I hesitate to recommend Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, because—although it has been almost universally acclaimed as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century since it was published in 1980—I found it difficult to enjoy. It is a story of the generational effects of family dysfunction culminating in the emotional and physical abandonment of two young girls. Robinson’s main character Ruth reflects on the consequences of the narcissism of parents.

“Then there is the matter of my mother’s abandonment of me. Again, this is the common experience. They walk ahead of us, and walk too fast, and forget us, they are so lost in thoughts of their own, and soon or late they disappear. The only mystery is that we expect it to be otherwise.”

Although the discerning reader can sense the underpinnings of a biblical worldview (Robinson is a deacon in her congregational church), any redemptive thread is buried in an overwhelmingly depressing plot. From a literary standpoint, it is a masterpiece. Robinson’s wordplay will leave the aspiring novelist asking, “Why can’t I write like that?” But I found more nuggets of theology in Sheriff Bell’s internal diary entries in Cormac McCarthy’s macabre No Country for Old Men and in the family tragedy of Leif Enger’s transcendent Peace Like a River.

So Brave, Young and Handsome, by Leif Enger – It’s not as good as his first novel, Peace Like a River, but Enger’s trash is better than almost everyone else’s treasure.

The Reagan Diaries, edited by Douglas Brinkley – Regardless of your opinion of our 40th president, this book will help you understand his heart.

Methland, by Nick Redding – An agonizing look at the sociological, demographic, economic and spiritual aspects of drug addiction in small-town America.

Not for Sale, by David Batstone – The global human trafficking crisis told through the stories of several of its victims. A stomach-turning must-read.

The Lost World of Genesis One, by John Walton – A readable exploration of how Genesis 1’s Ancient Near Eastern readers/listeners may have understood the creation narrative.

The Language of God, by Francis Collins – The head of the Human Genome Project—also an evangelical—explores God’s fingerprints in biology.

Finally Alive, by John Piper – An important exploration of the new birth that exposes modern evangelicalism’s lack of precision in understanding God’s work of redemption.

The Pianist, by Władysław Szpilman – You probably saw the Palm d’Or-winning film when it was released nearly a decade ago. The book is even better.

Tortured for Christ, by Richard Wurmbrand – The convicting, disturbing, inspiring memoir of the Romanian pastor and Voice of the Martyrs’ founder.

Isaiah, by Raymond Ortlund Jr. – I read this commentary as I was working my way through Isaiah. Profound, pastoral, theologically sound exposition of the gospel in Isaiah.

One of the books I read over my Christmas vacation was John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate—highly recommended for anyone unsatisfied with the major interpretations of Genesis 1: Young Earth Creationism and the Framework, Day-Age and Gap Theories.

For instance, Young Earth Creationism (YEC) had become increasingly problematic for me, as I read about the geological and astronomical evidence for an ancient universe and began to ponder the theological significance of living in a cosmos that was created 14 billion years before my arrival. Additionally, I did not see an exegetical necessity for a 6,000-year-old earth and found increasingly problematic YEC’s extreme attempts to reconcile scientific evidence with their biblical interpretation.

Although it is built on solid Ancient Near Eastern scholarship, Walton’s book is brief and highly accessible to the average reader. The core of his argument is this: The author of Genesis 1 was not attempting to argue that God created the material substance of the universe—his ancient readers would have all assumed this to be true. Instead, Genesis 1 is an account of God’s ordering and arranging the cosmos into a temple which would reflect His glory and from which He would rule. With this view, Walton argues, it is unimportant whether one believes the universe is 6,000 years old or 14 billion years old, because this is simply not what Genesis 1 is about.

I know I’m a bit late to the game with this book, but better late than never. Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God is a quick read, but it is both deep and convicting—particularly for those of us who have grown up in the church (the “older brothers” in Jesus’ parable of the two sons.)

For years I’ve accepted the premise that Keller argues in the book: that the famous parable is at its core an indictment on the self-righteous ones who refuse to rejoice at God’s extravagant and “prodigal” love for the lost. But Keller takes the argument further to expose the uncomfortable implications of the parable: that neither of the sons really love their Father and that only one is restored to fellowship in the end. If we really understand the story as Jesus intended it, it will likely offend our sense of common decency.

As Keller argues, if the gospel is like a lake, there is probably no other part of the New Testament in which the bottom of the lake can be more clearly seen than in this parable. It is a story about the devastating consequences of moralism and self-righteousness. Unless decent, upstanding “Christians” like you and me repent of our wretched tendency to think that we deserve God’s love because we follow His rules, we will end up like the older brother, watching our Father celebrating with prostitutes and tax collectors while we sit outside the gates sulking—and even hating Him for it.

I picked up Hugh Ross’s Creation as Science several years ago and haven’t bothered to read it until recently. Ross is an astronomer, an evangelical and the founder of Reasons to Believe, a ministry whose mission is to “show that science and faith are, and always will be, allies, not enemies.”

If you believe in a 6,000-year-old earth and that creation occurred in seven 24-hour days, the book may challenge your worldview. (Ross effectively argues for a 13.73 billion-year-old universe that began with a God-initiated Big Bang.) He also takes on classic evolutionists, traditional creationists and IDers as well, in a tone that is both respectful to those with whom he disagrees and reverent toward Scripture.

The most amazing effect of the book, though, is that I have found myself utterly amazed at God. The profound size and age of the universe and infinitesimal conditions that are required for life on this unique planet make not believing in God a joke. Ross spends almost no time defending the existence of God—he merely lays out the facts, and it becomes obvious.

Here’s just one item that will blow your mind:

“… Astronomers determine that the entire observable universe contains at least 200 billion galaxies. These galaxies contain an estimated average of 200 billion stars each. The total number of stars in these galaxies, then, is 40 billion trillion. The unobserved dwarf galaxies would contribute an estimated additional 10 billion trillion. Thus, the total number of stars in the observable universe adds up to about 50 billion trillion.”

Yeah, my mind can handle that just fine, but what about this?

“One reason the universe must be so massive is that life requires it. The density of protons and neutrons determines how much of the universe’s hydrogen fuses into heavier elements. With a slightly lower density (producing fewer than about 50 billion trillion observable stars), nuclear fusion would be less productive and at no time in cosmic history (either in the big bang or in stars) would elements heavier than helium be produced. Or, if the density were slightly higher (producing more than about 50 billion trillion observable stars), nuclear fusion would be so productive that only heavier-than-iron elements would exist. Either way, life-essential elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorous would be too scarce or nonexistent.”

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” – Romans 1:20

Methland is, if anything, a masterful piece of journalism. But it’s more than that, as author Nick Reding traces the connections between the rise of methamphetamine traffic and economic duress in rural America. His no-holds-barred depiction of the human destruction caused by meth addiction both turns the stomach and breaks the heart. This account about a recovering addict reveals the unmistakable spiritual dimension of meth addiction:

The bad news, said Major, was that he lacked anything in which to believe. He was working hard–at staying clean, at raising Buck, at making money. But without meth, Major found it impossible to feel, as he put it, “happy.” … Even when Major did the right thing, he couldn’t quite believe in its rightness, for that thing didn’t satisfy him–meth did. … To get back to normal–that is, to begin once again to derive meaning from the humdrum facts of life–might take years. … Major’s self-admonishment that he ought to be grateful is no substitute for the neurotransmitters–and the feeling of well-being they create–that he can no longer produce. In the meantime, the gravitational pull of meth, with its pyrotechnic promise of biochemical ecstasy, could be overwhelming.

Today I finished The Reagan Diaries, a compilation of Ronald Reagan’s diaries from his eight years in office, edited by Douglas Brinkley. Reagan is the first political figure I remember, and I remember him well, even though I was very young when he began his first term. Here are a few unexpected things I discovered in his diaries:

Reagan hated war: Although he is often portrayed as a warmonger as a result of his hard statements against communism, his diary reveals a true fear of the potential of war with the USSR and a genuine desire to do everything in his power to avoid it. However, for better or worse, he believed the best defense against Russian aggression (whether real or imagined) was a solid nuclear arsenal, in spite of what he seemed to understand was the obvious consequence if a war ever started: MAD.

Reagan was a persuader: He genuinely believed–whether dealing with Sam Donaldson, Jesse Jackson, Mikhail Gorbachev, House Speaker Tip O’Neill or his own self-described liberal children Ron and Patti–that all he needed to do was get in a room with them and he could make them understand his position. It apparently hurt him when he was accused of being a racist, warmonger or anti-environmentalist, and he would often make personal calls and set up meetings with opponents to hash out differences in a constructive manner.

He had compassion. He frequently describes his deep emotion at meeting with sick children, wounded soldiers or people who had lost family members in disasters or war. Often his efforts in promoting freedom overseas were inextricably intertwined with his frustration at the way individual people were being treated under dictatorships or in other oppressive societies. He also seemed to care for people’s souls. In one interesting account, he expressed deep concern for Nancy’s unbelieving father who was on his deathbed and noted that he was looking for an opportunity to ask him about his eternal condition.

He loved freedom. Like a thread throughout the entire book, Reagan’s core obsession was extending freedom around the world. It was something he believed in–sometimes with a childlike naivete: Not only did he believe in it, but he assumed that it was a shared value of humanity. It informed every interaction he had with communist leaders and it animated his foreign and domestic policy.

Simply put, you must read this book: Stay Alive, My Son, by Pin Yathay. I’ve never had a book elicit such visceral anger and grief. At times I was literally vibrating with rage at the author’s unbearable suffering, which he recounts with the detached demeanor of one who has lost everyone dear to him.

In a nutshell, the book is Yathay’s account of the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power in Cambodia in the 1970s and how nearly every member of his family was systematically destroyed in the regime’s maniacal plot to rid the nation of any they perceived of as a threat to their establishment of a socialist utopia.

Although Cambodia is known for the “killing fields”, where 20 percent of the nation’s population was exterminated, what struck me even more than the overt violence of the Khmer Rouge is the dehumanizing strategy of their worldview. In an attempt to create loyalty and dependence on the regime, people were removed from their homes, family relationships were severed, children were taken away for brainwashing, books were destroyed, education was banned, personal possessions were stolen and redistributed and every aspect of daily life was controlled—all under the guise of ensuring equality. The result, of course, was not equality, but universal poverty, starvation and social disintegration.

Read “hard” books like this. They will motivate you to pray for, give to and advocate for those who have no access to the freedoms we take for granted.

My latest reading has been two important books, The Starfish and the Spider and Groundswell. Both discuss the growing phenomenon of decentralization, specifically as it relates to organizations/businesses and media. In other words, power and influence are being distributed to “the little guys” through wikis, social networking, blogging, etc. (as Groundswell points out), and the same should be happening in business, as leaders delegate idea generation, creative control and ultimately executive responsibility to their teams (as The Starfish and the Spider advocates). A similar argument was made by Dennis Bakke in Joy at Work–Dennis only allowed the executives at his multi-billion dollar company to make two decisions per year. All the rest had to be delegated to managers and team members. Of course, all this makes for good talk, and many organizations boast of decentralization. But I’ve discovered that actually making it happen is tough, for at least one reason: me.

“I’ll just do it myself,” is something I’ve always found myself thinking–and sometimes even saying. But, that statement is loaded with hubris (i.e. “I can do it better than anyone else”), impatience (i.e. “It will take too long for you to do it”) and selfishness (“I don’t want to show you how to do it, because then you’ll be one step closer to stealing my job”). Ultimately, it’s an attitude that harms ministries and organizations because it consolidates knowledge and skills in individuals rather than teams, it makes continuity tough during transition and it assumes that leaders are better at certain things simply because they’re leaders. It’s an attitude that feigns industriousness by always being busy but rarely empowering others to excel. It’s an attitude that feigns responsibility by always assuming the burden of decision making, but rarely entrusting others with challenging solutions. Simply put, it’s a sure-fire way to make yourself burn out and your team rust out. Either way, what a waste of resources.

The solution? Every day, I’m exploring how I can empower someone to make a decision that I would normally make, to discover a solution I would normally attempt to solve alone or begin to learn a skill that I’m not all that good at anyhow.