Sic Semper Tyrannis

Whatcha' Readin'?

I’ve been reading a lot of stuff lately. I recently finished If Grace is True-Why God Will Save Every Person, by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland. It’s pretty controversial stuff, being about universal salvation and thus the role of scripture and experience, but a very interesting read. But I think this book is pretty much as subversive as you allow it to be.

After that I read What Jesus Meant by Garry Wills, not nearly as eye-opening as the former, but raises an interesting question to me, did Jesus come from the Essene tradition? Wills is a Greek language scholar and some of his Scriptural translations were very interesting and fresh sounding.

And finally, I just yesterday finished Anderson Cooper’s Dispatches from the Edge. Man, what a sad, sad book about the Sri Lankan tsunami, Iraq war, and hurricane Katrina- all events that Cooper has covered for CNN. I don’t envy him for his job at all even though he says he needs the constant displacement. I had no idea about the pain in his life. I was thankful that he didn’t try to tidy up these horrible events and images into a nice, neat little package where all of the suffering suddenly makes sense. That would have been sickeningly trite.

Up next, I’ll finally read A New Kind of Christian by Mclaren for my small group and a book called Father Joe, on recommendation by Lance.

posted by Mike @ 1:52 PM