I can't imagine how much I have spent on books relating to spiritual development. Fancy titles, authoritative authors, "relevant" topics. I think that I bought them because I was looking for something, an answer. Worse still, I have been looking for THE answer. The more I read, the more confused I got; what did I have to do to find the KoG?
At the Salvation Army training college, I received the basics of theology, doctrine and biblical studies. Through this, I began to see that God communicates in a huge number of ways, shaped by the history and perspectives of his listeners. The pursuit of a single unifying theory of God is flawed and we can only find our way by listening to him. We find him in the journey of faith that we undertake and not by reading books, less still by re-interpreting writers of a previous generation. I still respect them but less because of what they said but they were listening to God.
Should books be the way?
so which one is the most authoratative or perceptive or ....RIGHT??!!
ReplyDeleteBut this is my frustration - what happens if none of them are "right". What if there is NO "right". Any book is the product of the lifestory of the writer. If we use books too much, I see two problems:
1 - we strive to replicate someone else's experiences with God
2 - we try less to find a truer version of our own experiences with God.
Your point about Johhny Cash's autobiog is well made. It is a book from another walk of life which lets us see another persons perspective. Once we see that then we must also see that Luther, Bonhoeffer, Bishop Reid, Catholic writers, Celts,Ethiopian Christianity ,Yancey also offer something.
But I think that they do not offer us their view of the same thing, but something of their spiritual journeys.
I think part of what you are saying is that books are useful when what they say "co-incides" with where we are at any moment in time and I agree.
ReplyDeleteSo my next question is this...what are the circumstances where a book prooves to be a bit of a breakthrough for us?