By Dr. Johan Tredoux – Uncommon Community
A More Christlike God by Bradley Jersak
This is my go-to recommendation for those who are deconstructing their evangelical faith handed to them. Many times, those who deconstruct their faith, don’t know how to put it back together again. By combining both elements of Eastern Orthodox (early church fathers) and Western theology, Jersak does a great job to show us how to adjust our assumptions to get a better picture of what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus here in the 21st century. Jersak’s simple premise is that God is like Jesus. He shows us how Jesus interpreted the OT… how Jesus un-wrathed the God of the OT… creating for us non-violent pathways to follow. He expands the Gospel in a beautiful way… as an abundant life for today, and not just something that happens sometime in the future when we die. Definitely, a must-read.
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I was profoundly moved by this short but very deep work by Paul Tillich. It was written in the early 50s, by what I would consider, one of the best theological minds of the 20th century. Given the anxiety of the present pandemic, “The Courage to Be” gives you some of the best ways to absorb the anxiety produced by the threat of non-being (non-existence). It is a great work. The last sentence should be memorized: “The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.”
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Peter Enns shows us the context out of which the Bible was formed over thousands of years. There are very few contemporary books on scriptural understanding that I would recommend more strongly than Peter Enns’ “The Bible Tells Me So.” The spiritual journey that Peter Enns describes for himself in many ways matches my own journey. Enns has a way to make the oral traditions, the cultural and sociological influences and development of the writing of the texts come alive in a very humorous way. This work affirms my position that the authority of scripture is not in the written word, but in the LIVING WORD, Christ Himself. It will unravel your Sunday School view of the Bible, but in the end, you will have a much deeper and richer understanding of God’s incarnational revelation to us.
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The Art of Intimacy by Thomas Malone
This is a timeless classic, in my opinion. It explains the deep longing we all seem to share for closeness and intimacy. The co-authors (Father and Son) helps the reader to see the difference between being close to someone and being intimate. The encouragement is for “me” (my private space) to show up simultaneous with “I” (my shared space). The ideal is for me to be fully myself with you. It involves moving away from pre-judging or pre-constructing in our relationships. It involves not freeze-framing your significant other in a particular time and space. Putting the insights to work has the profound potential of increasing your intimacy in your family and your marriage. The lessons learned in this work is in a league of its own. It is deep and profound.
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We Are What We Love by James K. A. Smith
I really like this book. James helps us to move away from the old cliché that “we are what we think.” He helps us to access a more holistic way of being ourselves by letting our affections and heart shape our every day lives. James is letting us know that we are not merely brains on a stick and while we may affirm something on an intellectual level, our desires and our habits will ultimately show what we really love. Even seemingly benign habits like the use of our smartphones or going to the mall have a way of shaping us. The challenge for us is to habituate our habits in a healthy direction. Highly recommended.
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