Have Christian Books Helped Christians To Be Disciples?

Robert Jacob Thiesen | January 29, 2018 | Church Culture | No Comments

“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.”

My training in Philosophy might be summarized as taking this saying to an extreme. To borrow one of Stanley Hauerwas’ more epic lines, in Philosophy, I was taught to read things the same way porcupines screw: very carefully.

I was recently asked, however, to put this training on the shelf for a day and judge thousands of books by their covers. The Christian community I am a part of here in South Korea is building a library for a sister community in Nagaland, India. Thousands of Christian books were donated by Korean Christians for this library. The books were almost all published in America from the 80s to 2000s. My job was to sort through them and take out books that were not relevant, heretical or too old and broken.

Judging so many books quickly did allow me to take a broad view of the kinds of books Christians have been writing and reading.

II.

My initial response to the task given to me was enthusiasm. Building libraries for the rural poor in India! What could be a more worthy task? However, as I began sorting through the books, I became discouraged.

Were these books that would help build the church in Nagaland or were they only books that offered comfort and advice for Christians who wanted to get along in middle class North America?

Here is some of what I found.

There were many books that appeared to be relevant only to people living in North America. This in itself is not a fault, of course. Books ought to be addressed to a particular readership and situation. However, for many such books, I found no evidence that readers were being challenged to live lives of discipleship in the face of their particular situations. If there were evidence of such challenge, I would have been more confident that these books could be of use to Christians in Nagaland.

By far, the most numerous books I found were those of the “Left Behind” series, written by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. As eschatology, I find these books, which continue to have massive influence on evangelical’s political views, deeply flawed. Sorting these books, I decided that there was no good reason to export our bad ideas to Nagaland, and so removed stacks and stacks of them without remorse.

I also found many books that said decidedly odd things about women. When I came across books like this, I consulted with one of the Korean women working with me. She was also suspicious about what exactly was contained between covers like this one. Would Naga women relate to or benefit from the views of womanhood assumed in these books? We decided, no.

Other books were more encouraging, like those on prayer. While I did not know exactly what these books said, being encouraged to pray can only be good! Having a rich prayer life is a part of any life of discipleship.

I also felt better about books that stuck close to biblical texts. I was more confident that these books would be generalisable to the lives of the Naga people. There is no guarantee of good interpretations, of course, but at least these books were engaged in the types of conversations disciples everywhere should have.

This is the type of book I was most happy to find. It is a book of which I was confident would be relevant to living a life of discipleship in Nagaland. First, it focuses on a particular part of discipleship: in this case, how to age well as a disciple of Christ. Second, it is scholarly; this I take to be evidence of seriousness. This is a book that will likely be critical about its own presuppositions and will be helpful for a life of discipleship in the real world.

III.

The questions I asked myself as I sorted through these books were the following: Are these the books we need to interpret the Christian story faithfully in an idolatrous world? Are these the books we need to transcend our own situations and pull together as the global church in a hostile world? Are these the books we need to live lives that make us look more like Jesus in a “me first” world? I asked these questions not as the North American “we,” but as the Christian “we.”

Unfortunately, far too many books were not the books that we need. As Christian writers and readers, let’s take this as a challenge!

About The Author

Jones

I am a volunteer with Mennonite Central Committee and the Dandelion Community in South Korea. My specialties are farmwork, teaching, writing, and organizing. I grew up in British Columbia, Canada, in the small town of Yarrow. I've spent four years treeplanting in the wilds of British Columbia and Alberta, and also earned a Master's in Philosophy from the University of Western Ontario. My current work involves issues of peacebuilding and nationalism in North-East Asia.

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