I once heard a professor state that the two things that will most shape your life over the next 10 years are the books you read and the friends you chose. He’s right on both counts. A recent conversation with a friend over breakfast caused me to consider the books that shaped my life and beliefs. Specifically, the books that changed my mind or the trajectory of my life in some significant way. This includes the good ones, as well the ones that confused me or set me on an unhealthy detour for a season.
Two quick observations before I share my list.
One, almost all these books I read before I was 30. Books still shape me in my 40’s, but who I read in my earlier years had a stronger influence in setting or changing the trajectory of my life. Early reading sets foundations. Choose wisely.
Two, the written word still has power. Ideas endure long after the one who wrote them down. Reading a book, which takes hours, days, or weeks to chew on, still has great potential to form not only your ideas, but also your mind. Learning is hard. The struggle is what causes the growth. A 30-second reel, a 30-minute YouTube video, or a 3-paragraph AI summary can impart useful information, but quick media doesn’t tend to produce good thinkers.
Six Books that Shaped me for the Better
Chosen By God – RC Sproul. The first time I heard of the doctrine of election, I hated it. It scared me. I even cried about it. I was in high school at the time. A godly man in my church handed me gently reasoned with me, answered my questions, and finally gave me this book. It was the book that convinced me of the Calvinist Doctrine of Election initially. I really should say that I surrendered to it when all my attacks proved fruitless. I still have that battered copy on my shelf. This is part of the reason I believe that high school students deserve good theology and more than surface level doctrine.
The Potter’s Freedom – James White. In college and seminary, there were plenty of Calvinism and Arminian debates. So much so that I just got tired of it. Most of my Professors were the kind of Baptists who believed in free will, but also held onto ‘once saved, always saved.’ You can opt in, but can’t opt out of salvation. For a few years in this environment, I abandoned Calvinism in frustration and fatigue. For about 2-3 months, I even tried to become an Arminian (more on this later). It didn’t stick. James White’s book brought me back, fully convinced, to Calvinism, and it felt like coming home. Not the best or clearest book on the topic, but it was the right one at the right time for me.
Power through Prayer – EM Bounds. EM Bounds was a Civil War-Era preacher on the Confederate side (even though he opposed slavery) and a prisoner of war. He wrote several books on prayer with short chapters and lots of memorable, powerful sentences. He is unrelenting in his blunt, self-assured style. He’s not for everyone. But I loved it. This book taught me that prayer was far more necessary and powerful than I had previously thought. It convicted me of my weak, paltry prayer life and gave me confidence to pray deeply. He was no Calvinist, though, and I disagree with some of his assertions about prayer changing God’s mind. However, this book made an indelible mark on me.
The Bible and the Future – Anthony Hoekema. For a long time I was dissatisfied with the Dispensational Premillennialism I was taught at my Christian College and grew up with at my home church. That’s a story for another time. At one point, I picked up a copy of Hoekema’s book on eschatology at the college library for a paper. The copy was already marked up by someone else, who clearly had wrestled with its contents. I had to buy my own copy to mark up. This book was the nail in the coffin to my dispensationalism, and convinced me of Amillennialism. Today, I hold to a more modified form than Hoekema presents, but I still cherish what this book did for me.
Preaching and Preachers – Martin Lloyd-Jones. This is my favorite book that made me fall in love with biblical preaching and filled me with confidence in what it can achieve. Lloyd-Jones is a legend among Reformed pastors. He famously preached through the Letter to the Romans over a period of 12 years and 366 sermons on Friday night services. He knew a thing or two about preaching. The book is based on a series of lectures he gave to seminary students during his later years. I love his wit, his strongly held opinions, and his warmth. I still fondly remember evenings in the upper room of our old Cape Cod on Lake Road, sitting in my red wing back chair, feeling like I was sitting with an old mentor who was pouring out decades of wisdom and inspiration to me. I soaked it up. I’ve only read it once, but I still think about it. In fact, it’s just about time I read it again.
A Body of Divinity, Thomas Watson. This was not my first Puritan work, but it has been the most impactful. Watson opened me to the Puritans as a lifetime reading project. Not much time passes before I have to pick up another one. It is rare in life that you read a book that is so good that it makes you feel foolish for having wasted so much time on lesser works. A page of good Puritan, like Watson, is powerful wisdom and insight distilled. Often I gain more in a chapter of Watson than an entire book by many modern pastors. I still pattern my thinking and sermon writing after Watson, particularly in application.
Four Books that Did Damage
I’ve read plenty of bad books. What made the following list damaging was that these books captivated me on first reading. I felt they were really on to something, yet they ended up bearing bad fruit in my life and faith for a season. They sent me on a detour that took a while to recover from. Still, I learned lessons from the journey.
Pagan Christianity – Frank Viola and George Barna. There was a time in life when I was restless and dissatisfied with modern churches. I believed church structures were bloated, expensive, too professionalized, and got in the way of mission. Sadly, this has sometimes proven true. At the time, though, I thought that house churches were the answer. I read a lot of books on organic house churches. This book, however, was more polemical and critical. It made me think that just about everything in the ‘institutional church’ had pagan Roman origins and should be abandoned in favor of house churches, which were the purest expression of what a church should be. The house church movement was the revolution that never took off here in the States. Looking back, this book came across as smug and self-important. It stirred those same qualities in me, and that took a while to get over.
Emerging Church – Dan Kimball. This isn’t really that bad of a book. It just ended up going nowhere and took me with it. I read this before Pagan Christianity, during that same season where I was dissatisfied with church, particularly the consumeristic, megachurch side of things. I became fascinated with the up and coming Emerging Church. I never bought into the theologically liberal version (Emergent Network), but this made me think appropriating Medieval Christianity by candles, stained glass, and liturgy in worship was the key for Christians responding to postmodernism. ‘Smells and bells’ were needed to draw this hungry generation into the presence of Christ and back to church. This impulse for a more mystical and traditional faith isn’t new, and is again on the rise. But older doesn’t always mean better. I thought this was the path my generation would take in response to waning seeker sensitive movement. It wasn’t. The emerging church movement never really emerged. It lacked weight, direction, and doctrinal clarity. What emerged were a new generation of leaders sorting into different camps. More conservative thinkers trended toward the New Calvinism of the Young, Restless, and Reformed, while liberals morphed into progressive christianity.
Blue Like Jazz – Donald Miller. I read this book in college and was intrigued simply because it was different from standard Christian fare. It was ‘non-religious,’ emphasizing spirituality without reference to established churches. At the time, I was in a place where I just wanted to feel something in my faith. Culture was changing and there was a postmodern mood that Christians didn’t know what to do with. This book embraced it. Blue like Jazz is provocative in areas, but also quite shallow. I can remember none of its lessons, if it even had any. Like many of the postmodern-leaning Christian writers of this era, Miller didn’t seem to have a point other than expressing himself, with all his doubts. At least the book is accurately titled. It’s just meandering thoughts about Jesus, unmoored from solid theology. Being provocative is not the same thing as being profound or true.
A Long Faithfulness – Scot McKnight. This is the book that convinced me to become a Classic (not Wesleyan) Arminian… for less than three months. McKnight argues that the warning passages in Hebrews prove you can lose your salvation. And if that is true, if the last of the five points of Calvinism falls, then they all begin to fall apart. I was convinced at the time. I proudly wore the Arminian label and tried to be consistent. I just couldn’t. I realized it would have to affect other parts of my theology that I was wholly committed to, such as substitutionary atonement, which is a thoroughly Calvinistic doctrine. Consistent Arminianism tends to collapse into open theism (the idea that God doesn’t know the future). Human free will, it turns out, is a jealous god. The ability for humans to choose our own destiny is assumed as foundational from the beginning, and all Scripture and even God himself must submit to it. I also struggled to find the Arminians that were theologically robust and not liberal in other areas. All my heroes were Calvinists, so I realized I was missing something. I couldn’t moonlight as an Arminian for long.
I could list many more books that shaped me for good and others that sent me on difficult seasons. God has been good all the way. Ultimately, it is the Bible that has most shaped, guided, guarded, upheld, and strengthened me. As it should be. It is God’s eternal Word alone that serves as the only sure standard against every wind of doctrine. We neglect that book to our own peril.
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