I love encouraging people to read important, worthy, easy-to-read Christian books. I have said many times, read! read! read! but beware of wasting your time on froth and theological froth. read rich doctrinal books about him who called you for his glory and excellence (2 peter 1: 3).
Now, I know what you’re thinking: I don’t have the time or the ability to get anywhere on books like that. So, I want to show you something really encouraging. when they showed it to me, it changed my life. most of us don’t aim very high in our reading because we don’t feel like there is any hope.
You are reading: Christian books for adults
Suppose you read about 250 words per minute and decide to spend just 15 minutes a day on serious theological reading to deepen your understanding of biblical truth. in a year (365 days) you would read for 5,475 minutes. multiply that by 250 words per minute and you get 1,368,750 words per year. now most books are between 300 and 400 words per page. So if we take 350 words per page and break it down into 1,368,750 words per year, we get 3,910 pages per year. this means that with 250 words per minute, 15 minutes a day, you could read about 20 average-sized books a year!
reads well, not (necessarily) much
now where should you start? Someone recently asked me to list some of the books I have in mind that are about substance, not foam. let me emphasize at the outset that I don’t think reading a lot of books is important, not for the average person anyway. reading good books, solid books, non-soap books, substantial books, it’s really important. and read them well.
If you’re wondering what I mean by reading well, one place to start is how to read a book by mortimer adler. I read it when I was 22 years old. if you ever hope to read another book, it’s never too late to adler.
I’ll group these recommendations into categories, starting with biography, which is one of the most efficient ways to learn about history, theology, and psychology (everything, really), all in the form of a good story.
great Christian biographies
Roland Bainton’s Here I Stand is a biography of that epoch-making Martin Luther in the 1500s.
biography of david daniell william tyndale: a biography gives us insight into a period in history when christians burned christians for reading the bible. William Tyndale first translated the Bible from Greek into English in the 16th century. they killed him for it. It’s an amazing look at the kind of Christianity that burns people alive for reading the Bible in English, and the kind of man who risks his life to help those people read it.
Below, two biographies of Iain Murray: Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography and the Forgotten Spurgeon. Murray is an unusually effective storyteller because there is always life and doctrine in his stories. however, he never feels like he is just using the story to teach doctrine. but the doctrine really creates amazing stories. But probably the most comprehensive, but deeply appreciated, biography of America’s greatest theologian is Jonathan Edwards: A Life of George Marsden.
the confessions of agustin is the longest sentence you will ever read. really. the whole book is written for god. he died in 430 and is probably the most influential christian in history, outside of the bible. his confessions are three hundred pages long, and each page invites us to a radically godly life. taste and see what augustine does there for the celebration of sovereign grace over his early lustful life, and what god made of him.
stories from the mission field
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Courtney Anderson’s To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson tells of the man who went out from America to do missions in Burma, where he almost went insane with grief and loneliness. It is a great, soul-strengthening story.
autobiography of john paton, john g. Paton: The autobiography of the pioneer missionary of the new hebrides, is worth it only for the first few pages with the magnificent parting scene between him and his father. it is a beautiful and unforgettable moment in which a father who loves his son sends him away knowing that he may never see him again. but the father knew that his son was doing exactly what he wanted him to do.
hudson taylor’s spiritual secret was written by his son and daughter-in-law. Taylor was the founder of the China Inland Mission. and delving into his life and history is a great place to be.
Elisabeth Elliot’s biography of Amy Carmichael, A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael, is great not only because Amy Carmichael was a one-of-a-kind woman and missionary, but because it gives you a idea of elisabeth elliot. elisabeth elliot was, in my opinion, almost in a class apart among women of the 20th century because of the incredible combination of gifts she brought. (For a longer list of worthwhile women’s books, I suggest you go to Nancy Demoss Wolgemuth’s list of biographies.)
the foundations of Reformed theology
First, two by J.I. Packer. Get Knowing God. Get A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life, which is a collection of shorter writings. You don’t have to read it straight through. In fact, in that book, Packer’s introduction to John Owen’s Death of Death is probably one of the most influential short essays in the contemporary Reformed resurgence. It catapulted many of us from a fledgling love of God’s sovereignty into a more full and robust appreciation for the truth of God’s invincible grace.
glory road: the journeys of 10 african-americans into reformed christianian, edited by anthony carter, is valuable not only because the stories themselves are fascinating and useful, but because these ten brothers become portals to african-american authors that you may know little about and want to follow up on.
jonathan edwards’ religious affections are in a class by themselves (in my opinion) in uplifting and clarifying the role of the affections, or emotions, in the christian life. It was a shocking and glorious read for me sitting in a rocking chair many a Sunday night in Munich, Germany, decades ago. I am listening to it on audio even now as I write this. a biblical bath of self-crucifying acid.
the wonder of salvation
I would point you to two by John Stott: Basic Christianity and The Cross of Christ. There are no Stotts left that I know of. Even the Brits who are brilliant today seem to want to communicate like Americans (casual/careless). We need Stott, not only for his biblical faithfulness, but also for his impeccable clarity and precision and orderliness.
the redemption of john murray fulfilled and applied. oh how I remember reading this when I was in my early thirties. just the title itself is great and explains a lot! It helps us understand that there is a completed stage in redemption and an applied stage. a once-for-all work of redemption, and a continuing work. It walks us through what that means in light of God’s sovereign way of working in our lives.
how to live as a Christian
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This is the place to make sure that John Owen gets included. After Jonathan Edwards, outside the Bible, no one has fed my soul more deeply than this greatest Puritan writer who died in 1683. His small classic On the Mortification of Sin is the fullest and best exposition and application of Romans 8:13 that I know of: “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”
I would also point you to another Puritan named Jeremiah Burroughs and his book The Rare Gem of Christian Contentment as a sampling of all those wonderful Puritan paperbacks that The Banner of Truth has reprinted. They are worthy of our attention. Packer calls them the redwoods in the forest of theology.
spurgeon has written so much that you can’t begin to read it all. but let me point to his lectures to my students and highlight two chapters from that book (both available online). The first is “the blind eye and the deaf ear”: how to handle and survive criticism in the ministry (or anywhere). If you want to know how to navigate life when you’re a controversial person, you should turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, and read what Spurgeon means by that. the other is “the minister’s blackouts”. that’s an old-fashioned title on how to deal with depression and discouragement. I think you will be very encouraged by this short article.
stories that never happened
John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress has sold more books than any other book outside the Bible. Historically, Pilgrim’s Progress is off-the-charts helpful and influential. If you’ve never read that classic, go there.
Believe it or not, I didn’t read c.s. lewis’s narnia children’s books to my mid thirties. I didn’t grow up in a home that didn’t even know about c.s. Lewis. but we read them to our children. they loved them, and I loved them when I was in my thirties. I still do. Children’s books are called the Chronicles of Narnia. get the audio equipment and play it for the whole family while driving. then there is the space trilogy for an adult taste where you can see what lewis does with science fiction in contemporary cultural criticism.
dostoyevsky’s crime and punishment – I read it when I was in the third year of high school. I don’t remember what impact it had, but I remember that he captivated me. Recently, I listened to it again and found it, oh god, so compelling. Dostoyevsky is compelling because of his penetrating understanding of the human soul for its evil and its good and how they are all intertwined.
read for your soul
Let me end with a warning: Be careful reading for quantity to impress anyone. read for your soul
If we could live a thousand years and experience a thousand relationships in a thousand times, places and cultures, perhaps we wouldn’t need books to (eventually) become wise. But our lives are short, and God has been merciful to give us many places, many times, many cultures, and many experiences distilled in books.
Find the ones that strengthen your faith and make you want to live for God.
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