I read a lot.

The question popped into mind recently: "Is all of this reading I do purely for the reasons I want it to be?" The reason why I thought of it is because I try and read everything. Not literally everything, but subject-wise...I read books of history, politics, classic literature, modern literature, and Christian life. I'd be a liar if I said there was NO personal pride in it...but really I'm shooting for something that not a lot of Christians know and strive for...knowledge of the world around me.

Now I'm not saying that I'm some special force in the world and everyone should be like me, or that most Christians intentionally stay unculutured. But I've noticed that sometimes a thing like your reading list, if you have one (if you don't, then make one ;) ), will be filled with books on the Bible and Christian living only. There's none of the old college "well roundedness" going on. The reason why universities, religious and secular, make you take things like math when your an English major, or interpretive dance when your study to design spaceships, is that they don't want you to live in a bubble and know only what you need to do one thing for the rest of your life. Who more than Christians, then, should have a semblence of the world around them? To know of the social struggles of those both in the houses on their block and in the countries across the sea? To know God's word inside and out, and to be able to connect it with an allegory of meaning with someone in a well known novel or poem?

I recently purchased Timothy Keller's The Reason for God: Faith in an Age of Skepticism. When I went with some good friends to his lecture at UPenn a few months back, I was inspired when someone asked him the question "what do you read to stay informed?" (It was something of that nature...I can't recall the exact question.) His reply, basically, was "I live in Manhattan, so I'm a New Yorker. So I read what New Yorkers read...but on top of that there's all of the theology and Christian books. So it's a lot more than the average person, but I read both what Christians read and what the people around me read." (Emphasis mine.)

So that's my goal. I want to know God's word, and know the people around me culturally. I want to be a good steward of my mind, in both making it the mind of Christ and like one of the sons of Issachar, who had understanding of their times.


Joshua