Checking to see if a Liberty email account had been set up for me, I discovered that it had not only been set up, but there was an email indicating that I had been accepted into the D.Min. program. I am grateful to God for the opportunity to learn and grow. As I prepare for that workload, I need to trim down on the books I'm currently reading.
1) Flight of the Eagle by Conrad Black. I have been working on this 800 page monster for a couple of weeks now. While not as engrossing as the WWII series, it provides an accessible look at US history, tracing its rise as the lone super-power. It is refreshingly apolitical, while the writer makes decisive judgments upon particular figures and events. With a bias toward those who propelled American self-identity as a superpower, he tends to be too generous toward some (Woodrow Wilson) and too stingy with others (Calvin Coolidge). If you want to rediscover the genius of the American experiment, this is a good place to start (and continue for a while).
2) Shepherding a Child's Heart by Ted Tripp. This is a modern day parenting classic, and perhaps the first I'd recommend to new or established parents. Tripp literally gets to the heart of the problem by recognizing the heart of a child as the object of parenting, not simply behavior. Children must be confronted on why they sin, not merely how they sin. This requires engagement as much as discipline, and grace and much as law. It lays down a challenging call upon parents--one worth meeting for the sake of their children.
3) The Maze Runner by James Dashner. The most imaginative fiction of the present generation (i.e., Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, etc) almost exclusively belongs to the domain of young adult fiction. And like The Hunger Games, the Maze Runner is another worthy dystopian series that challenges its readers to imagine a future ravaged by human nature. The main character awakes, without memory, in a hemmed-in compound of teenagers, joining them in their quest to traverse the maze outside the compound and the grizzly creatures found within and escape to freedom. A haunting question lingers behind the action: Is the world outside the maze any better than the horrors within? This book is being made into a movie and will likely follow the young adult classic-turned-movie, Ender's Game, as a blockbuster success.
4) Constitutional Conservatism by Peter Berkowitz. A decent treatise on what the title means, this book explains ideological conservatism through the work of the legendary British parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, through the American Founders, and into the modern era when traditionalist, libertarians, and foreign policy hawks coalesced around a Burkean-styled ordered liberty. The greatest trait of this book is its stress on political moderation alongside ideological conservatism. Conservatism has historically been a moderate movement. Simply consider the structured revolution (really, reformation) in America against the radical, utopianized revolution in France. The former was inherently a conservative quest, seeking to re-apply and constitionalize historic principles of virtue and liberty; the latter was inherently a progressive quest, seeking to overturn a culture, history, and timeless principles as well as a form of government. This book offers a humbling rebuke to conservatives who eschew conservative methods as betrayal and unacceptable compromise.
Soon to begin: Dangerous Calling, by Paul David Tripp, with my ministerial-bound Christian friend. This book is a soul-probing look at the wonderful and terrible call to the pulpit. Vintage Jesus, by Mark Driscoll, for my No BS BS, which contrasts the claims of Christ against the predominant worldviews of this age.
