The Resolute

The longer I continue as a Christian the more Christian books and literature I seem to acquire, and on the odd occasion I even read them. It seems for every conceivable topic there is a plethora of books available to enlighten me.

However there is one particular kind of book that I find quite worrying. It is what I will refer to as the Christian ‘guide book’. At this point some distinctions and definitions are important. A ‘guide book’ as I am defining it is not a theological or doctrinal book; these are books which aim to look at the bible’s teaching on a particular topic such as the Spirit, or Election, or the Cross in order from a rather academic perspective. These books I believe are very helpful.

Nor is a ‘guide book’ a commentary. Rather a ‘guide book’ is a book aimed at instructing Christians on how to live either generally or with regard to a particular issue. These books may heavily base their conclusions on the bible’s teaching or if there is little in the bible on their topic (such as the issue of dating as Gus has already mentioned) then they refer to “Christian wisdom” or some other such ‘authority’.

At the outset I will admit that some of these books can be very helpful, however, as a genre I think most of them are not. The reason: they are quite simply rubbish. Whilst commentaries and theological books look at the bible’s teaching and effectively are someone’s considered opinion on what the bible is saying argued from the bible; guide books more often than not seek to tell Christians exactly how to live in a way that does not reflect circumstances, the freedom afforded to us as Christians and more often than not the bible’s teaching.

2 Timothy 3:16 ff are very famous words, and if the bible is indeed “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. “ Then why would we spend our time looking at someone else’s wisdom when we have the bible’s wisdom, and the Holy Spirit to help us understand and implement it????

My other problem is that so often ‘guide books’ take us away from grace. ‘Guide books’ give us rules for living as a Christian, which is just what Jesus death shows me won’t save me. I need to rely on Jesus death and resurrection for salvation, not on John Smith’s Guide to Christian living.

My problem with these books is not so much that they exist but that we set too much store by them. How about we do Christianity by the book? The only book that matters, the Bible.

Christian PodCasts

Number: 711
Total size: 12.16 GB
Total length: 20.7 days

Christian Books

Number: 69
Total number of pages: 26,282
Number of Bibles: 2 ESV, 5 NIV, 1 NASB, 2 Good News

Christian Conferences and Camps

Number in 2009: 9
Number from 2002-2008: 39
Humber of days 2002-2009: 199

Bible Reading

Number of hours actually reading the Bible: …

A Definition

Noun
mandate

An official or authoritative command; an order or injunction; a commission; a judicial precept.¹

That is not what I’m talking about.

Some background information

There has been some recent talk about one-to-one ministry. For example the September 2009 issue of The Briefing was titled “One sheep at a time: The power of one-to-one ministry“. A soon-to-be-released book by Colin Marshal and Tony Payne called “The Trestle and the Vine” also talks quite a bit about how one-to-one ministry is integral to the mission of a church.

The basic idea is that mature Christians disciple other Christians who go on to disciple other Christians who go on to disciple other…

What this looks like in practice

Man-dates

They are not like the kind of date I’d go on with my girlfriend.

I meet up with three guys from church. The basic idea is to catch up, read the Bible and pray together. So we usually try and set a date every two weeks or so, we might get lunch, grab a coffee, head to the park or just find a couch in the church building.

Just like a date with a woman is planned/unplanned, fun and intentional in it’s long term goals; so too is a man-date.

It’s planned in that you need to be disciplined to make time for it. It’s unplanned in that there is not really any preparation required, just grab a Bible and continue reading through a book together. They are fun in that we get to act like boys for a while, ie. talk about sport or computer games, fart, chuck a footy around, that kind of thing (something that’s missing from our busy lives too often). So it depends on who I’m meeting with, but we might get coffee or lunch, or head to the park or go fishing. And finally it has long term goals. I hope to see all the guys I meet up with growing in maturity, Godliness and one day themselves be meeting up with other guys to repeat the process.

Man-dates are good, find someone who you can meet up with regularly to share your life with, read the Bible and pray.

Women… you might need to find a new name (suggestions welcome), but it all applies just the same, except maybe the farting.

1. mandate. Wiktionary. Retrieved 14 October 2009 [↩]

A quite time is a common Christian practice of reading the Bible and praying. Many Christians seek to spend between half an hour and an hour each day reading the Bible and praying, many other Christians seek to avoid doing so.

This article looks at Bible reading, and offers 5 simple steps on how to avoid bible reading:

1. Get tired. This will allow you to use the “I’m too tired” excuse. Stay up late. Facebook and Wikipedia are good ways to waste time while staying up late.
2. Get busy. This will allow you to use the “I’m too busy” excuse. Find meaningless things to do such as Facebook and Wikipedia. This will also help you complete step 1. Watching excessive TV can also be helpful. Important, life changing programs such as Australian Idol, Farmer Wants a Wife and Top Gear are appropriate time fillers.
3. Choose an ineffective time of day for Bible reading. Specifically, if you are a morning person then read the bible at night, and if you are not a morning person then keep committing to read it in the morning. The aim is to make it more difficult than it needs to be.
4. Never be honest about how frequently (or infrequently) you actually read the Bible. When discussing your bible reading habits the correct answer is “My quiet times are going great”. If you were to be honest and say that you are struggling to regularly read the Bible then you will find that friends will want to help motivate and encourage you in this struggle.
5. Avoid any kind of reading plan. Reading plans, whether formal publications or informal self defined plans, will provide too much structure and motivation for bible reading. They would cause the reader to become disciplined which would not help avoid further bible reading.