My Top Five

I have noticed recently on Facebook that people are sharing lists of books that have had a powerful impact on their lives.  These lists are typically five or ten books in length, and they are books that the list maker return to regularly.  I have been fascinated at many of the books mentioned by people on their lists, both for the good and for the bad...

While it is hard to really draw a bead on just five that have had a powerful impact on my life, here is my honest effort--although, to be honest, I may redact this list sometime in the coming days.  Some of you will wonder, where is Dostoyevsky, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Orwell, Dickson, and the like...?  I have read them, and enjoyed most of them.  But this list isn't about the greatest literary works I have ever encountered.  Rather, it is a list of the five books that have deeply shaped me and I continue to turn to on a regular basis (and, at least two of them are considered literary giants!).

So, with no further adieu, here it is:


1. As a Christian, it goes without saying that the most important book that I have ever read is the Holy Bible.  Christianity is not a faith rooted in subjective experience.  Rather, it is a faith that is rooted in God's self-revelation to humanity in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.  The Bible is where we come to understand this self-revelation of God in Jesus.  That is, Scripture bears witness to Jesus.  It testifies to the truth of Jesus and gives us an objective way of understanding the nature of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  2 Timothy 3:16 informs us that, "all Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."  

2.  I was thirty-two years old before I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time.  The blockbuster movies were already in the theaters before I ever held this book in my hand.  At the urging of several friends I bought a used copy on amazon.com and eagerly began to read it upon receiving it in the mail.  I almost quit reading it the first day.  The history of Middle Earth and then the encounter of the hobbits with Tom Bombadil at the beginning was enough to make my head spin.  I stuck with it, though, and found myself blessed as the pages began to turn.  In the past ten years I have read this book six times...I try to pick it up every eighteen months or so.  I feel like I am going on a journey to visit old friends every time I pick it up.  While J.R.R. Tolkien denied that LOR was an allegory of the Christian faith, a person of faith can't help but pick up Tolkien's baptized Christian imagination as the pages fly by.

3. As with The Lord of the Rings mentioned above, I never actually read The Chronicles of Narnia until I was in my early thirties.  As a child I had watched the animated movies on television and seen the BBC recordings on PBS, but I had never actually read the books.  It was the release of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a motion picture in 2005 that compelled me to read them.  I loved them (well, except for The Horse and His Boy).  Some would say I am cheating by choosing a set of books, and that is a legitimate complaint, so I will narrow this down to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  C.S. Lewis' imaginative world of Narnia is deeply rooted in the reality of the world in which we live today.  I love the Beaver family who faithfully remember the ancient magic and prophecies.  Ah Narnia, where it is always winter, but never Christmas...

4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is special to me for a number of reasons.  Growing up in Hannibal, Missouri I was surrounded by the legacy of Samuel Clemons (Mark Twain).  I first read this book as an illustrated children's book in elementary school.  I read the actual book for the first time in Mrs. Anders 7th grade English class at Hannibal Junior High School.  She helped to make the book come alive, which is a true gift.  Beyond having a great teacher/guide for this book, I grew up attending First Presbyterian Church of Hannibal, where Samuel Clemons spent many Sunday mornings as a young boy.  I also had the privilege of working at the Mark Twain Cave for three summers while in high school, the very cave where Tom and Becky were lost and where Injun Joe met his demise.  So, perhaps I don't love this book primarily for it's literary greatness-but don't be deceived; Twain has an uncanny ability to address societal evils with wit and bite.

5. As a minister, this little book by James Torrance blew my mind away.  Worship Community, and the Triune God of Grace is only four chapters and 125 pages long, but every page is dripping with the importance of the right worship of God.  He writes that, "Worship is the gift of participating through the Spirit in the incarnate Sons communion the Father." In other words, worship isn't about our personal experience or whether or not we got fed on any particular Sunday.  Rather, worship is all about lifting up our praise to the Lord God in all of his fullness: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  To quote from the back cover, "This book explodes the notion that the doctrine of the Trinity may be indispensable for the creed but remote from life and worship."  Only my Bible has more underlining in it than this book.