Moan or Longing? ... Read and decide for yourself!

I love reading! Everything from books and magazines to competitions and recipes on the side of cereal packets if I am desperate.

I see this as a good thing, and being in this role - I find that people are always passing articles and books to me with the recommendation 'You should read this!'

Now I read quite widely, but want to focus these thoughts on the nature of Christian books that I have been encouraged to read recently. (I should clarify that these have mostly been in the devotional genre.)

These books have been both contemporary and classic - and it is this that I want to reflect on. Most of the contemporary books I have stopped reading after one, perhaps two chapters. This has been for two reasons, both of which increasingly irk me.

1/ The author has said everything they want to say in the first chapter and the rest of the book seems to be restating the same thing in different ways ... Ie - there is a lack of spiritual depth ... Instead we get sound bites!

2/ These books also seem to me to be very formulaic ... If you want this, then do this ... And God will answer all your prayers. However the doing never seems to 'cost' anything, as if somehow our Father's world is centred on us, and He is just waiting to answer our prayers, and make our lives 'nice'. Spiritual life coaching for those who want to improve their lives ...

I'm afraid I don't see that this message is reflected greatly in either Church history, or in the world in which I live (ie my messy reality) nor, more importantly, in the pages of the Bible - despite valiant efforts by authors to make it appear so!

Contrast this with the classics which seem to expound and exhort us to Biblical and, dare I say, deeper spiritual realities, such as humility (utter dependence on God in ALL things), consecration (giving over of all that I am, and have, to His Lordship) etc. etc.

Is this a moan or a longing for something deeper in contemporary, western, Christian faith?

Perhaps what I now consider classics were themselves surrounded by books such like those I have been reading recently ... But which have long been forgotten. My fear is, however, that in this 'modern world' anything contemporary has value simply because it is contemporary ... What is the latest must read? What is shaping Christian thought today?

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