Good Reading

Upon some reflection time yesterday, I think what I need to do regarding my “blogging problem” which I mentioned earlier is to just set myself some realistic limits on how much time and when I will allow myself to spend surfing around other blogs. So, as long as I can keep to the limits and not steal time from my kids and from other things that need to be done, I can still blog.

So, with that little bit of bloggity business out of the way, I wanted to say a little about some neat reading material that came in the mail on Wednesday and that the boys and I are thoroughly enjoying reading together.

First I need a little introduction to explain where I’m coming from. I grew up in a large Southern Baptist church with good preaching and teaching, and my parents are serious about doctrine and Bible teaching, meaning that I got some great informal training as I overheard and participated in the discussions they would have around the house, at dinner and in the car. So I am very blessed to have had that kind of biblical grounding from early on, and by God’s grace He has allowed a love for His Word to be a part of my life since I was young. So please don’t take what I’m about to say as knocking my past in any way at all.

But something I’ve become aware of about Southern Baptists, at least in my own experience, is that while we may be a people of the Book (at least we used to be….), we are not really a people of books. What in the world am I going on about, you may well ask? Well, Baptists (at least the church I was growing up in at the time, anyway) have been pretty good at educating us Biblically, and that is, obviously, vitally, extremely, and eternally important. (Please, I’m not addressing any of the current problems here, and, yes, I’m aware there are a good many….) But something I think I missed out on is education about the history of the Church through the ages. Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, D. L. Moody, and Billy Sunday are about the furthest back in history I remember anyone ever mentioning. Which means that this little Baptist girl had never heard about some of the “good dead theologians” (thanks, Kim!) until I grew up and broadened my horizons a bit. Though I embrace whole-heartedly the idea of Sola Scriptura, (that the inerrant Scripture is the sole source of written divine revelation, which alone can bind the conscience, and that the Bible alone teaches all that is necessary for our salvation from sin and is the standard by which all Christian behavior must be measured), there is nothing wrong with reading what people in the past have had to say about what they’ve learned from the Bible! And I think we miss something important when we know nothing about the great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us. We don’t always appreciate the high sacrifices that many have paid for their faith. I have known virtually nothing about the martyrs and gifted theologians that God has used in the past. Though we heard about more modern missionaries often (and that’s a good thing, don’t misunderstand the point I’m trying to make), I had very little comprehension of Church history beyond fairly recent Southern Baptist history.

And I had very little comprehension that there was much of a Christian community outside of the Southern Baptist Convention, and had no idea about the Church calendar kinds of things except some vague notion that Lent is when the school cafeteria all of a sudden began offering fish as a lunch choice on Fridays and my Catholic friends at school would talk about giving up soda or chocolate for Lent. I also had no idea about Advent until I met D, who went to a Missouri Synod Lutheran school as a kid, and then when I went to work for an (admittedly quite liberal) Lutheran organization and was shocked when Pastor Bob (my boss) mentioned that they didn’t sing songs with “Hallelujah” in them during services during Lent until Easter. That was an alien concept to me. I’m not at all advocating a return to Roman Catholic rituals, here. I’m just saying that we Baptists pretty much tend to be rugged individualists when it comes to knowing anything about other groups of Christians and about the past, and that's a shame.

That very long introduction is to explain why I’m so excited to be reading something that, I’m sure for many, is a classic of Christian reading material, which I’ve never really taken opportunity to read. This brings us to my joy when answering the doorbell on Wednesday afternoon and seeing that the package I had ordered from Truth For Life had arrived. Along with Alistair Begg’s sermon series on Hebrews were the Pilgrim’s Progress and Little Pilgrim’s Progress books I’d ordered. I’ve heard so many people talk about Pilgrim’s Progress, and I’ve wanted to read it for a long time, so when I saw this while ordering the sermon series, I thought we’d try it. The Little Pilgrim’s Progress is a retelling of the original in a way that is simpler and more understandable for children, and the Pilgrim’s Progress is an updated version that has modernized some of the English. (For you purists out there, sorry! But they’ve kept it very close to the original that John Bunyan wrote.)

Anyway, the kids were quite intrigued by their new book, and when I opened the package, J said, “Can I look at it now? I love new books!” He is truly a kid after his mommy’s heart, I tell you! So, that evening we started reading Little Pilgrim’s Progress together, and J and M were so excited by the story they didn’t want me to stop, so we kept on past bed time (only a little bit, though). The thing that is really exciting is that J is getting the symbolism. When Little Pilgrim meets Worldly, and Worldly says he can get rid of his burden another way than Evangelist told him if he’ll just go down the other path, J piped up, “But, Mom, his burden will get heavier! He’s going down the wrong path, so he’s sinning more! It will just get heavier and he won’t be able to get rid of it!” Bingo. Of course, when that chapter ended with Little Pilgrim starting toward the wrong path, I said, “Well, we were going to stop here, but we can’t leave Little Pilgrim going the wrong way. Let’s read one more and find out what happens next.”

So, I’m really enjoying reading this with the boys, and I’m thrilled at the discussions we’ve already been able to have about what the Bible says as a result of explaining the symbolism to them. And thanks to my dad and mom and their insatiable love of reading and desire to know and love God and learn His Word, and to certain bloggers like Kim, Kim, and Connie, among others, who have mentioned reading good Christian writing on their blogs, and the crew at Pyromaniacs who have introduced me to Charles Spurgeon’s writings, my appetite is being whetted to delve into more discoveries of treasured classic Christian writers in the near future.

And, now that I’ve taken advantage of Boo’s nap time for this writing, I must publish this and walk away from the computer until this evening when children are asleep and I have a bit of free time in order to honor my new resolve not to fritter away the day. Happy Friday, everyone!