BOOKS–Where My Pointy Nose Is Currently Stuck
Until I can figure out how to make the sidebar display my current reading list (Grr!), I’ll be logging them here. Here’s what I’m reading right now…
God & Government by Charles Colson. This is a revised and updated edition of his bestselling book, Kingdoms in Conflict. It’s been updated to include his thoughts on recent events such as 9-11, radical Islamist jihad, embryonic stem cell research, etc. After years of watching the growing rift between secular society and the religious culture, many of his acquaintances were urging him to write a book. After all, he’d been a non-believing White House staffer before becoming a prominent voice for evangelicals. He’d seen both sides of the issue. He wasn’t sure he could ever find a framework for addressing the gigantic political and religious mess that America has become. His studies of Augustine’s The City of God and Richard John Neuhaus’ The Naked Public Square provided such a framework, however. His book began on a plane above India, when he wrote “The kingdoms are in conflict, both vying for ultimate allegiance. Not just in America, but around the world. By his nature man is irresistibly religious–and he is political. Unless the two can coexist, mankind will continue in turmoil. Tragically, we have lost sight of both the nature of man and the nature of God and His rule over the world.” This forms the thesis for his book, that the sphere of the church, as witness of God’s Kingdom, and the sphere of governance/politics should cooperate and coexist. They should NEVER, however, usurp one another’s roles. Any time the two realms get off balance, “the public good suffers.” If you’re a member of the secular left, looking for substance to your view that religion must be forever banished from the public square, you won’t find help here. But neither will you find help if you’re a far-right Christian looking for a call for the Church to conquer the public square or Capitol Hill. Colson navigates a careful course between the two extremes, encouraging our public discourse to return to civility and mutual openness. He puts forward some very interesting thoughts. I’m less than halfway finished, but thus far I can endorse the book readily.
In Six Days: Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, ed. by John F. Ashton, PhD. (Linked to christianbook.com because it’s $3 cheaper there than Amazon. 8) The debate over the age of the earth is HUGE these days, even within the church. Though I don’t believe where you come down on this issue is going to make-or-break you for eternity (and it’s distastrous when churches get embroiled in this particular fight), an open-minded person should know the reasoning on all sides of the issue. I’ve got material in my library that takes about every possible position on it. I picked up this book because I wanted to see what actual scientists are saying, from their own disciplines, that can lend itself to at least a questioning of Darwinian evolution, if not a complete scientific proof that the world is young (neither Darwinians nor Creationists can “prove” their position, based on the scientific method–there’s no way to do experiments that are repeatable, and no one I know currently living on the planet was around when the earth came into being. Both sides can only show how available data can lend some creedence to their view). So I’m steeling my brains to see if I can follow the thinking of scientists. I am definitely NOT a scientist; why do you think I’m a preacher? 
I’ve slogged through the first essay and yeah, it gets a little technical. I’ll probably be in and out of this one for quite awhile, because I’ll need plenty of time to try and wrap my brain around what’s going on. So don’t expect a final review for some time. Wish me luck; I was always more of a literature and language kind of guy in school. My grades in math and science were…unremarkable.
WordPress for Dummies, Lisa Sabin-Wilson. (Picked this one up so that I don’t drive Micah insane with questions! No seriously, the WordPress deal is brand-new to me, having come from the Blogger world where the interface is a great deal different. I will mercilessly tweak this blog until it looks the way I want it–only thing is, I don’t know how (yet)! This little gem ought to take me pretty far–and I’ll be looking less amateurish soon! Man, I wish I were in college at the time that the internet was actually up and running. When I graduated from Iowa State, you were cool if you had one of those ancient 2400 baud modems and could connect with bulletin boards (you should have seen my collection of mahjongg tilesets!) HTML, XML, CSS…I might have run into all those letters while eating alphabet soup as a kid while watching the Sonny & Cher show on TV, but that’s about my limit of familiarity with ‘em. I hope to remedy some of that in the future (but don’t expect any quick miracles).
