10 Significant Books from 2021

It was a good, if different reading year. I read and reviewed many fewer books this year than in any past year. In large part this due to reading for a book that I am writing and trying to write said book, which is not going as fast as I would like. Also, the pace at work seems to get increasingly faster and consume more and more of my free mental space, which makes it much easier to pick up something light and fluffy or find a movie to watch than to work through some excellent, but challenging Christian non-fiction.

In any case, my apologies for flagging aside, my deeper apologies go to a number of books that my friends have obviously appreciated, but which I am unable to commend simply because I didn’t have time or energy to read them.

However, here is my imperfect list of good books I encountered in 2021 that I would commend to you for future reading. They are in no particular order.

You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World by Alan Noble

“This is a book I would recommend for people of every age, but especially for those about to be sent out into the world. Noble teaches undergraduates, so it has the marks of many conversations had behind an office door, with students who came for help with an essay, but needed assistance in putting life together. Would that many more young Christians would discover the central message of this volume before heading out into the world, making shipwreck of their health, their life, and perhaps their faith in attempt to become someone, do something, and belong to themselves in an inhuman world.”

The Glory Now Revealed: What We’ll Discover About God in Heaven by Andrew M. Davis

“If asked where to learn about heaven, this is the resource I will point people toward. It is clear, simple, and Christ-honoring. More importantly, the book minimizes speculation by focusing on what can be understood from Scripture plainly read. This is the sort of book that draws the reader’s mind beyond the pages themselves to the hope that the author is pointing toward. It is a hopeful book, which offers a healthy dose of encouragement in a world that seems to be bent on wearing us down and keeping our minds of the life to come. The Glory Now Revealed is the sort of book that helps us become more like Christ by imagining more vividly what our future life in the presence of the visible Christ will be like in heaven.”

Ethics as Worship: The Pursuit of Moral Discipleship by Mark Leiderbach and Evan Lenow

“Ethics as worship means that the Christian worldview is the beginning of the moral quest. The foundation of the Christian worldview is properly Scripture, which anchors the method and content in the reveal Word of God. But a purely “scriptural” ethic can lead to casuistry. After all, Scripture does not say that we cannot use cocaine or tell us precisely what to do about global warming. An alternative, which includes various forms of philosophical ethics attempts to get at truth apart from Scripture and then looks for passages that can illustrate. Still other forms of so-called Christian ethics are more like weather gauges that check the cultural climate and decide write and wrong to try to maintain respectability. Viewing ethics as worship puts God at the center, with Scripture as the foundation, and delight in God and holiness as primary signs of success.”

Enjoying the Bible: Literary Approaches to Loving the Scriptures by Matthew Mullins

‘This book is an academic text. The best audience will be those familiar with the basics of literary theory or hermeneutics. Enjoying the Bible would make an excellent text for a “Bible as literature” course at the undergraduate level or as a source of encouragement for English majors in universities trying to reconcile the value of a literary approach to the Bible with its spiritual authority. This is a volume that can serve to encourage the weary seminary student or studious pastor whose need to produce a paper or sermon sometimes stifles a thoroughgoing delight in Scripture. This is a good book that will help many faithful, orthodox believers grow in their love of God and his Word.’

The End of Our Exploring: A book about Questioning and the Confidence of Faith by Matthew Lee Anderson

“As a parent of children who “know all the answers” because we have spent a lot of time on discipleship, I find Anderson’s faithful but open approach to questioning helpful. This is a book that I will have my children read toward the end of high school. Sometimes it is frightening that my kids have the ready answers to theological questions. I worry that they have borrowed my authority, as it were, because they have seen me teach through an abbreviated systematic theology, several books of the Bible, and other topical lessons. They know that I have read the books and explored the questions, but it is important that they do some of their own exploring, too.”

Recovering the Lost Art of Reading: A Quest for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful by Leland Ryken and Glenda Mathes

“The self-description of the book is apt. The authors write, “[This is] a guidebook by two season and enthusiastic reading travelers, who show all readers . . . how to discover more delight in the reading journey.” This is not an academic volume, though it has academic value. It is not a prescriptive “how to” like Adler’s book. It is filled with instruction, but it is not purely didactic. It’s the sort of book that can be read piecemeal as someone tries to grow in the art of reading. It’s also the sort of book that can be used as a textbook in a high school or introductory college literature class. It would also be useful as a companion to a reading group. Most significantly, it’s a book that will help its reader grow in their love of the better things in life.”

Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity by Alisa Childers

“In response to the redefinitions and abandonment of the ancient Christian faith by progressive Christians, Childers points people toward “historic Christianity.” She doesn’t perfectly define this term either, but she describes it as a faith “deeply rooted in history. In fact, it is the only religious system I can think of that depends on a historical event (the resurrection of Jesus) being real—not fake—news.” She goes on to summarize her faith as understanding that, “The Bible is [God’s] Word, or it’s not. Jesus was raised from the dead, or he wasn’t. Christianity is true, or it isn’t. There is no ‘my truth’ when it comes to God.” What she defends through the book is the faith “once and for all delivered to the saints,” with the truthfulness of Scripture at the core and the necessary conclusions drawn from that about the nature of God, the importance of the cross, and the goodness of pursuing holiness as it is described in Scripture.”

Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into Reading the News by Jeffrey Bilbro

The core of the problem, as Bilbro presents it, is not necessarily the technology or the content of the news, but rather that too much of what we get that passes as news has very little to do with our lives, even though it is designed to rattle our cage. What we get angry or excited about often has little to do with what God is concerned about: “Perhaps we need to conduct an emotional audit and consider which issues or news items cause us to become angry, outraged, or excited: Are we grieving over what grieves God and rejoicing over what brings him joy? Or have we become emotionally invested in trivia while growing apathetic about matters of real import?”

Bilbro recognizes that a big part of the problem is the way we read the news. As a result, the fix is to change ourselves and what we value. This is a book that is timely and well suited for those looking for an off-ramp from the highway of partisan politics, misanthropy, and emotional turmoil that often goes with the news.

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman

This is the only one of the books which I have not reviewed this year. Actually, I did review it, but due to a tragic failure of autosave, my lovely review was lost and I have not recreated it yet. I will provide a mini-review here.

Trueman’s book is one of the most important books of the year and likely will remain significant for years to come. Rise and Triumph digs into the reality-denying world of identity confusion that surrounds us. How have we come to a place where a statement like, “I am a man trapped in a woman’s body,” is considered meaningful? “Gender Identity” wasn’t really a recognized term when the infamous Obergefell case redefined so much of reality. Trueman walks through the stages of modern philosophy and culture that have allowed that sweeping change to be made so quickly and so readily absorbed. The books moves from Rousseau, through the Romantic Poets, Nietzche, Marx, and Darwin, the into Freud, with Marcuse and some other contemporaries thrown in. It’s obvious Trueman has done his homework, though his reading may not agree with the most generous interpreters of those works. Rise and Triumph has explanatory power. The really good news is that a more accessible version is being published by Crossway in 2022.

Dispatches from the Front: Soties of Gospel Advance in the World’s Difficult Places by Tim Keesee

Each of these dispatches—quick vignettes of the gospel bearing fruit and increasing—reminds readers that we have a supernatural God who works in mighty ways to accomplish his vital work in the world. For the pastor weighed down by the constant bickering about pandemic protocols, selfishness of congregations, and mundane arrangements of life in the US, this book offers a vitamin shot of encouragement about the way God can work in hard places. For the average Christian whose vision of the faith is limited to a service that can be squeezed in between travel league games and vacations, this will reveal Christian faith that energizes all of life.

10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity by Rebecca McLaughlin

The usefulness of this book is that McLaughlin has transposed important apologetic arguments from the halls of the atheist/Christian debates and put it in language and terms that are absorbable for the average teen. McLaughlin uses illustrations from Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and a variety of Disney animated movies. She does this as someone who has obviously watched and enjoyed them, so they don’t come across as misplaced tinsel, but actually support the content of the book. This is a book that reads well without sacrificing the quality of the arguments.

The End of Our Exploring - A Review

If what I see on social media is to be believed, all the cool kids are deconstructing the faith of their childhood. It’s all the rage, but it’s not really a new thing.

For some, kissing dating goodbye was a traumatic experience, though for many of the most vocal critics, I suspect Josh Harris’s book provided a solution to a problem they only wish they had. Nevertheless, the experience turned too much for Harris’s faith, as he has recently abandoned Christianity and begun selling “deconstruction kits” along with a series of webinars for $275.

Other deconstruction workers are less entrepreneurial, but there is a steady stream of people who were once overt, professional Christians who have transitioned to making money off of deconverting and encouraging other people to do the same.

One response to the deconstruction/deconversion movement is to provide answers to the cultural defeaters of the day. Standard apologetics books like Lee Strobel’s Case for Christ or Josh McDowell’s More than a Carpenter provide helpful aids to those with general struggles regarding particular questions about Christianity. Other books like Tim Keller’s The Reason for God and Making Sense of God tend to focus on bigger picture problems and defeaters. Recently books like Alisa Childers’s Another Gospel? tell the story of starting down the path of deconstruction and ending back a Jesus. These assume that someone is either outside of Christianity looking in or already down the road of deconversion and need pulling back. It is a helpful approach for many.

But what about those that stand on the fuzzy border between faith and doubt and wonder which way to turn?

Matthew Lee Anderson’s 2013 book, The End of Our Exploring: A Book About Questioning and the Confidence of Faith, provides a helpful resource for those with questions or who want to create a space for legitimate questions within the faith community.

Anderson is a pastor’s kid who was (by his own confession) the insufferable know-it-all who was too cocksure to ask good questions or hear good answers. He has come a long way, and this book can help readers make significant progress without some of the awkward relationships.

The book begins by exploring the nature of questioning, identifying that many questions are not good questions because they presuppose an answer. They key message is that good questions can be helpful as we seek to recalibrate our faith—knocking off the pieces inconsistent with Scripture and keeping the parts that fit with an integrated biblical understanding––but most people are not well-equipped to ask good questions.

Anderson goes on to note that our information economy that values data rather than wisdom contributes to shallowness of discourse. So does the shallowness with which much of the Christian community in the West actually holds their Christian convictions. The result is that young people often either fail to ask good questions or encounter hostility when questions are asked.

Questioning is viewed as dangerous in some churches because too few people know the answers. In some churches, questioning is taboo because it leads to the uncovering of inconsistencies between faith and practice. Sometimes questioning is unwelcome because the people being questioned have the same questions, fear they are wrong, but are clinging to faith in the face of that prospect.

Some see questioning as an act of faithlessness, but Anderson shows how good questioning can be a catalyst for a deeper faith, because there are valid answers to the hardest questions that can be tossed at Christianity. The End of Our Exploring explains why that is so and also helps the reader begin to formulate better questions.

As a parent of children who “know all the answers” because we have spent a lot of time on discipleship, I find Anderson’s faithful but open approach to questioning helpful. This is a book that I will have my children read toward the end of high school. Sometimes it is frightening that my kids have the ready answers to theological questions. I worry that they have borrowed my authority, as it were, because they have seen me teach through an abbreviated systematic theology, several books of the Bible, and other topical lessons. They know that I have read the books and explored the questions, but it is important that they do some of their own exploring, too.

The way that Anderson encourages exploring is critical to the outcome achieved. The nature of this exploring is clear from the title of the book, which comes from a T. S. Eliot poem:

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

That perspective marks the fundamental difference between faithful questioning and deconstructing. When people deconstruct they are seeking to tear down because they’ve already decided the thing is wrong. Anderson’s questioning and exploring is an attempt to know the truth better. It does not presuppose the truth, as if the conclusion is foregone and the exploration is simply a sowing of wild oats, but it does not begin from a posture of skepticism and caustic disbelief.

 The End of Our Exploring is a warm, personal book. It is thoughtful, rigorous, and challenging. Above all, it is helpful as I continue my exploring and seek to point other explorers toward a deeper understanding of truth.

The End of Our Exploring: A Book about Questioning and the Confidence of Faith

By Anderson, Matthew Lee

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Your Future Self Will Thank You - A Review

One of the most challenging questions for Christians to ask themselves is whether they are more Christlike today than they were a year or even a decade ago. Even among those of us active in our local churches on a regular basis, this question can lead to awkward silence and, perhaps, even prevarication. If we are brutally honest, most of us cannot claim to be more Christlike today than we ever have been and that should give us some pause to think.

It’s not that we should be perpetually living on some sort of “mountain top” spiritual experience. Christlikeness has very little to do with how we feel, but it has a whole lot to do with how we live.

And the question of how we live is not a question of our avoidance of sin. Most of us don’t drink, smoke, chew, or hang with girls that do. This isn’t simply about ethics. The question of spiritual progress has a great deal more to do with the normal advance that takes place as we mature as Christians. Unfortunately, for many of us, that advance looks less like progress and more like a slow slide backward or an attempt to tread water while pretending to be moving ahead.

Every year we make new resolutions. We are going to pray more, lose weight, memorize Scripture, and be more diligent in a hundred different ways. However, it seems that a few weeks later our will-power has failed and we have slid back to where we started.

Drew Dyck’s recent book: Your Future Self Will Thank You: Secrets to Self-Control from the Bible & Brain Science, is, despite its clunky title, a very helpful book. It is a quick read, but well-written and robustly researched. This book belongs in a reading list with other books on spiritual disciplines.

The basic topic of this book, as the subtitle indicates, is self-control. This seems to set the volume up for two potential errors: legalism and self-reliance. Dyck is careful to avoid both. He does this by reminding readers that self-control is a biblical virtue (e.g., Prov 25:28, 1 Cor 9:25) and by noting that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit (e.g., Gal 5:23). We cannot earn salvation by being more self-controlled, but growth in godliness should result in greater self-restraint.

The Bible points us toward the need for self-control as a sign of and means to pursue spiritually maturity, but that leaves those of us who struggle with the virtue pondering why we can’t just be better. That’s where the science comes in.

As someone who struggles with self-control, Dyck set out on a quest to figure out why. This took him through a year or so of reading the literature available in the field of psychology and brain science. He has helpfully distilled the results in this book and carefully balanced those findings against the wisdom of Scripture. What he finds is much like the argument Christian Miller presents in The Character Gap: human character can be shaped, there are practical ways to do so, and that those practical means of forming our character look a great deal like traditional Christian devotional practices.

Having explained why we so often fall short of our goals of being more self-controlled, Dyck also helps explain how we can get better. He goes well beyond the usual Sunday School response: read the Bible, pray, and attend more church. These are all a part of the formula, but without a little more meat on the bones, such admonitions leave us asking why we haven’t gotten any holier in the past decade.

The basic formula laid out in Your Future Self Will Thank You is that we need to incrementally build new habits. Dyck sifts through research that shows that the problem with most of our self-improvement attempts is that we try to change too much too quickly and without the appropriate incentive structures. Dyck uses recent scientific research to show that will power is a finite resource. It can be developed over time. However, our self-control is subject to fatigue. When we are tired, stressed, or distracted we are much more likely to fail in our attempts at self-control. Not coincidentally, this happens to match what Scripture teaches. This is why Sabbath is built into the pattern of Scripture. This is why Proverbs focuses so much on patterns of life.

Interspersed with the explanations of why we fail, Dyck has included helpful steps to begin to develop better habits. His examples tend to focus on things that should matter to us as Christians: physical health, stronger prayer lives, more consistent Scripture reading. This is a long way from self-help book designed to unlock ten secrets to build a better you. This is a book that can help provide practical mechanisms to get Christians to develop better habits that lead us toward holiness.

Dyck’s book will benefit those who already have a good understanding of spiritual disciplines. For those that don’t, it should be paired with a book like Andy Davis’s, An Infinite Journey: Growing toward Christlikeness or Don Whitney’s, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. In fact, Dyck’s book fills out some of what is absent from traditional books on spiritual growth because it helps explain why we fail and what, practically, we can do to fail less.

Your Future Self Will Thank You: Secrets to Self-Control from the Bible and Brain Science (A Guide for Sinners, Quitters, and Procrastinators)

By Drew Dyck

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.