My Top Reads of 2020
This year I set out to read less books than I usually do. I felt that I was reading to quickly and not retaining enough. Somehow, I ended up reading more than I ever have. I'm still not sure how that worked, especially because I do feel like I read more closely and carefully this year than in years previously. To date I have read 89 books this year and will like be a bit over 90 by the close of 2020. Below are my top five in the categories I most often read in with brief reviews of the "best" in each category.
Ministry/Pastoral
Henry Nouwen, The Wounded Healer.
It’s hard to put into words how important I think this book is. If I could recommend only one book for all pastors and Christian leaders to read, it may well be this one. In this book Nouwen reveals why pastors must recognize and readily admit that they, too, are wounded. This is not easy for pastors as we often believe the lie that in order to help others find healing in Christ we ourselves must present ourselves as though we no longer have any wounds. As I said, this is a lie. The Wounded Healer shows us a better, more faithful way forward for Christian ministry.
2. Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness.
3. Kevin Vanhoozer, Hearers and Doers: A Pastors Guide to Growing Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine.
4. Paul Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church.
5. (TIE) Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse; Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church.
Christian Life
1. Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly.
This book will stir your affections for Christ. Not by telling you they should be stirred. Not by issuing guilt for your affections not already being stirred before reading. Not with 9 steps to fuller affections for Christ. No. This book will stir your affections for Christ simply be peering into the infinitely deep reality of Christ's affections for you.
To do so Ortlund goes to the Puritans and reveals them to be not stodgy curmudgeons (as is often imagined by those who have not read them), but deeply devotional doctors of the soul. Take up and read.
2. Joe Rigney, Strangely Bright.
3. James K.A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom.
4. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together.
5. Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity.
Theology
Matthew Lapine, The Logic of the Body: Retrieving Theological Psychology.
Lapine has given a helpful corrective to the all too common counseling advice of “just think the right thoughts and your anxiety will go away” that arises out of a view of emotions as purely cognitive. He does so by presenting/retrieving a “tiered psychology.” What this does is show that much of our emotions arise from our subconscious levels and are therefore (initial) out of our control and regulating them is not an immediate action.
If it sounds complex it’s because it is somewhat because we as embodied souls are. And yet the main takeaway is that our pastoral counseling must take the body into account if it is to care for others holistically and be actually helpful.
Earlier this year I also read *The Body Keeps the Score* and this book felt like a kind of Christian version of it. It is required reading for those doing any kind of pastoral care/counseling due to the fact that it teaches us to take into consideration the body rather than only the mind when counseling those with anxiety, depression, and the like.
2. Augustine, The Trinity.
3. Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism.
4. Adonis Vidu, Atonement, Law, Justice: The Cross in Historical and Cultural Perspectives.
5. Beth Felker Jones, Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection.
History
Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom.
Think you know why the South seceded? If you haven’t read this book then I doubt you do. At least, I doubt you know the reason Johnson reveals in this book. Yes it’s slavery, but it’s far crazier than you’ve thought: The South seceded in large part due to its aspirations (and perceived necessity) of the global/imperial market expansion of slavery (it’s way more interesting than that may sound).
First, my one negative: Personally, I could have done without all the chapters on steamboats, but hey, maybe that is your thing.
But even still, this book is just spectacular. Not only is it a fine history of antebellum slavery in general, but the thesis Johnson sets out to prove, that the standard version of the reasoning of the South’s secession is anachronistic and ignores the imperialistic aspirations of the South is framework shifting. And he proves it. Invasions of Cuba paid for and performed by southerners? The toppling of the Nicaraguan government and the installation of a white southerner as Nicaraguan president? Like I said, incredible. The South had imperialistic aims for slavery and saw the election of Lincoln (as well as a host of other events) as the nail in the coffin for their twisted fantasies. This, was in large part the driving factor of the Civil War.
If you don’t want the full 420page treatment, then I suggest reading the Introduction and the final four chapters. You'll miss some intriguing stories and a lot of information about steam boats, but you'll get the thesis and that's what matters with this book.
2. Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race.
3. Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia.
4. J.S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933-1945.
5. Kathryn T. Long, God in the Rainforest: A Tale of Martyrdom and Redemption in Amazonian Ecuador.
Auto/Biography
James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography.
Well written. Insightful. The fact that it is a biography of Herman Bavinck (one of the premier Reformed theologians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries) should say the rest.
2. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me.
3. Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait.
3. Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance.
5. Larry Tauton, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens.
Fiction
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, In the First Circle.
Cards on the table: I'm a Solzhenitsyn fanboy, but all bias aside, this book is absolutely incredible. This took me a long time to read (I actually started 2019) due to grad school readings and the fact that it’s just a heavy book in a lot ways (including literally heavy with it being 741+ pages)! I think it took me so long because of the suspenseful nature of the book. The entire book takes place in about a week with flashbacks to other times before the central plot that drives the narrative. So every page has you on the edge of your seat just wondering when the preverbal shoe is going to drop. Besides that, within the overarching narrative are dozens of sub-narratives with their own suspense. It's thrilling in a sense but also draining.
Solzhenitsyn has Stalin’s Communist Russia and its hellish Gulag system in his sights. But he also delves into themes of humanity, suffering, moral objectivity, and more. The dialogue between the three main interlocutors provide some of the most philosophically stimulating parts of the book. But the best part of the novel is the humanness of the characters–prisoner or “free,” zek or Stalin himself (the “Stalin chapters” are remarkable)–their doubts and fears, hopes and dreams, struggles and victories.
In the First Circle is an outstanding novel for the content and themes it holds, but also by the storytelling genius of Solzhenitsyn. He tells dozens of characters’ “stories” and interweaves them all. But be prepared, dog-ear the character list, you will need it.
2. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward.
3. Pat Barker, Regeneration.
4. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin.
5. Douglas Wilson, Evangellyfish.
Ethics
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent, Rational, Animals.
This is, perhaps, the most important ethics text I have ever read and one that is most needed in our age of individualization. MacIntyre points out, rightly, how most ethical meta-theories attribute autonomy, cognitive ability, and self-sufficiency to be the markers of humanness. His argument is that if this are what determines what it means to be human, then millions of people (children, the elderly, humans with handicaps) must be less than human. His proposal flips the script by giving a far more realistic and honest assessment of what it means to be human. To be human, for MacIntyre, is actually to be dependent on others. Our lack of independence, our need for other humans (from infancy until our death), is what makes us human. This has profound repercussions for ethics.
2. Oliver O'Donovan, Begotten or Made.
3. James K.A. Smith, How Not to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor.
4. Oliver O'Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics.
5. O. Carter Snead, What it Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Bioethics.
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