Books that made a difference

Over at The Washington Post/Newsweek the web forum On Faith has asked its panelists to tell us about a book or books that have made a difference in your life. There are answers which include Philip Yancy's What's So Amazing About Grace, Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest, and yes that collection of 66 books I have read more than any other made the list with someone naming The King James Bible. You can read all the panelists responses.

So, naturally I wondered about my own answer. It's not just my job, the Bible is the best answer as I read it all the time, have read it more than anything else and have even given as many as a hundred sermons in a year based on its contents. But moving beyond the obvious...I had to pause. The question isn't what book did you most enjoy reading, which could get an odd answer like Stuart Little, Thr3e, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, When Nietzsche Wept, The Poisonwood Bible, The Oldest Living Conferederate Widow Tells All or the novels of Susan Howatch.

If they asked what did you find the profoundly interesting, I could answer And the Band Played On, Bowling Alone, Leadership and the New Science, Generation to Generation, or Guns, Germs and Steel. Or which books have haunted me, as I haven't been able to forget them would include A Sand County Almanac, The Monkey Wrench Gang, In Our Strange Gardens, Diary, and Salvation on Sand Mountain.

Those that have influenced how I think about my faith would have to include several by C.S. Lewis and Michael Ramsey, Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, Chesterton's Orthodoxy, Quarks, Chaos and Christianity, Love's Endeavor, Love's Expense, Amazing Grace: a vocabulary of faith, The Black Christ, and certainly Christianity Rediscovered.

But the question is made a difference. The answer would have to be the writings of Heinrich Böll, the German Nobel Prize winning author I first was introduced to thanks to that great influence on my life Dr. Jerry Weatherford at Georgia Southern, who is one of two Mormon men (the other being Dr. Lane VanTassel) who helped me be a better Christian (in very unMormon ways, of course). Böll's post World War II works broadened my world and showed me how words could convey great depth of meaning. I could choose The Clown, or Billiards at Half Past Nine but should go with the short story collection Children's Are Civilians Too which I checked out of the Georgia Southern Library to read and reread. I only owned a copy after coming to Camden County and in reading it discovered how much the pathos of those stories mattered to my life.

What books have made a difference in your life?

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor