Okay, I wrote a piece or two about developing the Christian mind and showing that we stock books more than theology, church life, or spirituality.  And that we stock a diverse array of things because we trust that you, our friends and customers, don’t mind using the old noggin’.

It wasn’t an accident that 30 years ago, the day we opened, we gave out copies of Your Minds Matters, a fine little book by John Stott (IVP Classics; $8.00, now with a nice forward by Mark Noll.)  As Stott shows, the Biblical call to think is not just for the professors among us; it
has large implications for us ordinary folk who have jobs and other tasks, day by day.  We have to do more than think, more than even thinking well.  We have to think like Christians!   Being intentional about “thinking Christianly” enables us to keep
Biblical principles and theological truths and spiritual insights and ethical mandates before
us as we engage in, well, anything and everything.

 What do you think
about shopping at Amazon or Chick-Fil-A?  What do you think about the
increased death of Pakistani civilians caused by drone attacks, paid for with your
tax dollars? What is your understanding of fun? Of grief? Of finances? Of art?  Where do you stand on the HHS mandates that
disrespect the religious freedoms of Catholic hospitals, say—that is, what do you think of human rights and the different institutions within society and how to measure the public good?  More foundationally, what do you think of the idea of the government itself, the nature and meaning of business, the idea of vacations, the blessings and dangers of technology?  Novels?  Sports and space exploration?  (Does God have an opinion?)  From your
view of work to your view of leisure, there is no
issue or no side of life or sphere in God’s world that dare be compartmentalized off away from
faith and cannot be understood in some manner that is honoring to God. (The whole creation is declaring to us things about God, after all!  And the whole creation groans under curse!)  We live our very lives as worship to God—embodied as image bearers of God—but our daily discipleship must be informed by faithful thinking. 
 
When we say we want to sell books to help people relate Sunday
to Monday, this is what we mean.  It is mostly something many of us intuit —
that spirituality and Christ-like discipleship includes thinking about
life differently — but it seems that too few churches help us grapple
with real-world decision-making and gritty discipleship.  The language of vocation and calling,
worldview and wisdom, of the common good and public
justice, of “taking every thought captive” and being stewards (all core aspects of a Biblical worldview) are too far from the conversations in many churches, or
so it seems. And so we read together, learning, studying, pondering.    

We hope that as you read these BookNotes blog posts you are inspired to read widely, to think differently, and to allow God’s work in your own heart to shape your daily practices, that is, the habits and texture of your daily life.  The spiritual disciplines we hear so much about, and the books we so warmly sell about spiritual formation, can lead us away from this world, too deeply into our own interior lives, obsessed even, or they can be life-giving, helping to shape us into people who understand the “abundant life” Christ has come to bring and His reign that He came to announce and inaugurate.  We can be harbingers of that new creation, agents of God’s reconciliation, in the world God so loves.  I hope our bookish ruminations help us tell that story, and we are confident that there are enough oddballs like you and like me that know that books can help us along this odd way.  Tolle tegge — pick up and read, as the voice spoke to Augustine the morning of his conversion.

Well enough sermonizing.  I mentioned the Christian mind just last week, and, in the post celebrating our time at Ocean City Beach Project I shared that we are particularly passionate about helping college students relate faith and learning.  I raved about the simple and yet insightful introduction to college life, The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness by Donald Optiz and Derek Melleby (Brazos; $13.99) and the truly lovely, eloquent, rich, Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision for Faith, Learning, and Living by Cornelius Plantinga (Eerdmans; $16.00.) We still have them both on sale for 20% off.  There are other “must read” books for the serious college student who wants to be faithful at State U, but I suggest these for starters.

RECLAIMING THE CHRISTIAN INTELLECTUAL TRADITION (Crossway Books)

Here is a new series of small books, ideal for being brief and poignant, written by learned Christian leaders that are quite useful for thoughtful students.  They have a bit of an intellectual edge, classical, almost.  We respect each of the authors and are grateful for their   clarity and rigor.  You may have a nit to pick, perhaps, about this one or that, but we are eager to show and sell these, wanting to offer these books that further illustrate not only the kinds of books we sell, here, but the way publishers are stepping up to offer resources of this nature.

I won’t describe them as they are fairly self explanatory.  They are published by Crossway Books and sell for $11.99 each.  They are small, meaty, introductions.  I do wish their was a bit more Bible in these–the political one, for instance, spends a bit too much time on Aristotle and Locke and Hobbes and Mill, but not on Moses or Isaiah, Peter or Paul.  Jesus?  Um.  Well, these are the only books a Christian thinker should read about the topic,but they are remarkable as brief introductions to these historic subjects, helping us see a fabulous distillation of main schools of thought and the most important thinkers.