Tim Casteel

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My Top Books of 2023

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I read more than I did in 2022 but a lot less than I used to back in the days of 75 or 100 books/yr. The biggest shift this year has been toward reading the Bible more. I really like my current method of reading the Bible: reading M’Cheyne’s Bible-in-a-year and then studying one book of the Bible in depth.

The Bible is easily the best book I read all year. I’m starting to REALLY enjoy reading it – I think, the fruit of repeated reading. It’s such a complex and endlessly deep book.

This design by Chris Harrison beautifully illustrates the interconnectedness of Scripture. The connecting arcs are a visual hyperlink – showing when a verse in the Bible references back to another verse (a total of 63,779 cross-references). The more I read the Bible, the more fun it is, as I begin to see the threads. Several of the books below helped me to better see those connections.

“At any price, give me the book of God! Let me be a man of one book.” – John Wesley

The Top Books I read in 2023:

  1. The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God  – G.K. Beale
  2. Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow – Yuval Noah Harari
  3. The Six Conversations: Pathways to Connecting in an Age of Isolation and Incivility – Heather Holleman
  4. Feminism against Progress – Mary Harrington
  5. How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels – N.T. Wright
  6. Everything Sad Is Untrue – Daniel Nayeri
  7. Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power – Byung-Chul Han
  8. From Land to Lands, from Eden to the Renewed Earth: A Christ-Centred Biblical Theology of the Promised Land – Munther Isaac

The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God  – G.K. Beale

Tremendously helpful book for understanding the entire Bible. Beginning at the garden of eden, the archetypal temple, Beale traces temple language throughout the Bible, methodically working his way through every book of the Bible that references the temple. 

God created the universe to be his great temple. And he gave Adam a charge to spread expand the glory of God to fill the entire earth. This goal would be achieved not directly by God but by a “human vice-regent whom he installed in the garden sanctuary to extend the temple of God’s presence worldwide.”

That was Adam’s purpose, and it is ours. Jesus founded the heavenly temple on earth and left us the mission of extending the temple of God to cover the earth like the waters cover the sea.

We, as the church, ARE the end-time temple.

Our job on earth is to expand the kingdom temple, the presence of God, through obedience to our king.

If you’re interested in this topic but not enough to read a 459 page book, you could read Beale’s 177 page version of this book God Dwells Among Us though it’s significantly less good. 

Here’s the thing about good academic works – they’re often very readable and more clearly argued than their stripped/dumbed down counterparts. The 177pg version doesn’t make the content more accessible, but quite the opposite. It lacks coherence and is difficult to understand. While the 459 page book is long, it’s very clear and coherent. And the length is a feature, not a bug. We learn through repeated exposure over weeks, not days. If you chew on the Temple in scripture for a solid month, it will stick with you. The average reader can read 450 pages in 12.5 hours. So if you read 30 minutes/day over the course of a month, you could easily read The Temple by Beale. 

It’s worth the effort. You’ll be surprised at your intellectual ability to dig deep and really learn about Scripture. You can push through some of the clunkiness of an academic work: “In this section, I will continue to attempt to draw together some of my more important hermeneutical observations and conclusions made so far throughout the study, especially as these bear upon the theology of the temple.” Yes, that sentence is very dry. But 99% of the book is packed with such incredible insight that you won’t be able to stop reading it.

Click to see my full review on Goodreads

Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow – Yuval Noah Harari

In Homo Deus, Harari argues that humankind is about to become godlike in their powers.

Humans will merge with computers who “will know your desires, likes, and dislikes even better than you.”

Yuval Harari is a gay, atheist Jewish professor at Hebrew University whom John Mark Comer calls the leading atheist of our time.

He is an honest atheist, a compelling writer and a brilliant thinker.

“Omnipotence is in front of us, almost within our reach, but below us yawns the abyss of complete nothingness…a universe devoid of meaning. Modern culture is…plagued by more existential angst than any previous culture. This is the primary commandment [of the modern age]: create meaning for a meaningless world.”

His forecast for the future is sobering: In the twenty-first century we, with the power of AI and  biotechnology, will create overwhelmingly powerful ideologies that will be able to subconsciously manipulate our brains, leaving us unable to distinguish fiction from reality.

Not a short book but it’s so engrossing and well written that the 464 pages fly by.

Click to see my full review on Goodreads

The Six Conversations: Pathways to Connecting in an Age of Isolation and Incivility – Heather Holleman

The book’s tagline sums it up well: “Pathways to Connecting in an Age of Isolation”. Aside from learning to read and conform our lives to God’s Word, I believe this is the key skill to develop: learning how to build warm, deep relationships.

“You’ll gain confidence in starting conversations. You’ll know how to connect. And your life will change forever from lonely, disconnected, insecure, and even unhealthy to living in richer communities of deep connection, security, and well-being.”

Click to see my full review on Goodreads

Feminism against Progress – Mary Harrington

Feminism Against Progress is the kind of brave book that can change history – with piercing insight into both the cause of and the cure for a rotting society.

Mary Harrington came of age in the radical left, gender-queer world of early 2000’s London, questioning whether she was really female and changing her name to Sebastian for a while.

“I was raised to believe in Progress Theology – the more-or-less religious framework that governs much of modern culture in the West. This theology says there’s a ‘right side of history’, and things can go on getting better forever. But one day, about 15 years ago, I realised I no longer believed.”

What caused Harrington to de-convert? Partly, becoming a mom:

“I’d bought uncritically into the idea that individual freedom is the highest good, that bonds or obligations are only acceptable inasmuch as they’re optional, and that men and women can and should pursue this equally. Then I went through the wonderful and disorienting experience of finding my sense of self partly merged with a dependent infant. The kind of absolute freedom I’d accepted as an unalloyed good, pre-baby, was suddenly a great deal less appealing to me than it had been, because I actively enjoyed belonging to my daughter. Pre-baby, I could do more or less what I liked, as a mother I couldn’t very well refuse to get up and feed my crying newborn at 3:30 a.m. just because I didn’t feel like it. Her interests mattered more to me than anything else in the world, including my once-treasured autonomy.”

To my knowledge, Mary Harrington is not a Christian. But her piercing writing is incredibly amicable to Christianity. Her overall goal seems to be answer the question: how do we, as very different men and women, “live together in the rubble of absolute freedom?”

The answer: get married, stay married, and have babies.

Part of Harrington’s solution is to value the contribution of women in care-roles – mothering, caring for the elderly, building relationships in neighborhoods and community. Women are the relational glue that holds together societies and encourage interdependence. We all need “a freedom haircut” and women are key leaders in this movement toward interdependence (partly by embracing their sexed difference).

Click to see my full review on Goodreads

How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels – N.T. Wright

I’ll read anything by NT Wright. Before reading this book I could not have answered: if you strip away the birth (incarnation) and the death/resurrection of Jesus, what was the life of Jesus about?

His most challenging point is that Jesus did not come to teach people how to go to heaven.

“This is not—demonstrably not—what the four gospels are about.”

When Jesus talks about “doing this or that ‘so that you may enter the kingdom of heaven,’” he is not saying “so that you may go to heaven when you die.” “The ‘kingdom of heaven’ is not about people going to heaven. It is about the rule of heaven coming to earth.”

For as long as I have been reading the Bible this has bothered me – why doesn’t Jesus clearly tell his followers how to go to heaven?

Instead, Jesus spends his time on earth challenging the Jews to become citizens “of the kingdom coming on earth as in heaven.”

Click to see my full review on Goodreads

Everything Sad Is Untrue – Daniel Nayeri

A mostly-true story of an Iranian woman who converts to Christianity and is forced to flee to Oklahoma with her two children.

The stream of consciousness writing makes the book a bit hard to get into. But it’s worth the effort.

An easy read- the target audience is young adult – but packed with profound, beautifully-written wisdom like: “We don’t owe anyone our sadness, but the sharing of it is what friends do. It makes the sadness less.”

This year, no other paragraph pierced my soul like this one:

“Imagine you’re evil.

Not misunderstood.

Not sad.

But evil.

Imagine you’ve got a heart that spends all day wanting more.”

Ouch.

Click to see my full review on Goodreads

Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power – Byung-Chul Han

A poorly named book- it’s not at all about politics.

A better title would be any of these:

  • Invisible slavery in a world of endless freedom
  • I Want Everything Now – how smartphones make desire immediate and enslaving.
  • Protect me from what I want- life in the digital land of endless desire.

Byung-Chul Han is a South Korean-born German philosopher who is one of the most widely read philosophers in Europe today.

Like all of Han’s books, this is a brief, dense philosophy book.

There are few thinkers as helpful as Han in understanding our modern world. He’s the modern equivalent of Neil Postman or Marshall McLuhan- pulling back the curtain of technology to help us see what is underneath.

Han does the hard work of reading inscrutable philosophers and academics, synthesizing them, improving their ideas, and then writing briefly and simply.

Click to see my full review on Goodreads

From Land to Lands, from Eden to the Renewed Earth: A Christ-Centred Biblical Theology of the Promised Land – Munther Isaac

“Land is a central, if not the central, theme of biblical faith.”

If you’re a careful student of the Bible, there should be a glaring thematic hole in the NT. After being one of THE major characters in the OT, where does the Land go in the NT??

Over the last few years of reading (books & the Bible) I’ve become convinced that the Great Commission is almost an exact replica of Moses’s commission to Joshua. Jesus, like Moses, comes to a mountain on the edge of the Promised Land but does not go into the land, instead sending his people to take it. 

Which raises many questions: What is our promised land- do we have one? What role (if any) does the Land play in the New Covenant (it’s notably absent from Jeremiah’s New Covenant)? And in what ways is our obedience connected to taking the promised land?

From Land to Lands is written by a Christian Palestinian. So there’s obviously a lot at stake (and a little bias!) for the author. This books pairs nicely with Beale’s book on the Temple. 

Some key ideas:

  • The wages of sin in the OT is exile from the land.
  • “The Land is given to Israel for a distinct purpose: to provide a space in which it can embody faithfulness to the Torah. In the land, Israel establishes an alternative society, one that is ruled by the laws of God”
  • “There is a clear connection between the king’s righteous reign and the flourishing of the land. The Israelite monarchy project failed; and the king as the main figure in this system holds the main responsibility for this failure. Instead of being a source of blessing and fertility for the land, he was the cause of the tragedy for the people and the land.”
  • “Canaan, the land of promise, is the first stage in the realization of the universal promise [to bless all nations].”
  • What is the promised land in the New Testament? “The land that Jesus inherits is the whole earth.” Our Promised Land is the nations.

Though not a short book (at 410 pages) it is very accessible (not overly academic). 

For more great books here’s my lists from 2022, 2021, 2020, best-of-the-decade, 2019, 2018, and 2017.

The Modified M’Cheyne Method – Read the Bible in a Year

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Of all the great plans to read through the Bible in a year, perhaps none is as enduring and well loved as the plan by the old Scottish minister Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813–1843). The year before M’Cheyne died (at the young age of 29), he created a plan to read through, in a year, the whole Old Testament and twice through the New Testament and Psalms. The M’Cheyne method is the preferred bible reading plan of many Christian leaders including DA Carson, Tim Keller, Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Stott.

Nothing has been better for my relationship with God than reading the Bible on a daily basis, and yearly reading the entire Bible.

I prefer the M’Cheyne Method because you read from different sections of scripture every day. That keeps you from getting bogged down in more difficult books (I’m looking at you Major Prophets!). M’Cheyne intended that his plan would be split into Family and Secret, with two chapters being read together as a family, and two in private devotions. 

I’ve used this plan for the last eight years with a small modification: the Modified M’Cheyne Method (MMM) I use gets you through the entire Bible one time in a year (instead of the New Testament and Psalms twice), reading only 3 chapters per day (instead of 4). You simply drop the fourth column and just read the first three passages. The MMM assumes that all the reading will be done in private devotions.

For the first 6 years of using M’Cheyne I read both volumes of DA Carson’s excellent For the Love of God Volumes I & II that offer a VERY short devo/commentary on the Bible reading from each day of the M’Cheyne plan. Volume 1 comments on one of the chapters from the first two columns, Volume 2 comments on one chapter from the last two columns. I’d highly recommend buying both volumes – it takes less than 5 minutes to read both.

Where to find MMM:

  • I put together a pdf you can print and keep in your Bible with the 2023 MMM plan
  • Carson’s For the Love of God tells you what today’s reading is from M’Cheyne. I just wake up, open up For the Love of God on my Kindle to today’s date; it tells me what to read, and then gives me a brief commentary on what I read. It’s almost always insightful, and always short. For the Love of God is also available for free online.
  • M’Cheyne is also available on your Bible app on your phone.
  • Or this is REALLY helpful: Customizable Bible Reading plans – just plug in which plan (M’Cheyne!), timeframe (3 mo or 1 or 2 yr or “by Dec 31” or whatever), and what days of the week you want to skip (tsk-tsk), and it will spit out a plan for you.

All of those (except my pdf) will offer the four readings (NT and Psalms twice). To read the Bible once, simply drop the fourth reading.

May God bless you as you daily read and apply His Word.

The Spiritual Effects of Distraction

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“To be a follower of Christ in the early twenty-first century requires a way of being in the world that resists being sucked into the numbing glare of [our phones].”

Alan Noble – Disruptive Witness

Here are a couple tools you can use to begin to understand and fight our phone’s effects on us spiritually: a 4 page article and a 45 minute video.

The Spiritual Effects of Distraction is a 4 page article that would be a great tool for a 15-30 minute discussion in discipleship or a staff meeting.


The-Spiritual-Effects-of-Distraction-2021Download

Here’s a 45 minute talk called How to Stop Looking at Your Phone that I gave at the 2021 National Cru Winter Conference:

(someone with a sense of humor chose the freeze frame!)

Turning Drowning Students into Christ-Centered Laborers

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I don’t want to lead with Cru anymore – I just need to focus on self-care and my mental health.

– upperclassman student leader
Photo by Ian on Unsplash

On the college campus, with increasing frequency, we’re seeing upperclassmen leaders in our ministry struggling to keep their heads above water. Unable to personally thrive, they are completely unable to love and serve others. These are not average students – these are Bible study leaders who we’ve been discipling for a couple years.

Author and pastor Mark Sayers explains this same phenomena in his church in Australia:

“Thirty years ago we thought about people coming into a church and we had an assumption that they’ve got some basic functionality in their lives. Then we realised there’s a group who were coming in who were broken — maybe they had substance abuse, mental health challenges. But now I’d say it’s overwhelming — 90 per cent of people coming in need formation…Many struggle to have a conversation and they’re overwhelmed with social anxiety. So I think there’s a place for the Church to offer formational life skills, as part of the discipleship journey. It’s almost like we get to help people rebuild from the bottom up.”

We’ve long had the luxury of assuming students were coming into college with basic adult functionality and we could start with spiritual disciplines and quickly move to a missional lifestyle. Unfortunately that is often no longer the case.

For the last couple years, on our campus we have begun to focus on helping freshmen develop these formational life skills.

Sayers’s book Reappearing Church lays out three levels of formation:

  1. FORMING PATTERNS align us with the reality of how humans and God’s world work- learning the importance of diligence, of matching our words and actions, of integrating into our lives the values of delaying gratification for greater goals and being responsible for the consequences of our actions.
  2. DISCIPLESHIP PATTERNS align us with God’s kingdom, creating habits and disciplines in our lives that shape us for God’s kingdom, shaping us into Christlikeness and Christlike community.
  3. INFLUENCING PATTERNS align us with God’s mission in the world, forming within us patterns that spread the presence of God into the whole world. These patterns take us beyond ourselves, reconnecting us with our mandate to spread God’s presence in the world.

We’ve adapted Sayers ideas into a pyramid of formation: personal, spiritual and missional. 

Like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I believe these three are sequential: the foundational needs must be met before progressing to a higher level. If a student feels like they are drowning personally it is difficult to establish spiritual disciplines and there is no way they can focus on others and live on mission. It does little good to talk about sharing the gospel with their classmates if their personal life is chaotic and exhausting, they’re not sleeping enough, spending 10 hours a day on screens, and experiencing crippling social anxiety. You’re adding weight to a crumbling foundation.

“The number one enemy of Christian spiritual formation today is exhaustion.” 

The Good and Beautiful God- James Bryan Smith

Selfish self-care vs self-discipline leading to sacrificial service

This is not to say that they have to only work on (and perfect) the first level of personal formation before they can progress. As Tara Isabella Burton observed in her book Strange Rites, “because the work of ‘self-care’ is never complete, care for the other is never quite justified.”  

This is not a self-care that terminates on one’s self. Godly personal formation cannot end on itself. It is going somewhere. It is Godward and others-focused self-discipline. 

If we don’t help students build some personal disciplines they will remain trapped in a self-centered world of never-ending self-care. Starting with personal formation is a compassionate lifeline to a drowning student to get their head above water so they can care for ‘the other’. 

I firmly believe God uses the weak and weary as his chief ambassadors of the gospel, “to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” (II Corinthians 4:7) But I believe some basic personal habits can quickly help students move from anxious and overwhelmed to growing and able to serve.

Matt Perman in his productivity book What’s Best Next asserts that “our ability to spend undistracted time with friends and family” and to sacrificially serve others around us “depends largely upon a skill that goes underneath all of those things and makes them all possible – knowing how to manage ourselves.” Personal discipline “amplifies our ability to do good.”

Glorifying God by doing good is what we were created to do (Ephesian 2:10; Titus 2:14). A Godward life focused on others is the heart of personal formation. We train ourselves to “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions”, to “live self-controlled and godly lives” in order to “devote ourselves to good works” (Titus 2:12; 3:8)

This Godward, others-focused purpose turns self-care into worshipful self-discipline. It is an hour-by-hour presenting of our bodies to God as a living sacrifice. This IS how we worship God. By letting his Word form and transform us (Romans 12:1-2) in order to serve others. 

The foundation of all our doing: we have value that is given not earned.

We live in an Achievement Society where we only have worth if we are getting things done. Our common modern ailments – anxiety, exhaustion, boredom, and despair – are all rooted in our inability to rest, to not work. And harder still: to not feel guilty when we’re not working.

“Be at rest – and know that I am God” is the antidote.

Here is the core truth that undergirds all of our formation: we have value that is given not earned.

The power for our personal, spiritual and missional formation “comes from realizing that, through faith in the gospel, we are accepted by God in Christ apart from what we do.” Matt Perman

Our inability to accept grace is at the root of our need to perform and achieve. Philosopher and University of Münster professor (1950-1976), Josef Peiper, in his book Leisure, the Basis of Culture, explains- 

Our modern “over-emphasis on effort appears to be this: that man mistrusts everything that is without effort; that in good conscience he can own only what he himself has reached through painful effort; that he refuses to let himself be given anything.” 

This stands in direct contradiction to our acceptance in Christ as “something given, something free of all debt, something undeserved, something not-achieved.” Dr. Pieper.

Ironically, we have to learn to rest and not-do before we can learn to work hard for the glory of God. Only a person at rest, secure in the grace of God, can progress to spiritual and missional formation.

This is the logical progression of the great New Testament passages that call us to do good works: Ephesians 2:8-10; Titus 2:11-14 and 3:3-7; Romans 12:1-2. Grace (not-doing) leads to a zeal to do good works. We have value that is given not earned. Therefore we can “spend and be spent” for others.

The format: three weeks- cycling through the three levels 

On our campus we have started to meet with small groups of emerging freshmen leaders for three weekly sessions, cycling through the three levels: personal, spiritual and missional formation. It’s almost too late to tack this on to discipleship with upperclassmen.

These freshmen are already in Bible studies, and some are beginning to be discipled by student leaders. We typically start these three week sessions in late fall or early spring (as we begin to see who the emerging freshmen leaders are). My female co-leader and I challenge 10-15 students each and meet with them with the main goal of helping them develop basic-functioning life skills.
The hope is that this will produce juniors/seniors who are emotionally healthy, whole, Christ-centered laborers (for the rest of their lives!).

So far, we’ve (my co-leader, Samantha Barnes, and I) developed two sets of three:

Feel free to copy and paste and improve!

They’re still a work in progress – the first three are better than the second three (though 2.1 might be the best!).

For the personal formation level, what other topics would you want to cover?

Here’s a list of re-formation topics I’d like to develop:

  • From total work to true rest
    • A “non-anxious presence” in the Achievement Society; rejecting the treadmill of achievement.
  • From performing to being formed
    • From self rule to Christ is King
  • From self-Care to self-discipline for the purpose of loving God and others
  • From individualistic freedom to committed community 
  • From I-tired to We-tired (moving toward community when you’re tired, instead of isolating)
  • From passivity to agency (Phil 4:8 – Dealing with anxiety or things we can’t control)
  • From enslavement-to-desires to freedom in the Rule of Christ
  • From distraction to depth
  • From pleasure to self-denying, sacrificial service
  • From “frantic busyness and chronic distraction–to a life of restfulness and wonder.” (Buchanan – The Rest of God)

My Top Books of 2022

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For whatever reason, I read a LOT less in 2022. I’m trying to get better at processing the books that I read (reading through all my highlights a few times to try to absorb the wisdom), which takes more time. And I journaled more which is slow but beneficial. But mostly I just read less! Reading is truly a habit that snowballs (and vice versa).

There’s always next year!

The Top Books I read in 2022:

  1. A Non-Anxious Presence by Mark Sayers
  2. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by René Girard
  3. Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm
  4. The Uncontrollability of the World by Hartmut Rosa
  5. Bowen family systems theory in Christian ministry by Jenny Brown
  6. Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled the Middle East by Kim Ghattas

A Non-Anxious Presence by Mark Sayers

The days are dark and chaotic and things feel overwhelmingly complex. But it’s times like these when God moves in great ways. He will bring renewal through leaders who experience the presence of God and strike out boldly into the chaos as a non-anxious presence.

Sayers has become my favorite author for two reasons:

  1. He helps me understand the times.
  2. He gives me hope

Sayers is unique among writers in that he nails both the diagnosis AND the cure. Incredibly rare. Many books excel at diagnosis. Very few books offer a practical cure. One in a thousand excels at both diagnosis and cure. [I’m guessing it’s because writers who are smart enough to understand the times are so cloistered in academia and so buried in books that they aren’t connected to real people; they aren’t practitioners, only researchers/writers. Sayers somehow does both. He pastors a church and knows his flock yet still makes time to read, think, and write.]

Even more remarkable: Sayers communicates in simple, clear writing. This wisdom is not buried under dense academic writing.

Sayers is a voracious reader and one of his great gifts to the church is distilling vast amounts of learning into concise, easy-to-digest summaries. Sayers lives in Australia, and is thus more aware of global politics and economics, and better able to critique America.


I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by René Girard

I was led down the Girard rabbit hole from reading my favorite book last year: “Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life” by Luke Burgis.

Girard was a French philosopher and anthropologist, not a theologian. But Girard found in the Bible (and specifically in Christ) the key to unlock the chains of oppression and strife. Neither “Wanting” or “I See Satan” are Christian books; the authors were secular truth-seekers (I believe both men were atheists until they discovered mimetic desire which led them both to follow Christ).

Girard identified the 10th Commandment as the key problem of all humanity: we want what our neighbor has. Girard called it mimetic (imitative) desire; our desires are shaped and influenced by the desires of others.

What is the antidote to mimetic desire? Girard says it is the imitation of Christ. More than that: “Jesus invites us to imitate is his own desire, the spirit that directs him toward the goal on which his intention is fixed: to resemble God the Father as much as possible.” We are to desire what Jesus desires – which is to resemble the Father as much as possible.

How does that kill mimetic desire? It breaks the chains of invisible conformity (wanting what our neighbor wants) and replaces it with the freedom of conformity to Christ. 

“The commandment to imitate Jesus does not appear suddenly in a world exempt from imitation; rather it is addressed to everyone that mimetic rivalry has affected. Non-Christians imagine that to be converted they must renounce an autonomy that all people possess naturally, a freedom and independence that Jesus would like to take away from them.”

The second seismic discovery Girard presents:

perhaps our modern world’s only absolute value, a concern for victims, is a uniquely Christian contribution to the world. Christianity is the source of our “concern for the poor, the weak, the disinherited, the lowly… Our [modern] concern for victims is the secular mask of Christian love.” Much like Tom Holland’s book “Dominion”, Girard argues that human rights “and humanitarianism develop first on Christian soil.”

Ironically, “The concern for victims has became a paradoxical competition of mimetic rivalries, of opponents continually trying to outbid one another.” Girard argues that Satan has co-opted this Biblical idea and turned victimism into an ideology that uses victim status as a way to gain power. 

“Our society is the most preoccupied with victims of any that ever was. The modern concern for victims obligates us to blame ourselves perpetually.”

Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm

Published in 1941 by a German seeking to understand the roots of Fascism. REALLY helpful for understanding the anxiety and powerlessness caused by isolation.

Moderns cannot bear the “freedom from”; the burden of isolation and powerlessness of being an individual in an overwhelming world, flooded by disjointed information (very strong Neil Postman “and now this…” vibes), stripped of structure and relationships.

Fromm lists three ways we deal with our aloneness:

  1. Authoritarianism
  2. Destructiveness
  3. Automaton Conformity

We see #1 in Nazi Germany and the modern day rise of populist Nationalism. #2 in mass shootings and rising suicide rates. And #3 in the absolute conformity demanded by our society on really any current topic (LGBTQ, Ukraine, masks, BLM). Those topics are not bad. But it explains our incredibly strong desire to say “I support the current thing”.

Fromm covers the Middle Ages, the reformation, the renaissance- charting the growth of new ideas like efficiency, individualism, capitalism, anxiety. Good (and much easier!) parallel to a Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.

I initially gave the book 5 stars but went back and knocked a star off for it’s incredibly poor chapter on the Reformation and really wrong remedies proposed in the last chapter. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book that’s such a mix of brilliant insight and bad thinking. But it’s mostly brilliant – 95% meat, 5% bones.

The Uncontrollability of the World by Hartmut Rosa

My favorite kind of book- a short, dense philosophical book that gives you new lenses to see the world better. Hartmut Rosa, a German university professor and sociologist, explains the consequences of a modern society driven by an “incessant desire to make the world engineerable, predictable, manageable… to make the world controllable at every level.”

Two problems with that:

1. A controlled world becomes grayed out, muted, it ceases to delight. (e.g. the dreary, lifeless humans of Wall-E on board the intergalactic luxury cruise ship, The Axiom). We are all Marie Antoinette now – “nothing tastes.” That feeling of being fully alive eludes us; which “leads to anxiety, frustration, anger, and even despair.”

2. “Human life [is] defined by uncontrollability.” We can’t control ourselves much less the world. Our own selves are frustratingly uncontrollable: our birth, our death (“Both the beginning and the end of life are uncontrollable”), our desires, our sleep, our subconscious thoughts. And paradoxically, despite amazing progress in subduing the earth through technology, medicine, and science – our modern world has become “increasingly uncontrollable, unpredictable, and uncertain.” See years: 2016-2022. Rosa calls it “The Monstrous Return of the Uncontrollable”. Our efforts to make the world controllable have produced a “radical form of uncontrollability.” And what’s worse, we lack the agency to do something about it. It’s all too overwhelmingly complex. And we’re too depressed to care (see Problem 1.

We can do something about the former problem, the latter must be accepted.

As a Christian, the latter problem has really helped me better understand one of the central themes of the Bible: waiting on the Lord. Trusting Him who is in control: of my individual life AND of the grand sweep of history. “From life’s first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny” – In Christ Alone

But how do we fix things? How do we address Problem 1? Our modern approach is self-optimization. Techniques and To-do lists. Techniques to improve in every area of life: 10 steps to becoming less anxious; 4 things every parent must do; 12 ways to have a better marriage. All of which can be added to our never-ending to-do lists. Yet we never arrive at a place where we can say “that’s enough.”

What is Rosa’s answer? Resonance. We crave transcendence – to connect to something beyond ourselves. [not sure where Rosa comes from spiritually. He mentions that the Judeo-Christian God is “entirely in keeping with resonance theory”]

Beauty and wonder and relational intimacy are what produce “life” or resonance (like a struck guitar string, our hearts reverberate and come alive): a breathtaking sunset, a loyal friendship, a moving concert, a beautiful flower. None of these can be engineered nor controlled. And the moment we try to “capture” them (usually by pulling out our cameras to try to save them for later!), we fail to preserve them AND lose the ability to enjoy the moment.

Most resonant moments are inefficient and can only be “obtained” through slowness. But a never ending to-do list and a relentlessly self-optimized life “leave us no time, space, or breath for resonant encounters.”

“Optimization means achieving the best possible result in the shortest possible time, while maintaining constant control…There is no method, no seven- or nine-step guide that can guarantee that we will be able to resonate with people or things.” Rosa sees “the fundamental contradiction at the heart of modernity” as “the basic conflict between our desire for control and our longing for resonance.”

Bowen Family Systems Theory in Christian Ministry by Jenny Brown

Since reading Friedman’s “A Failure of Nerve” and Mark Sayers’ “A Non-Anxious Presence” I’ve been eager to find more Christian application of the secular Bowen framework (which, as a college pastor, I’ve found to be EXTREMELY helpful). This book delivered.

It’s a series of academic papers so it’s a bit clunky. Not difficult to read or too academic, just clunky: “This paper attempts to introduce Bowen family systems theory (here on in referred to as Bowen theory) as a conversation partner in the reading of the text and as a commentator…”

And at the end of every chapter: “This paper has presented a case for the value of generational family research and use of the family diagram as an information generating tool”

Like watching paint dry…

But if you can skim past the dry academic intros and conclusions, there is gold to be found. 5 stars for content. 3 stars for readability.

I’d recommend reading A Failure of Nerve first, then you’ll be ready to jump into this book.

Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled the Middle East by Kim Ghattas

Fascinating overview of the last 40 years in the Middle East. Ghattas (who was born in Lebanon) argues that the Iranian Revolution set off a “black wave” of authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism that swept through the Middle East. Essentially: Iran and Saudi Arabia have been locked in a four decade long mimetic rivalry to out-Islam each other.

Very well written- Ghattas makes the incredibly complex and (to western readers) very-foreign world of the Middle East understandable.

For more great books here’s my lists from 2021, 2020, best-of-the-decade, 2019, 2018, and 2017.

Rewarding Beach Reads

By

updated summer 2022

These books are rewarding in that you don’t have to sacrifice substance for enjoyment. You can have the best of both worlds – learn something about the world while being entertained. 

Because everyone has different aims for reading, there are five lists (each is ranked, starting with my favorites):

  1. Easy, fun nonfiction books (This is my favorite genre- narrative nonfiction. Nonfiction that reads like a novel- easy to read, and hard to put down).
  2. A little more challenging nonfiction books
  3. Classic Fiction that are actually good AND not too hard to read (these classic books have stood the test of time and really stick with you, even change you)
  4. Life-changing self improvement books
  5. Understanding our modern world
  1. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin – Erik Larson – fascinating true story of the US Ambassador’s family in Nazi Germany (much of it focused on the Ambassador’s daughter’s trysts with Nazi officers -and even a date with Hitler) and how slow everyone was to see the absolute evil of the Nazis.
  2. 1776 – my favorite book by David McCullough – Truly miraculous how the Revolution succeeded when most of 1776 looked VERY bleak and the chance of success infinitesimally small. God Bless America.
  3. Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood – Trevor Noah (this one, you HAVE to listen to the audiobook; it’s one of my favorite all-time audiobook; lots of language, so be warned)
  4. The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey – Candice Millard – the best book by one of my favorite authors. Exiting the presidency as one of the most popular of all times, what did Teddy Roosevelt choose to do? Risk his life exploring a previously unexplored section of the deadly Amazon river.
  5. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE – Knight is incredibly honest, not skimming over his regrets and mistakes. I was surprised by the amount of spiritual searching throughout Knight’s life. The audiobook is particularly good. Have recommended this to many and all have loved it.
  6. Wright Brothers – McCullough. Inspiring and captivating story. The Wright Brothers captures the American can-do spirit.
  7. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis – captivating and heartbreaking look at poor whites in America. Makes sense of much of the wave of outrage that Trump rode into the White House. Fair warning – coarse language throughout!
  8. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania- Erik Larson – Larson is one of my favorite authors. I’ve read everything he’s written.
  9. Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill – Candice Millard – miraculous hard-to-believe-it-is-true story of Churchill. It’s as if God saved his life so he could save the world.
  10. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History – S.C. Gwynne – Engrossing (and balanced) story of the Old West. Especially interesting for those who have lived in Dallas or West Texas as much of the book takes place in North and West Texas.
  11. Open Andre Agassi – Brutally honest and fascinating book. Deep dive into insecurity and identity and validation.
  12. Becoming Elisabeth Elliot“ Ellen Vaughn – Hearing in new detail, the story of her life, and especially her decision to go back (WITH her small child!) to live with and serve the tribe that killed her husband deeply impacted me. 
  13. Educated – Tara Westover – Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Crazy, true story. Really well written.
  14. The Blood of Emmett Till (NOT light in subject matter, but a very good and important read)- The story of the horrific death of a young black boy, and more widely, the birth of the civil rights movement.
  15. When Breath Becomes Air – VERY well written memoir of a neurosurgeon who gets terminal cancer
  16. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety – It’s only by God’s grace that we haven’t nuked ourselves into a nuclear holocaust by now.
  17. The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football – Jeff Benedict – Great (and shocking) read for any college football fan. Basically the story of how deeply flawed young men act when given absolute power. 
  18. The Boys in the Boat – the unlikely triumph of nine small town boys over the world’s best rowers in the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany
  19. Becoming – Michelle Obama – A great memoir- Michelle Obama is a very good writer. Interesting to see the inner workings of the campaign trail and White House.
  20. Wild Swans – three generations of women trying to survive the brutality of 20th century China
  21. Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory – Peter Hessler – fascinating look at a rapidly changing China in the early 2000’s, as seen in the colorful lives of average small-town Chinese people.
  22. A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II – Sonia Purnell
  23. Where the Wind Leads: A Refugee Family’s Miraculous Story of Loss, Rescue, and Redemption Vinh Chung
  24. Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival – Peter Stark – good companion book to the story of Lewis and Clark (listed below)
  1. The Hiding Place – Easy read. But I couldn’t bring myself to put it in the section. I can’t think of a more important book to read during these chaotic days. A true story of Christian bravery and hope in a dark world.
  2. Founding Brothers – This Pulitzer Prize winning book is one of my favorite historical nonfiction books of all time. My favorite type of book – where the author puts in the work to comb through vast amounts of research to present a short, insightful summary.
  3. Man’s Search for Meaning – Profound book that chronicles Frank’s time in a concentration camp and his attempt to unravel what caused some people to survive and others to give up hope. He finds: man has to have meaning and purpose.
  4. Churchill – Paul Johnson – from what I researched, this is the best one volume biography of the man who saved the world (and it’s really short!). Not a hard read, 
  5. Team of Rivals – well written biography of the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Almost brought me to tears when he was (spoiler alert!) killed. How different would our nation be if he could have guided us through reconstruction following the Civil War?
  6. Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow – This one is especially fun if you love the Hamilton broadway play like our family does, as this is the book that inspired Lin Manuel Miranda!
  7. Darkness at Noon (not nonfiction, but might as well be) –  Outstanding novel based on real events in Communist Russia in the 1950’s.
  8. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson – How the Jim Crow south forced southern African Americans to migrate to the north and west. Long but really eye opening.
  9. Undaunted Courage: Lewis and Clark and the Opening of the American West – Stephen E. Ambrose – Name a more iconic duo. Now name one fact about them other than that they were the first to explore the west. I knew nothing about this famous duo before reading this. Their passage across the virgin west is enchanting – their discoveries, their courage, their leadership. The ending of the book was shocking. I won’t spoil anything but I was truly shocked- mostly that I had not heard any of it before.
  1. To Kill a Mockingbird – Not much I can say about this classic that hasn’t already been written. I thought classic novels would be difficult and dry. They’re Classics for good reason. They have great plots and great writing. And this is the best of the best.
  2. Fahrenheit 451 – This classic dystopian book illustrates the devastating effects and societal breakdown caused by the rise of technology and decline of reading.
  3. Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe – Can’t recommend this book enough. It is good on so many levels: 
    • It changed the world. When President Lincoln met Stowe, he remarked: So you’re the little lady who wrote the book that started this great war!”
    • It’s a great novel
    • Stowe powerfully shows both sides of Christianity as it relates to slavery: it’s complicity in slavery (and how that is out of line with true faith) and as the source for emancipation and the brave endurance of countless Christian slaves. Both her villains and her heroes profess Christ. But her villains are sophisticated fools and are shown to be false Christians who have a superficial knowledge of the Bible. Her heroes are unsophisticated, brave, sacrificial and true followers of Christ who are rooted in the Bible and compelled by a deep faith in a just and merciful God.
  4. Jayber Crow – Wendell Berry (a modern classic) – This book was good for my soul. I value efficiency and speed and productivity. Wendell Berry describes community in an age before the TV/internet. A life of slowness and anti-efficiency. I think I want what they had. It truly made me consider what life is about work/productivity or relationships. Like Jared Wilson said, “Reading this book is like laying in cool grass under a spring sun by a lazy brook.”
  5. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy – I personally enjoyed the Hobbit a bit more- it’s funnier and more compressed.
  6. Animal Farm – Funny and incredibly insightful. Though written before Mao’s rise in China, this book reads like a history of Communist China.
  7. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens – Incredible plot, scores of memorable characters, and full of great moral truths and justice. Such a deep meditation on the value of loyal friends over the empty pursuit of worldly gain. Incredible virtuous characters to emulate and foolish characters to learn by. And one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read.
  8. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair – Like Uncle Tom’s Cabin- a book that shows the power of the pen. Teddy Roosevelt read The Jungle and made sweeping changes to improve life for millions of suffering workers. As a Christian, one thing that stood out to me is how churches failed to lead the way in fighting inhumane conditions for immigrants. In The Jungle, Socialism is man’s only hope while the church is nowhere to be seen.
  9. The Death of Ivan Ilych – Leo Tolstoy – What a depressing, profoundly moving little book. Tolstoy is so gifted at articulating the inexpressible; in this case: the inner thoughts and swirling turmoil of a dying man. 
  10. The Great Gatsby – my college daughter just re-read this during the quarantine. It’s one of her all time favorites. Great story. Even greater meaning behind the story, as recounted by Alan Noble in Disruptive Witness: First, the American dream of attaining wealth, fame, and romantic fulfillment through hard work is a deadly illusion. Second, idealizing a romantic interest will always let you down.”
  11. The Devil – Leo Tolstoy – Another short story on the power of lust to destroy a life.
  12. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – a fun (and often laugh out loud funny) rolicking adventure
  13. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson – A familiar story but incredibly insightful re human nature. It’s a vivid depiction of Romans 7-8. What if we could simply split off our sinful nature (into a separate person) and just keep the good part of us?
  14. Jane Eyre – one of the reasons we read is to see a new world. There is power in stories. In creating the ideal of how the world should be, how people should be, they convey the nature of reality. If even, by showing the opposite – like the miserable treatment for an orphaned child in Jane Eyre.
  15. All Quiet on Western Front – Man. What a great, gripping & thoroughly depressing book. 
  16. The Road – Cormac McCarthy (another modern classic) – This one might come in handy in these dark days. Inspiring and really dark. A father and son trying to survive (and do good) in an apocalyptic world of bad people. This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don’t give up.
  17. The Good Earth – Pearl Buck – moving story of the brutal life of a peasant in 1800’s China. Oddly, The Good Earth really helped me understand the ancient world of the Bible- suffering, oppression, famine, and even how fine fabric communicated wealth (e.g.- Prodigal Son or Joseph). For most of the world, life in the 1800’s was more similar to Biblical times, than to our modern world.
  18. Brave New World – as summed up in the Foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death: people come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance and that we would become a trivial culture.
  19. Pride and Prejudice – OK, so this one is a bit hard to read. But well worth it. 
  20. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe – A searing critique of imperialistic Christian missionaries that rip apart the family structure of an African village (though the village is rooted in witchcraft and abusive patriarchy). It’s a tragic story and great novel.
  1. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos – Jordan B. Peterson – One of my top books of the decade. Peterson is essentially asking – How can one live the good life? Though not a Christian, Jordan Peterson gets so much right. Incredible wisdom packed into this very readable book.
  2. Atomic Habits – James Clear – We are what we repeatedly do. Atomics Habits gives very practical ways to make small changes that will yield big results.
  3. Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life — Luke Burgis – best book I’ve read in the past few years. Wanting argues you are enslaved to what you want (and what you want is only a desire because you saw someone else want it thus the power of Instagram Influencers). It’s a secular book but I think the author is now a follower of Jesus.
  4. A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix – Edwin H. Friedman – best book I’ve read on leadership. Worth reading if just to understand how to be a non-anxious presence in a world gone mad. Written in 2007 by a Jewish rabbi, this book resonates all the more since it’s a bit distanced from the current chaos.
  5. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport – The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.
  6. How to Break Up with Your Phone – Catherine Price – This is the first book I recommend to students because it’s an easy, short read and applicable to a wide range of phone addictions.
  7. Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions – Russell Brand – a vulgar, brutally honest, modern day Ecclesiastes; with Brand, a self-described half-wit King Solomon. Brilliantly insightful into the human condition and very helpful re how to escape the bondage of desire. Fair warning: TONS of cussing!
  8. The Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel – The best short book I’ve read on finances and investing. VERY helpful and concise.
  9. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams – Matthew Walker – What a remarkable Swiss Army knife of health and wellness sleep truly. There does not seem to be one major organ within the body, or process within the brain, that isn’t optimally enhanced by sleep (and detrimentally impaired when we don’t get enough). Sleep enhances our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer. Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether or not you will develop Alzheimer’s disease.
  10. The Next Story by Tim Challies – Distraction is the enemy of deep thinking. A distracted life is a shallow life. I believe that more information is what I need. When in fact, more information may lead to less wisdom. I need to take in less information and seek more wisdom.
  11. The Power of Habit – Why habits are life changing.
  12. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win – Jocko Willink – Best book on leadership I’ve read in a long time. Makes for a great audiobook (because Jocko sounds just like you think a Navy Seal named Jocko would sound like).
  13. Fast. Feast. Repeat.: Intermittent Fasting – Gin Stephens
  14. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking – Introverts! The internet age is our time to rise!
  15. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert B. Cialdini – Our brains don’t function well with overwhelming input. And our modern world has created an environment so complex we are reverting to animal like instinctual autopilot decisions. Which is not good. We’re making unthinking decisions. This book will make those techniques visible so you can fight them.
  16. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life – Nir Eyal – the ablity to focus is a superpower that is the most important skill for the twenty-first century.
  17. The Body: A Guide for Occupants – Bill Bryson – entertaining and informative overview of each part of your body.

These books are all pretty easy reads and each pull back the curtain on how our modern world works.

  1. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less – Barry Schwartz – This book explains so much of our modern world. We are the most prosperous land that has ever existed, yet Americans are less and less happy. The cause? The overabundance of choice. Choices are exhausting and make us less happy.
  2. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business – Neil Postman – Written in 1985, Amusing could not be more relevant to 2018 and humankind’s endless appetite for distraction.
  3. The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place- Andy Crouch – packed with wisdom.
  4. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads – Tim Wu – A surprisingly spiritual, deep (though not difficult) read. The Attention Merchants are the best and brightest minds in America who spend billions seeking to gain more of our attention. They do not have your best interests in mind. No one will legislate the Attention Merchants. We each must choose to take back control of our attention. 
  5. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains – Nicholas Carr – pretty dated (pre Instagram) but, nonetheless, is packed with relevant wisdom and insight re how technology works to scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and make us tense and anxious.
  6. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure – Greg Lukianoff
  7. Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World – Tom Holland – A secular church history. Written by an atheist historian trying to find the roots of our modern human rights- that all men are created equal, and endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. His troubling findings? They are by no means self-evident. They are not rooted in philosophy; they are only found in Christianity. Super long (so maybe better as an audiobook) but written in narrative, so it’s an easy read.
  8. iGen – Jean Twenge – Along with Coddling, this is THE book on understanding GenZ. Twene found there is just one activity that is significantly correlated with anxiety, loneliness, and depression: Screen Time (and girls are more affected by this than boys).
  9. The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance – Ben Sasse – How do you turn children into adults? Senator Sasse is incredibly accurate on his diagnosis AND his prescription [Sasse was a student leader in Cru at Harvard and his wife used to be on staff with Cru].
  10. The Second Mountain – David Brooks pursued achievement in work, succeeded, and found it lacking. Worth reading if only for his chapter on his Christian conversion (from secular Judaism). It’s beautiful & profound.
  11. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion – NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt wants to show you that an obsession with righteousness is the normal human condition. We’re born to be righteous. Haidt is a lifelong Democrat and Atheist who is VERY fair-minded and unbelievably aligned with Biblical truth. His conclusion: The main way that we change our minds on moral issues is by interacting with other people that we like.
  12. Just Mercy – Bryan Stevenson – hopefully you’ve seen the movie by now. If not, read the book then rent the movie! The true story of a lawyer laboring in the deep south to bring justice to death row.

My Top Books of 2021

By

Overall, here are the Top 10 Books I read in 2021:

  1. Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life – Luke Burgis
  2. A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix – Edwin H. Friedman
  3. You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World – Alan Noble
  4. Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World – Tom Holland
  5. I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t): Telling the Truth about Perfectionism, Inadequacy, and Power – Brené Brown
  6. Teach Us to Want: Longing, Ambition & the Life of Faith – Jen Pollock Michel
  7. The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity – Douglas Murray
  8. How to Break Up with Your Phone – Catherine Price
  9. Encouragement: The Key to Caring – Larry Crabb
  10. Becoming Elisabeth Elliot – Ellen Vaughn

Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life – Luke Burgis

What do you want? And through your life, what do you help others want? This book gives you new lenses through which to see the world. And once you start to see through the lens of Wanting, you’ll see it everywhere.

Wanting is the journey of a Tech start-up CEO, his crisis of meaning, and attempt to “understand the desires that had led me to those choices in the first place–the navigation system behind my ambition…What was the force behind my tenacious and never-satisfied striving?”

Our modern ethos is do what you want, because what you want is good. “Wanting” argues you are enslaved to what you want (and what you want is only a desire because you saw someone else want it – thus the power of Instagram Influencers).

I’m now convinced that the primary way we change is through models of desire – “people…that show us what is worth wanting.”

It’s a secular book but I think the author is now a follower of Jesus. Wanting has so many connections to great Christian books like James KA Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, A Secular Age (thin vs thick desire; immanent vs transcendent), and Piper’s Desiring God. 


A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix – Edwin H. Friedman

We are a chronically anxious nation: “a society progressing technologically [while] regressing emotionally.” Why? “Anxiety escalates as society is overwhelmed by the quantity and speed of change.”

Like Wanting, this book will help you better see reality- to truly understand dysfunctional families, workplaces, and nations (that we all live in!).

Worth reading if just to understand how to be “a non-anxious presence” in a world gone mad. Written in 2007 by a Jewish rabbi, this book resonates all the more since it’s a bit distanced from the current chaos.

This a book is about leadership in an anxious society; every bit as helpful for marriage and parenting as it is for the workplace. The key: to focus less on fixing or motivating those who are not capable of self-regulation. Focus instead on becoming self-regulated, a non-anxious presence.

A few gems:

  • Most crises cannot…be resolved (that is, fixed); they must simply be [endured thru a focus on] self-regulation and the management of [your own] anxiety instead of frantically seeking the right solution.
  • The children who work through the natural problems of maturing with the least amount of emotional or physical residue are those whose parents have made them least important to their own salvation.
  • Chronic anxiety in American society has made the imbibing of data and technique addictive precisely because it enables leaders not to have to face their selves.
  • A society cannot evolve, no matter how much freedom is guaranteed, when the citizenry is more focused on one another than on their own beliefs and values.
  • Children rarely succeed in rising above the maturity level of their parents.
  • Our [companies and] communities adapt themselves to the least mature and…who lack self-regulation.

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

Such a helpful book for understanding our modern world of anxiety, isolation, depression and exhaustion. “This is the fundamental lie of modernity: that we are our own.” The antidote: understanding how we belong to God.

Beyond its main theme, this was the first book to help me question my core belief in efficiency. Since college, few things shape me more than a drive for efficiency. I was wrong. “Efficiency is not a human virtue. It’s not a traditional virtue at all. It’s a metric for machines.”

“Efficiency demands that we always pursue the best option available. It asks: Can you use this time more productively?” Efficiency is the antithesis of sabbath, beauty, slowness, relationship, wonder, and awe. “A life of unending…self-improvement through increased efficiency and optimization is overwhelming, depressing, and unsatisfying.”

A few gems:

  • Unlimited desire and consumption always leave us exhausted and empty.
  • No matter how much we consciously affirm that our existence is already justified through God, virtually every other voice we interact with will tell us, “No. Keep striving. You haven’t done enough. If you quit now, your life will be a waste. Do something else to make it worthwhile.”
  • We might cover more ground, but we don’t seem to run any less than our ancestors. And if you never stop running, does it matter where you are going?
  • One reason society fails to fulfill its promise is that a society premised on the sovereign self has no discernable ends, only an ever expanding and ever demanding number of means.
  • Belonging necessitates limits. If we belong to ourselves, then we set our own limits–which means we have no limits except our own will. If we belong to God, then knowing and abiding by His limits enables us to live as we were created to live.

Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World – Tom Holland

A secular church history. Super long but written in narrative, so it’s an easy read. Written by an atheist historian trying to find the roots of our modern human rights- that “all men are created equal, and endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” His troubling findings? They are by no means self-evident. They are not rooted in philosophy; they are only found in Christianity.  Our modern world is under the Dominion of Christ – “the formidable–indeed the inescapable–influence of Christianity.”

Tim Keller on Dominion: “It is hard to overstate the importance of Holland’s book Dominion. He makes a readable and extraordinarily well-documented case that the central values and priorities of modern, Western, secular culture have actually come from Christianity.”

Holland is part of the new Christian-leaning secularists (I’d put Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson, John Vervaeke, Luke Burgis, David Brooks, Tara Isabella Burton in that group). Some have come to Christ. Most are merely intrigued and seeking truth that STRONGLY aligns with Christianity.

I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t) – Brené Brown

A deep dive into women and shame. This sentence impacted me and has stuck with me: “You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors.” Also: “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”

This is super helpful- a key way to identify which issues particularly lead to shame is by how you’d finish this sentence: 

  • “I would never want to be seen as…” (a loudmouth, pushy, etc)
  • “I don’t want people to think I’m…” 

“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.” Shame happens when others say, by words or action, “I can’t imagine doing THAT! I’m over here and you’re over there.” We overcome that isolation by sharing with others and hearing “You too? I thought it was just me!”

For women, Brown says the three biggest areas of shame are:

  • Body image (almost universal among all women)
  • Caregiving
  • Motherhood

[her research on shame has almost exclusively been focused on women, but her brief insight on men is profound: men mostly experience shame related to this issue: “I would never want to be seen as weak”]

Teach Us to Want: Longing, Ambition & the Life of Faith – Jen Pollock Michel

Such a challenging book. A great follow up and application to Wanting (though it seems to be a true follow up to James KA Smith).  “Following Christ is about reorienting our loves and desires toward his kingdom. We need not just be convinced of Christ. We need to be captivated by him.”
The goal= to conform our desire to match the desires of God. That is what it means to follow the will of God. Which, of course, is easier said than done.

“We simply can’t ignore desire. We get out of bed, go to work, get to the gym, marry (or not), have babies (or not), write books–follow Jesus–because in some measure, we want to. To be human is to want…wanting is the earliest language we learn.”

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity – Douglas Murray

We are living through a period “in which all our grand narratives have collapsed” and “just as things appeared better than ever before, the rhetoric began to suggest that things had never been worse.” Murray, a “hopeful agnostic”, is a gay, British man. As such, he is able to say things that others would be cancelled for. 

His four chapters are:

  • Gay – “being gay is an unstable component on which to base an individual identity and a hideously unstable way to try to base any form of group identity”
  • Women (among other things, on the biological facts of the difference between the sexes)
  • Race 
  • Trans

How to Break Up with Your Phone – Catherine Price

This is the first book I recommend to students because it’s an easy, short read and applicable to a wide range of phone addictions.
“if you wanted to invent a device that could rewire our minds, if you wanted to create a society of people who were perpetually distracted, isolated, and overtired, if you wanted to weaken our memories and damage our capacity for focus and deep thought, if you wanted to reduce empathy, encourage self-absorption, and redraw the lines of social etiquette, you’d likely end up with a smartphone.”

Encouragement: The Key to Caring – Larry Crabb

This book would be more accurately titled: “How to be others focused.” The best kind of book: short and packed with deep understanding of human nature (yet easy to understand).

Our primary barrier to being others focused: our feeling of emptiness, wondering “if I’m always pouring into others who will pour into me?”.

The answer – life is hard and you will always be alone! So stop waiting for others to pour into you. But that loneliness is the pathway to intimacy with God (which is what you ultimately want). And ultimately connecting deeply with others is a side effect of 1) depending only on God and 2) focusing on others.

Pairs nicely with Tim Keller’s the Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. Crabb’s book quickly (and, somehow, deeply!) dives into how to live that out.

Becoming Elisabeth Elliot – Ellen Vaughn

Few people have influenced me more than Elisabeth Elliot. Her books shaped my life. 

Hearing in new detail, the story of her life, and especially her decision to go back (WITH her small child!) to live with and serve the tribe that killed her husband deeply impacted me. The way she loves and follows God is almost hard to fathom. Incredibly challenging.

And super interesting to hear the real trials of missionary life- mostly team conflict!

Along with these Top 10, here are others I read this year that I would highly recommend to you (under each heading, listed in order of how much I liked them!).

Christian Devotional Books

  • The Weight of Glory – C.S. Lewis
  • A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 – W. Phillip Keller
  • Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture – Lesslie Newbigin
  • The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love That Reorders a Life – Seth Haines
  • The Imperfect Pastor – Zack Eswine
  • The Household and the War for the Cosmos: Recovering a Christian Vision for the Family – C.R. Wiley
  • Motherhood Redeemed: One Woman’s Journey from Radical Feminism to Joyful Motherhood – Kimberly Cook

NonFiction

  • Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman
  • The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom – Jonathan Haidt
  • The Road Less Traveled – M. Scott Peck
  • Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life – Jordan B. Peterson
  • Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything – B.J. Fogg
  • Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World – Maryanne Wolf
  • I Will Teach You to Be Rich – Ramit Sethi
  • Fast. Feast. Repeat.: Intermittent Fasting – Gin Stephens
  • The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss – Jason Fung
  • The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion – Rodney Stark
  • Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious – Timothy D. Wilson
  • A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas – Warren Berger
  • Business for the Glory of God – Wayne Grudem


History/Biography

  • Open – Andre Agassi
  • A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II – Sonia Purnell
  • Where the Wind Leads: A Refugee Family’s Miraculous Story of Loss, Rescue, and Redemption – Vinh Chung
  • The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz – Erik Larson
  • The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West – David McCullough
  • Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland – Christopher R. Browning

For more great books here’s my lists from 2020, best-of-the-decade, 2019, 2018, and 2017.