Reading

I've been doing some reading lately - a bit intermittent, but I'm getting better at it.

I finished the first book a few weeks back, Don Carson's The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God - I'll post some reflections on that eventually, I've lent it out to nearly everyone I know along with my notes in it! I've just started reading Desiring God by John Piper, and will be posting about that the next few weeks and next I'm getting into The Sovereignty of God by A. W. Pink. So I'll try and keep you posted.. at least as intermittently as my reading is.

"Surely God's love isn't that difficult?"

Well, Carson gives what he feels are at least 5 reasons for difficulty in understanding the love of God:

1. We no longer have a prevalent Biblical framework with which to understand the love of God

2. Culture won't retain the Biblical framework, it purges any uncomfortable characteristics of God for a sanitised, pop understanding of His love.

3. Postmodernism and it's inherent pluralistic view of the world doesn't allow for an expression of this Biblical framework.

4. We can no longer grapple with how God's love and God's justice are related, and in rejecting the biblical understanding resort to a reductionistic view of the love of God.

5. God's love is often depicted as easy and obvious, by overlooking some of the distinctions the Bible makes in it's own depiction of the love of God.

All of these reasons resonated with me.

Carson only expressed 5, he implied there were more. In the ten years since this publication, I wonder, have any others become obvious?

Reading Carson

For quite some time, I've had intentions to read some of Don's work, and have got part way through his books before study or work or some other thing distracted me from my time for reading.

So I've resolved to start again, and blog about it.

Over the next few weeks I'll be reading:

- The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God

- How Long O Lord?

- A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and his Prayers

I don't know how the format of this blog will look like. I might just post reflections, or tell you about a chapter I like, or maybe just say something that I thought about that is pretty much abstract from the book's topic. See how we go.

"Over-against us"

Don Carson says "God stands over-against us in wrath"
I like that. I think I'll use it.

Reading biographies

I am really bad at reading biographies.
The majority of biographies I have read have been of musicians.
In fact, I haven't read a single biography of any of my favourite Christian authors, and just realised this was a poor oversight.

The other day, I heard an interview between Mark Driscoll and Don Carson, and hearing that really put Carson's writing into a much more illuminated context for me.

And I realised that where we as Christians need to be discerning of what we read, and testing it against the Bible, we can have a better understanding of authors and their motivations if we read their biographies.

So, I'm gonna get stuck into some soon.
Wish I had realised this earlier.