Every Christian Should Read These Books...

To just choose one is impossible. That is impossible. The one that I know each Christian should read is... Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke. I'm Pastor Cameron. And this is the Uncut Podcast, where we have uncut, honest conversations about faith, life, and ministry. Today, we're sitting down on a cold, snowy December afternoon, and we've decided that we were gonna talk about what's one book, Cameron, that every believer should read or... Not... Other than the Bible, Cameron. Okay.

Other than the Bible. Other than the Bible, what is one book that every believer or most believers should pick up and read? Okay, so... I really think there's two. Oh! Maybe even three. I'm over here trying to narrow it down to one, and here you are just going to be like... Okay. Yeah, I mean, because if you were to say, name one book in... Like name one book in these three genres of book that Christians should read other than... I don't know.

But to just choose one is impossible, that is impossible. Because we love books. We do. We do. Okay, so I do kind of have, well, there's two. There's one that I know for sure, and then there's two by the same author that I'm kind of like, choose one of these and read them.

They're both... They're different, but they're both like super good, so. Okay. The one that I... The one that I know each Christian should read is Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Did I steal yours? No. No. No, you're close, but no. Yeah, Caustic Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer spelled B-O-N-H-O-E-F-F-E-R. Now you're just showing off because you can spell his name. Well, no. Like, I want you to be able to go and Google it and find it.

And I did a, when I was doing one of my master's, not divinity, but master's of arts and theological theological studies, we did a one whole year was on the period of theological reflection called the contemporary period, which is around that like 20th, mid-20th century, early 20th century period. So like Penenberg and Moltmann and Bonhoeffer and all of those guys.

And we were each assigned a theologian that we needed to study their primary works and then choose one main primary work and then respond to it critically. And so I spent a whole semester with the. I had to study Bonhoeffer for an entire semester. And I'm not just choosing that book because I studied it, I think that that book would probably be on many people's must-read list.

But anyway, Bonhoeffer was a German who was a seminarian and pastor during World War II, in between World War I and World War II, especially in the rise of Hitler and Bonhoeffer was a functional pacifist meaning he was he was not against he was not in favor of the war not in favor of any war.

And however, saw Hitler's leadership and what the Nazi regime was doing as a primary danger, to both the justice of God and the holiness of God and whatever, and so he essentially said, you know, the whatever evil may exist in the act of war is less, or whatever evil may exist in the act of war is not as great of an evil as not acting to eliminate Hitler. Right. So he was a part of then a plot to assassinate Hitler, a plot that was unsuccessful

and that ultimately got him, got Bonhoeffer killed. Yes. But in the midst of all of that, as a very young theologian, he was very prolific in and writing, and the cost of discipleship was probably one of his more famous, is probably his most famous work. That and Life Together. And Life Together, yeah, which is about community. And so if I had to recommend one book that any Christian would read outside of the Bible, it would be Cost of Discipleship, which helps us to focus.

It doesn't really help us to focus. It's just a kind of a corrective to the more contemporary understanding of Christianity as being the key to all of your joy and happiness in life. Caustic Discipleship helps us to remember that a relationship with Jesus or following Jesus is also is, you know, following a road to our own crucifixion, our own death, ultimately our own resurrection, but our own death as well. So, but it communicates a radical call, a radical call of following Jesus.

So that would be my first must read. Yeah, Bonhoeffer's a dude. He is a dude. And in fact, if you wanna not just read what he wrote, but read about him. Eric Metaxas, M-E-T-A-X-A-S, who is a Christian biographer, wrote a biography of Bonhoeffer that's probably the best out there. It's fantastic, it's easy to read. It's pretty thick. It's a very thick book. But it's easy to read. I think it's titled Prophet, Priest, and Martyr, or something like that is the subtitle to it. But it's so good.

Yeah, and you'd really really really really like that if you haven't read a biography on Bonhoeffer but want to he was quite the because like He not only did he ultimately end up being you know at least involved in the planning of an assassination attempt against Hitler, but leading up to that he was part of the like The church that was resisting government control by the Nazis.

Yes, and And all of that so it was you know, there was a Yeah a big long story. I even remember reading in a short biographical.

Statement, or like summary of that, like him contemplating, like people giving him an out and saying, stay here in the United States, don't go back because people were watching what was happening in Germany and were like, things are not going well, we think we're moving towards a war, and he was like, no, I'm gonna go back because of that, so... Yeah. So, excellent. Yeah. Excellent book. Why do you think that book is so pertinent? Because it is a message that's not popular in church.

Just not. We go to church to feel better about ourselves. You know, we feel we go to church to have like a, to be lifted up in spirit, you know, to have a joyful competence, to be recharged, however you wanna, however you wanna talk about it. But the scriptures that speak about like the cost of, the personal cost, the familial cost, the societal cost, to following Jesus, to being a disciple of Jesus is not something that often gets talked about, or at least doesn't get talked about a whole lot.

But it is firmly rooted in the life of the cross, the life of discipleship. I mean, you look at every single one of the disciples, every single prominent figure that followed Jesus closely, that was a disciple, they didn't ride off into the sunset of the Roman Empire, victorious because of their relationship with Jesus Christ. They were killed for it. Right. But most of them were killed in a spirit of joy.

And Paul himself, Paul included, Peter, John, They were all killed, executed in some way, shape, or form because... Rather violently often. Yeah, violently because of their insistence on the resurrection of Jesus Christ and as Him as Lord. And so that is not a popular message, and we're far away from...

We're far away from as a people understanding, or at least I should say, in the United States and generally in the Western world, we are way, way, way, way, way far away from understanding the practice, that the practice of our faith could require our... Requires people's lives sometimes. You know, it's more of like a fake scenario that we tell youth group kids. If people came into this church right now, held a gun to your head and said,

you have to renounce the Bible, would you do it or not? Like... Of course, they all say, oh, no, I would not do it, right? Because it's such a fanciful scenario that no one actually takes it seriously. Yeah. Yeah. Unless... Did you see that clip? I think it's from... There's a podcast out there that I see the reels all the time. What is it? Youth ministry stories or something like that? I've seen them, yeah. And they have that story about somebody who was in a youth group and...

Fake gunman type of thing. Fake gunman kidnapped, the parents were in on it and approved it, and it was all like the youth leaders and stuff, and scared these kids to death and probably caused lots of trauma. Yeah, those kids are all deconstructing today. Yeah. Don't do that. Don't phage a fake hostage situation in order to give your kids a taste of suffering for the gospel, but that would not be a good youth ministry strategy.

You know? So do you want to talk about the other two books that you were thinking, or do you want... No, let's go with you.

Go with me. And let's see... See if I name one of those other two books. See if you name one of them, yep. Oh, man, I keep going back and forth. But I'll kind of go with, I'll go with like maybe a safe answer, because it's a little bit, it's broad, it's a classic, it's like proven the test of time, and I would say like. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It was one of mine.

It's one of my other ones. I have one of Lewis' books is on my, man, it's one of these two, so I can talk about that one next. Yeah, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Lewis is probably one of the authors that I've... I haven't read all of his stuff by any means, but out of all the authors I've read, I've read close... I've read more of his stuff than I've read any other author, so... And there's a lot to, like, dive into it, but, like, mere Christianity is, I think it's fairly approachable.

It's, I mean, it's older, so, like, some of the language might be a little bit of a challenge to kind of, you know, tackle if you're not used to reading literature that's not recently written with our vocabulary, but, But you know, it was originally, I think several, it was a radio program that he put on through the BBC, and it was a series of lectures that he did that way, and then he took those BBC lectures and wrote them out, edited them, and turned them into the book, Mere Christianity.

And so it was written with this very broad intention to kind of speak to a large, wide audience and make an argumentation for Christianity's reasonableness, how it. Addresses some of the secular, like, proclivities of like society, like, talks about like the moral law, and covers a whole bunch of things.

And it's, it's really good to read in sequence, but it's also not quite so such a complicated book that you couldn't open up a chapter and just start in a chapter and still get some pretty significant things out of it. So it's, you know, just one of the biggest authors, thinkers, writers, and apologists in recent Christian history relatively. And I think it's worth reading at some point if you can.

There's even if you're like really intimidated by like picking up a book, you could go online and there is this YouTube account called CS Lewis Doodles, and he has some portions of Mere Christianity, and he has these hand-drawn animations that go along with the book. They're really fun to watch. Bible Project by CS Lewis?

Yeah, something like that. But CS Lewis Doodles, you can check them out, and you'll get a taste or a flavor for what some of the content of that book is that way, if you're a little hesitant to dive into a book right away. Did any of your college professors use Mere Christianity as a text? No, I read it in high school. I got to go to a Christian school, and I think that was the first time I was exposed to it was in high school. Yeah.

I'm thinking back, I think in undergrad, I took an Intro to Christianity class, and I think it was one of the supplemental texts or something like that that we could read. No. There was a class, I could have taken a literature class that was only the literature of C.S. Lewis, but I had a pretty heavy semester load that year and I decided not to because they were gonna read every major fiction and nonfiction book that he wrote in a semester and I was like, I can't keep up with that.

So I had to miss that class because I just I was taking too many other classes that required too much. I was like, I cannot get able to do that. I have read, I did read a lot of his stuff in because I was a dual religion and philosophy major. And so a lot of his stuff crossed both of those spectrums, like philosophy of religion and stuff like that. So I know for sure I read The Problem of Pain, read Miracles, wrote a whole paper on Miracles, if you remember that.

The Great Divorce, read that in that same class. Of course, mere Christianity was a primary text in a lot of classes, but yeah, classic. I think it's gonna be on the short list for most people, should be on the short list for most people. So I would say the other one that I was thinking of was another Lewis book, but I wasn't... It's not... I think it's equally as popular, but it's not really in the same genre. Okay is Screw tape letters.

Yeah, I really think that it is a Extraordinarily, applicable, appropriate, insightful book for most Christians to read. It is, and I think Lewis would say this, it does take some liberties. It takes quite a few liberties, obviously, with faith and spirituality or Christian thought.

Screw tape letters, a great divorce that you mentioned also, he would say, both are theological or like, Their allegories, they're not even like, you know, they're not even in the same category as like, you know Most people know definitely no CS Lewis for line which in the wardrobe the Chronicles of Narnia series, which is fiction with allegorical, imagery but screw tape letters and Great divorce in particular are both more

explicit in their allegory but he's a little bit more liberal with some... He's not interested in representing true Christian, like, theology in its exactness necessarily, but showing spiritual principles. Yeah. So, but what is Screwtape Letters for those who've never, like, had any exposure to them? Like, what is the book? So, the main... the main idea of the book is the screw tape is a demon and he's writing letters to another demon, Wormwood.

And it's like a, basically what you have is you have the letters going back and forth, about the mentor demon teaching the mentee how to essentially like break down a child of God. And kind of like the cunning and craftiness of what must be done and how to use culture and how to use their own appetites, physical and emotional, mental appetites. And essentially it's just like this way of seeing the, of describing the cunningness of the enemy to destroy the children of God. Yeah.

It's not scary. No, it's not scary. It even makes it, I think, somewhat humorous at times. Like it's not like, it's kind of weird to feel like you're reading, because it somewhat disarms it a little bit by thinking that you're reading essentially like these, like office memos that are being passed back and forth between two demons is what the tone of it sounds like, and so it sounds kind of goofy at times. Yep. Yeah. So, but I think it does.

Haven't read it in quite a few years. I look for my copy still looking for my copy If you have my paper copy of the screw tape letters, please bring them back to me.

Belongs to the library of Cameron. Yeah, I'm about to buy it again I'm about to buy it as a digital so that I can read it again but it's been a while since I've read it, but I want to right now and, and Yeah, just I have always felt like it's a really interesting take on and really interesting way to to process through what happens or what may be happening in a person's life, you know, behind the spiritual veil that we don't really see with our human

eyes, but that, you know, that the scripture says is there and active and working.

The spiritual realm, that is. And so it was, it's all, it always has kind of like been, I always come away from books like that, the screw tape letters. And I don't know if you've ever, this is probably, this is a little bit less of a classic, but have you ever read any of the, this present darkness book? These present, this present darkness by Frank Peretti. Yes. Piercing the darkness, this present darkness. Yeah, I read those.

I read some of those, I think, when I was in high school at some point. Yeah. Yeah. Those are completely fiction, but they are all about depicting the spiritual battle that we don't see, and I always walk away from reading those books with an increased perception, an increased perception of the spiritual world around me, but also like a greater passion to pray. Like, oh, I need to be praying more.

I need to be praying more that spiritual strongholds would be torn down, that I would have eyes to see the things that are going on around me spiritually, not just what appears on the surface of people's lives, but what is actually happening in the spiritual realm around them so that I can pray into that and that I can pastor towards that, not just pastor towards what we see. So, yeah. My two books then would be Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis and The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Add your book Mere Christianity by Lewis, and I think you've got a pretty solid top three. Yeah, very much. I don't know what else. Let's say, okay, let's, do you have any things that would be honorable mention? Yeah. I think another Lewis book that deserves honorable mention is Till We Have Faces, which is much more of a fiction book, but with some really poignant themes that I find a lot of people end up resonating with. So it's a retelling of a, I believe, a Greek myth.

So he takes a Greek myth and then he kind of changes it a little bit in order to kind of demonstrate.

What false love and true love looks like So the whole book it's a really good book it's a book where if you follow along with the main character you get to see a, Fantastic perspective shift which at the end you're just like Well, you see when you get to the last like three four chapters of the book There's a perspective shift that happens and you suddenly reinterpret or re-understand the whole book differently, makes it worth rereading.

But the main idea of that book is that it depicts both healthy love and unhealthy love, and how we sometimes fall into this trap of believing that, like, love of our friends, love of our neighbors, love of our closest and dearest ones or significant others has to look a certain way, and we think it's love, but it's not, because people have done some pretty awful and controlling or manipulative things in the name of love, but ultimately love is freeing, it's giving,

it's not controlling or demanding, right? You can quote that whole passage, Corinthians. So. So it's a really it's a really good book But it's much more Allegorical a little bit more like you're gonna have to wrestle with the text a little bit more Lewis doesn't necessarily lay out Exactly what he's intending you to learn from the book, a lot of Lewis's books Some of it a lot of his fiction books can tend to pair with his nonfiction writings.

So So we have faces, pairs with the Four Loves book that he wrote where he talks about his different, his philosophical categories for the different types of loves in relationships we have, so. Okay, how about this? How about.

Name a book written in the last 30 years Okay. Yeah. Okay. So name name a book written in the last 30 years that you would recommend because these are these are all books from Yeah, these are like a hundred years ago a hundred years ago. Yeah, almost if not, yeah already so I can think of two. Okay, I can think of, Life of the Beloved by Henry Nowen or.

Emotionally Healthy Discipleship by Peter Scazzaro. Yeah. I would say that would be... I've not read that Nowen book, but Scazzaro's book, I think, would be a good one. I was gonna say... I actually had two Nowen books on my list, too. Would be either The Wounded Healer by Nowen, or In Jesus' Name by Henry Nowen. And that's, those are two really good ones. I would also say The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey. Mind-bendingly awesome book. Really? I've never read that one. Oh my gosh. So good.

That was the first book I ever was made to read in college. My first class of my freshman year of college, like first college class ever, I walk into a class, it was a class with Jesus of Nazareth, and I had no idea what a academic study of Jesus of Nazareth was gonna look like. I thought it was gonna be all about like, I didn't know, no concept of the historical Jesus, There's no concept of literary criticism or historical criticism or anything like that.

But anyway, thankfully, my professor was and is a believer and pastor, but also PhD in New Testament studies. So she had us read as the first book, The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey, which is more of a reflection. It's not necessarily an academic work, but a reflection.

It's really really good. I would also maybe add some of Peterson's works So, oh, yeah, Peterson's books, which ones though If you're in ministry, I would I would read his memoir the pastor. Mm-hmm. It's excellent book The contemplative pastor is always sat pretty high on my list of books for pastors to read. Yep five smooth stones for pastoral work Mm-hmm by Peterson is really good. Yep Um, I would say, uh, a law and obedience at the same direction by Peterson, very good one as well.

Um, but I would read as I would read as if you haven't read his memoir called the pastor, I would read that. Yeah. Cause it helps to bring a lot of clarity to who Peterson was and why he did write a lot of the things that he wrote. If you don't know who Eugene Peterson is, but you've ever read the Message version of the Bible, Peterson is the one who wrote that.

RL – Wrote the Message. RL – What he's most known for. RL – That and then secondarily, probably, is Long Obedience in the same direction. RL – Yeah. And he catches a lot of grief. Well, I guess it depends on the environment that you're in, but he can often catch a lot of grief for writing the Message. Oh, it's a watered down version. Oh, like, you know, but it's actually a translation. It's very, and here's the thing too, is Peterson has dual PhDs in Semitic language.

Something that I didn't know until I read his memoir that he is, uh, he's a, a very well respected, very well read dual PhD in Semitic language, which both Aramaic and Greek are Semitic languages, so is Hebrew. And so it would, it would, like... It's not like he's just some dude who's rephrasing the English translation. He actually translated from the original using his expertise.

Yeah. So there are many more Bible translations out there that are actually just some dude rephrasing English translations translations into modern or doing, there, there, there are significantly more translations I would have more problems with than the message. Again, you know, it's not the translation philosophy that I think is useful for everything, but it's a good translation. Like read it. Yep.

Yeah, that's a whole little bunny trail, but yeah, Peterson's a great guy to read, particularly if you're interested in pastoral ministry or just ministry in general. It's a really good voice to hear. What about why so many now in books between the two of us?

That's a good question. I don't know. I think what I respect about Nouwen is his, I think I respect the philosophy of ministry that he employed, which was like self-emptying. I mean, like Peterson, Nowen, we mentioned Peter Scissaro, all three of those are contemplative in a modern sense. They're about as monastic as you can get in a modern setting, kind of. So, which is interesting because I'm not really a contemplative person, but I appreciate both Peterson and now and for that.

Yeah. Yeah. I think they, and when we were saying contemplative, I don't know, contemplative is like a really big word that we I won't dare and try and define exactly but it's it's this more I guess like contemplative is more of, Wait, I'm gonna mess it up, because I always mess it up. Was it Mary that sat at Jesus' feet and Martha was running around? Yes. So contemplative spirituality would be Mary sitting and being with Jesus. Yep.

Martha spirituality, which is, I think, more prevalent in evangelical and modern, Protestant denominations, is a doing things for Christ. And so... The only way that I can keep those two straight is from the book title. You ever come across that book before? Having a Merry Heart in a Martha World? Oh, yeah, now that I will use that as my, as I can keep those two. That's the only way that I can keep those two, the who said it, who's feet, so. Martha World, yeah.

But we live in a world where we're defined by what we do, how well we do it. You know, we are doing things with Christ, or doing things for Christ, which are not in themselves necessarily awful, but when that's the only way in which we know Jesus, and we never know Jesus by simply being with Him, we begin to run into some unhealthy tendencies.

And so I think all those authors kind of push us into a more merry way of being, a being rather than a doing. Right. And if you want an even more modern take on that, you can read some of John Mark Comer's books. Yeah. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry is probably his most famous. Yeah. It's very good towards that lifestyle as well. So, well, if you guys out there listening or watching or whatever,

if you have a book that one, you think we should read. 2. You think it should be a book that's included on the list of books other than the Bible that all Christians should read. Drop it in the comments and let us know. Maybe we will pick it up and read it and respond to it. Or maybe we've already read it. Or maybe we've already read it. But anyway, we appreciate you listening today. It's hopefully, well, it looks like a little bit of a shorter episode for you today.

Any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments. Music.