Saturday 31 July, 2010

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Buying a Christian book part 2: What to avoid

Posted: Jun 29, 2008 by Matt

If a new Christian walks into Wesley Owen (or any large Christian book store, or in fact any Christian book store) how do they know which book to buy? We know that Christian books vary wildly in quality and often in theology. It’s not uncommon to find most of the early church heresies repeated in many popular Christian books. In the last blog we looked at the positive side – what to look for when buying a Christian book. In this blog I want to list some of the pitfalls of buying a Christian book. What should you avoid?

• Don’t assume that the top 10 is a guide to quality. It’s easy to think that because the majority of Christians like a certain book that makes it a good book. I don’t think that’s true at all. There may be some great Christian books that make it into the top 10, but the most popular views tend to be the ones that flatter us the most, pander to our egos and leave us very much in our comfort zones. The default mode of our humans hearts is to love ourselves more than anything else, so popularity is no guide to quality especially where Christian books are concerned. We all like to talk about ourselves and if a Christian writer is going to spend 200 pages doing that, the money virtually walks out of our wallets on its own. A Christian book is not a washing machine. A washing machine washes clothes and popular opinion may be a great indicator of whether we’ll end up with clean clothes without much hassle, but it’s no guide when it comes to God’s Word telling us what we need to know. So many Christian books tell us what we want to know rather than what we need _to know and there’s a world of difference. What we _need to know is more important in the end, because that’s what makes us more like Jesus.

• Get your light reading somewhere else. There’s a tendency for Christians to want ‘light‘ reading and I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all – if anything Christians need to chill out a lot more and make time to relax and make time to turn off the TV for a good read. But why do we want Christian light reading? Why don’t we just go to Waterstones down the road and buy a great novel? The quality of the writing is most likely to be better and your more likely to enjoy it. If Christian writers are that good at writing fiction why don’t the main bookstores have their books in stock? I know Christians may linch me for saying this, but I’m not sure there’s a place for ‘Christian fiction’ – I think it’s a sad result of Platonistic Christianity where we feel the need to cut ourselves off from the world at every available opportunity. Personally if I wanted to get people reading Christian books who don’t normally I’d buy them a Christian biography. They’re normally well written, passionate and have a point. They’re not ‘light‘ reading but they’re very accessible.

• Theology is not boring. As Christians we have an amazing God who has communicated his good news to us through the Bible. And yet many Christians aren’t interested in reading books that help them understand their amazing God better. Now I understand that some Bible study books are dry and boring and there’s still a long way to go for many authors to avoid writing about the Bible and putting you to sleep at the same time, but there are many authors who bring God’s Word to life. We’re missing a treasure store of great books by righting many of them off at first glance.

• The new new story. Why is it that a book that promises a new look at Jesus or a new understanding of the Bible is so appealing? The fact that Christianity is over 2000 years old and Judaism, even older must surely ring alarm bells? Instead we’re like magpies around something shiny and silver when buying books that promise new insights into the Bible, heaven, Jesus, Paul or whatever. If a book promises to tell you secrets noone else has, just read the history books to see how many heresies throughout church history taught the same thing! The one lesson we learn from history is that we don’t learn from it. Rather than hearing about new ways to see things, we need reminding of how amazing and exciting the old, old story is.

• It’s all about me. Our society tells us that we can achieve anything if we look deep within. We just need to believe in ourselves. It’s sad that many Christian books preach the same message with a Christian tint. So many books promise to make you happier, wealthier, understand the inner you better etc… The fact is that these books are just self-help books that you can buy anywhere and Christian publishers are making money from Christians selling this stuff to gullable Christians. Avoid books that centre on us and buy books that centre on God and his glorious gospel.I hope you’ve found these two posts helpful. They’re not exhaustive by any means and I’m no expert. If you have anything to share why not post a comment about this blog.