Being Made Much of?

"For many people, this is not obviously an act of love. They do
not feel loved when they are told that God created them for his
glory. They feel used. This is understandable given the way love
has been almost completely distorted in our world. For most people,
to be loved is to be made much of. Almost everything in our
Western culture serves this distortion of love. We are taught in a
thousand ways that love means increasing someone’s self-esteem.
Love is helping someone feel good about themselves. Love is giving
someone a mirror and helping him like what he sees.

This is not what the Bible means by the love of God. Love is
doing what is best for someone. But making self the object of our
highest affections is not best for us. It is, in fact, a lethal distraction.
We were made to see and savor God—and savoring him, to
be supremely satisfied, and thus spread in all the world the worth
of his presence. Not to show people the all-satisfying God is not
to love them. To make them feel good about themselves when
they were made to feel good about seeing God is like taking
someone to the Alps and locking them in a room full of mirrors."

-John Piper in Don't Waste Your Life

John Piper on C.S. Lewis

Reading "Don't Waste Your Life" by John Piper tonight, I found this section very insightful, where Piper is explaining the deep impacts C.S. Lewis had on him in Piper's college years:

"He has made me wary of chronological snobbery. That is, he
showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth
and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist.
Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for
being modern. This has freed me from the tyranny of novelty and
opened for me the wisdom of the ages. To this day I get most of
my soul-food from centuries ago. I thank God for Lewis’s compelling
demonstration of the obvious.
He demonstrated for me and convinced me that rigorous, precise,
penetrating logic is not opposed to deep, soul-stirring feeling
and vivid, lively—even playful—imagination. He was a
“romantic rationalist.” He combined things that almost everybody
today assumes are mutually exclusive: rationalism and
poetry, cool logic and warm feeling, disciplined prose and free
imagination. In shattering these old stereotypes, he freed me to
think hard and to write poetry, to argue for the resurrection and
compose hymns to Christ, to smash an argument and hug a
friend, to demand a definition and use a metaphor.
Lewis gave me an intense sense of the “realness” of things.
The preciousness of this is hard to communicate. To wake up in
the morning and be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the
warmth of the sun’s rays, the sound of the clock ticking, the sheer
being of things (“quiddity” as he calls it3). He helped me become
alive to life. He helped me see what is there in the world—things
that, if we didn’t have, we would pay a million dollars to have,
but having them, ignore. He made me more alive to beauty. He
put my soul on notice that there are daily wonders that will
waken worship if I open my eyes. He shook my dozing soul and
threw the cold water of reality in my face, so that life and God
and heaven and hell broke into my world with glory and horror.
He exposed the sophisticated intellectual opposition to
objective being and objective value for the naked folly that it
was. The philosophical king of my generation had no clothes on,
and the writer of children’s books from Oxford had the courage
to say so.
You can’t go on “seeing through” things forever. The whole
point of seeing through something is to see something through
it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because
the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw
through the garden too? It is no use trying to “see through”
first principles. If you see through everything, then everything
is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible
world. To “see through” all things is the same as not to see.4
Oh, how much more could be said about the world as C. S.
Lewis saw it and the way he spoke. He has his flaws, some of
them serious. But I will never cease to thank God for this remarkable
man who came onto my path at the perfect moment."

Excerpts of "Lectures to my Students" by C.H. Spurgeon

From Chapter XII: The Minister's Ordinary Conversation

Pg. 167-168

“Still, a minister, wherever he is, is a minister, and should recollect that he is on duty. A policeman or a soldier may be off duty, but a minister never is. Even in our recreations we should still pursue the great object of our lives; for we are called to be diligent “in season and out of season.” There is no position in which we may be placed but the Lord may come with the question, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” and we ought to be able at once to answer, “I have something to do for thee even here, and I am trying to do it.” The bow, of course, must be at times unstrung, or else it will lose its elasticity; but there is no need to cut the string. I am speaking at this time of the minister in times of relaxation; and I say that even then he should conduct himself as the ambassador of God, and seize opportunities of doing good: this will not mar his rest, but sanctify it. A minister should be like a certain chamber which I saw a Beaulieu, in the New Forest, in which a cobweb is never seen. It is a large lumber-room, and is never swept; yet no spider ever defiles it with the emblems of neglect. It is roofed with chestnut, and for some reason, I know not what, spiders will not come near that wood by the year together. The same thing was mentioned to me in the corridors of Winchester School: I was told, “No spiders ever come here.” Our minds should be equally clear of idle habits.

Pg. 168
“On our public rests for porters in the City of London you may read the words, “Rest, but do not loiter”; and they contain advice worthy of our attention. I do not call the dolce far niente laziness; there is a sweet doing of nothing which is just the finest medicine in the world for a jaded mind. When the mind gets fatigued and out of order, to rest it is no more idleness than sleep is idleness; and no man is called lazy for sleeping the proper time. It is far better to be industriously asleep than lazily awake. Be ready to do good even in your resting times and in your leisure hours; and so be really a minister, and there will be no need for you to proclaim that you are so.

Pg. 168
“The Christian minister out of the pulpit should be a sociable man. He is not sent into the world to be a hermit, or a monk of La Trappe. It is not his vocation to stand on a pillar all day, above his fellowmen, like that hare-brained Simon Stylites of olden time. You are not to warble from the top of a tree, like an invisible nightingale; but to be a man among men, saying to them, “I also am as you are in all that relates to man.” Salt is of no use in the box; it must be rubbed into the meat; and our personal influence must penetrate and season society. Keep aloof from others, and how can you benefit them? Our Master went to a wedding, and ate bread with publicans and sinners, and yet was far more pure than those sanctimonious Pharisees, whose glory was that they were separate from their fellowmen. Some ministers need to be told that they are of the same species as their hearers. It is a remarkable fact, but we may as well state it, that bishops, canons, archdeacons, prebendaries, rural deans, rectors, vicars and even archbishops, are only men after all; and God has not railed off a holy corner of the earth to serve as a chancel for them to abide therein by themselves.
“It would not be amiss if there could be a revival of holy talk in the churchyard and the meeting-yard. I like to see the big yew-trees outside our ancient churches with seats all round them. They seem to say: “Sit down here, neighbour, and talk aupon the sermon; here comes the pastor; he will join us, and we shall have a pleasant, holy chat.” It is not every preacher we would care to talk with; but there are some whom one would give a fortune to converse with for an hour. I love a minister whose face invites me to make him my friend—a man upon whose doorstep you read, “Salve,” “Welcome”; and feel that there is no need of that Pompeian warning, “Cave Canem,” “Beware of the dog.” Give me the man around whom the children come, like flies around a honey-pot: they are first-class judges of a good man. When Soloman was tried by the Queen of Sheba, as to his wisdom, the rabbies tell us that she brought some artificial flowers with her, beautifully made and delicately scented, so as to be facsimiles of real flowers. She asked Solomon to discover which were artificial and which were real. The wise man bade his servants open the window, and when the bees come in they flew at once to the natural flowers, and cared nothing for the artificial. So you will find that children have their instincts, and discover very speedily who is their friend, and depend upon it the children’s friend is the one who will be worth knowing. Have a good word to say to each and every member of the family—the big boys, and the young ladies, and the little girls, and everybody. No one knows what a smile and a hearty sentence may do. A man who is to do much with men must love them, and feel at home with them. An individual who has no geniality about him had better be an undertaker, and bury the dead, for he will never succeed in influencing the living. I have met somewhere with the observation nthat to be a popular preacher one must have bowels. I fear that the observation was meant as a mild criticism upon the bulk to which certain brethren have attained: but there is truth in it. A man must have a great heart if he would have a great congregation. His heart should be as capacious as those noble harbours along our coast, which contain se-room for a fleet. When a man has a large, loving heart, men go to him as ships to a haven, and feel at peace when they have anchored under the lee of this friendship. Such a man is hearty in private as well as in public; his blood is not cold and fishy, but he is warm as your own fireside. No pride and selfishness chill you when you approach him; he has his doors all open to receive you, and you are at home with him at once. Such men I would persuade you to be, every one of you.

C.H. Spurgeon - Lectures to My Students

The audio reading for the first chapter "The Minister's Self Watch" is outstanding, especially for those called to preaching (this does not include me, but I still benefitted much from various sections).

-- Download "The Minister's Self Watch" at Sermon Audio


-- Check out the entire book at the Google Library