What three books have influenced your faith the most?

[PilgrimsProgress]

Faith is a journey, a path we follow. Along the way, we seek guidance, even a new direction.

This often comes in the form of print, so my question is, if you could only have three religious books on your bookshelf, what would they be?
I'm guessing the Bible would be one, but perhaps not?

Perhaps as well as naming your three books, you might like to say something about the part they have played in your faith journey?

 

[Mendalla]

The Bible, though I would say only parts of it have really been big influences

The Bhagavad Gita - the vision of God it presents alone changed my outlook in some important ways, even as a Christian

Third one is a tough call. Maybe the Tao te Ching of Lao Tze or one of the major Buddhist texts but the Odes or perhaps the Epistles of Horace (admittedly, not strictly a religious text) really are next in order of influence since they introduced me to Epicureanism and Horace's philosophical outlook on life has influenced mine in a number of ways.

I guess, in the end, that I would have a hard time keeping it down to three, but those would be a start.

 

[unsafe]

I guess it would depend on which Faith we are talking about -----There are 3 types of Faith -----but all Faith is a free gift from God -----

-Natural Faith or intellectual faith or common faith ---is believing in something without needing proof ----We have faith that the medication we take will heal us -----like reading health books etc ---it relies on our 5 senses -----

Faith in God ---believing in the unseen realm -----so reading the Bible believing that God really exists without seeing Him and the words of His Book are true ----this faith does not rely on our 5 senses -----this Faith produces --it is powerful ---it can manifest the unseen into this seen realm -----

Saving Faith ----Believing that Jesus Christ died and shed His Blood to free us from Sin and Death ----so again reading the Bible and believing that Jesus Christ existed and was crucified and was resurrected -----

So for me I prefer and get my God kind of Faith and Saving Faith from believing and reading the one Book that can give me these 2 kinds of Faith ----The Bible -----I grow in my Faith by putting God's word into action -----and staying grounded and rooted in my relationship with Him ----

 

[Jaebius]

The book which has most influenced my faith is The Holy Bible. It contains the Gospel - God's means of grace. Through the Bible God has strengthened my faith, saved me, and kept me secure.

A couple of other good books I have learned from...

The Mission of God by Christopher Wright. This book really served as my introduction to the missional conversation. It reoriented my Christian thought from being the evangelical need to sell tickets-to-heaven to people to the missional desire to participate in the redemption of Creation.

The Triumph of Pastor Son by Yong-jun An. This book modeled to me what Christian love is all about at its best. It's the biography of a Korean pastor who adopted the murderer of his two sons, before eventually being martyred himself (by someone other than his adopted son - who himself became a pastor).

 

[Jaebius]

The book which has most influenced my faith is The Holy Bible. It contains the Gospel - God's means of grace. Through the Bible God has strengthened my faith, saved me, and kept me secure.

A couple of other good books I have learned from...

The Mission of God by Christopher Wright. This book really served as my introduction to the missional conversation. It reoriented my Christian thought from being the evangelical need to sell tickets-to-heaven to people to the missional desire to participate in the redemption of Creation.

The Triumph of Pastor Son by Yong-jun An. This book modeled to me what Christian love is all about at its best. It's the biography of a Korean pastor who adopted the murderer of his two sons, before eventually being martyred himself (by someone other than his adopted son - who himself became a pastor).

Received in the mail today as a Christmas gift from my middle son (he couldn't find it in the stores prior to Christmas Day), a book that I'm really looking forward to digging into. It's Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions: A Reader's Edition of the Book of Concord.

 

[Luce NDs]

1. God's Secretaries
2. The Swerve
3. a number of books going by names similar to: The Other Bible/Gospel/etc. and the potent tense that there is always another side to the myth of truth in a realm conditioned to outright lying to hide what you know about what bullies and other Taurus have done as 'oles in the virtue system ... what the world needs is more intern'd anal lists ...

Potent tense ... a sort of anxiety beyond mortal comprehension about how not to hang on but let go of control you never had in the first place do to exterior push and shove of the environmental stress to sur vive ... and thus Sous-la as an underlying place that men pop out of and sometime back in for a rest ... to fire around seminal IDe-as something mortally un graspable ... thus the out-of-it understanding. The paradigm should draw on it more to get us out of the hole were in from non-comprehensible idioms ... heaps of unknown word as god? Close to hammer OID's as panes in the as shoe-L? (kind of fou-la-goon as sulphurous sub marine breeze).

But you can't say that to institutional autocrats ... experts in keeping up social unrest .. or opposing anarchy to gather physical funds and fun dais for those watching humourlessly from outside the system? The a' Pauline Rule on exclusion ... indicative of: there' a' Moor tuit!

 

[paradox3]

The Bible

Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg

Not sure about the third. The Life of Pi maybe.

 

[Pavlos Maros]

If you could only have three religious books on your bookshelf, what would they be?

The Epic of Gilgamesh. It shows that enemies can become friends. and as friends can overcome anything.
Aesops fables. Show's morals are of man, not gods.
A thousand and one nights. Show's that all ancient historical books are just magic and myth with a moral stance, and simply for entertainment.

 

[Luce NDs]

Show's morals are of man, not gods.

Unless the god spot is a small dark spot hidden in the metaphysical mine ... a dark cave-like icon as a sign to confuse those that don't wish to know much? A shadow of truth about the way it is here ... a great Maas 've lie? Maybe only a manifestation ... of post tense fears ... as apocalyptic? Now that's something else ...

I had high level management suggest that I get the job done anyway I could ... and they wished not to know (in pre-tense mode avoidance of responsibility for the job?).

All thanks to IW for the pre/post and mid tense internalizations ...

 

[Jaebius]

Aesops fables. Show's morals are of man, not gods.

It's an excellent source for sermon illustrations as it gives insight into human nature.

 

[Seeler]

Gosh! We have to limit it to three???
The Bible - for me that's a given -- far out from any other
But now (I look at my book shelf; there are so many)
Books by Spong, Borg, Crossan, Armstrong, Aslan, MT Winters, and Funk et al.

I thnik of the books I read years ago, that have somehow ddisappeared, perhaps convoscated by my son at some point, perhaps donated to some church library. Something about "Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy" that I studied first year university (was that the namee of the book or the course). Books that I borrowed, read and remembered to return. Pieerre Berton's "The Comfortable Pew" fits int this time frame. Surely There were others I read before the most recent quarter century or more.

So -
Spong - "Rescuing the Bible From .." definitely. But I hate to limit it to one of Spong's books. His "Resurrection, Myth or Reality" also struck deeply as have many more since then.


Borg - another that is hard to pin down to a specific book. I glance along my shelves - I think that the first of his books that I read was "Reading the Bible Again for the First Time" -- it introduced me to all the other books by Borg or by Borg in colaboration with someone else.

Now I suppose I should say Crossan - I have certainly been influenced by his books, but I think even more by his seminars. His books can be long, dry and challanging (The Birth of Christianity) - his lectures bring them to life. And the first week-long seminar I attended where he was the key-note speaker, there was another guest who shared the week - Miriam T. Winters.

So for my third book, I'm going to say M.T.Winters' trilogy "Woman Witness, Woman Wisdom, Woman Word" three books in one, covering the many many women in the Bible.

If I were to name a fourth book it would be "The Five Gospels" by Funk ... and the Jesus Seminar. A great reference book.

Of course there have been others, some of them fiction, stories that have influenced me deeply and made me who I am. I don't think I will ever vacation in the States again without seeing with new eyes the poverty spoken of in Barbara Ehrenreich's book "Nickel and Dimed". I don't think that she ever mentioned religion in this book but she certainly showed an identification with the poor.

 

[blackbelt1961]

Book of John , Hebrews & Acts

 

[revjohn]

if you could only have three religious books on your bookshelf, what would they be?

Good question.

Since I am not stranded on a desert island I can count on there being plenty of Bibles on other bookshelves.

So . . . I'm going with the Puritan Trinity of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, Foxes book of Martyrs and Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.

 

[revjohn]

Hmmmmm. Mildly annoyed to find that my copy of Foxes book of Martyrs has wandered off of my bookshelf. I will have to put an APB in the bulletin.

 

[Ritafee]

Siddhartha: by Hermann Hesse
Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers by Thich Nhat Hanh
Dear and Glorious Physician: A novel about Saint Luke by Taylor Caldwell

 

[Mrs.Anteater]

This question reminds me of the evangelical retreat I went to with my sister when I was about 16. The question was, which person was /has influenced you most. The default answer was "Jesus". Unfortunately I had just read a book about Che Guevara.
People spend the rest of the retreat trying to save me.

I would say, my early influence was Joerg Zink, protestant minister and author, who understood to connect biblical stories with actual history and translated many texts into modern language,
Eugen Drewermann- catholic theologian, expelled by the church, who interpreted biblical texts but also fairy tales with depth psychology and
Harry Potter- whose life story of love, life, friendship,sacrifice and the real connection to history (Nazi Germany) or any other authoritarian regime is so perfectly and smartly described. (Ok, the latter is more than one book....)

 

[PilgrimsProgress]

Some interesting replies.......
Here's mine -
1. The Bible (the book that contains all the stories and attempts at explanations of God and Jesus)
As a child, I didn't wonder if the stories were literal or metaphorical - I just liked the stories.

2. "The Heart of Christianity" - Marcus Borg.
This book brought me back to Christianity from agnosticism. As an adult, I didn't believe in the literal Bible, and this book showed me that a metaphorical approach was an acceptable way to interpret Christianity.

3."Beyond literal Belief' - David Tacey

Recently I've become somewhat disenchanted with Progressive Christianity - it seems to rely too much on thinking and dry intellectualism, and not enough on soul and spirit. Jesus is much more than a subversive social worker and teacher.....
Tacey, unlike Protestant me, is a Catholic - and he makes a good case for retaining myths and midrash interpretations. He is another that speaks of depth psychology and the way he interprets Jesus's birth and resurrection is fascinating and convincing.
If you're open to new interpretations of Biblical metaphors, this is a must read.

He points out that as secularism is growing, interest in myth and fable type films, such as Avatar, are growing. Seems we really do need our myths and archetypes......

 

[Luce NDs]

Recently I've become somewhat disenchanted with Progressive Christianity

PP it seem you are not alone there ... if you can't connect the intellectual with (what's beyond what we don't know; myth) then it is difficult to cut across the parietal lobe efficiently to allow the extractions of pre tense before catastrophes ...

This often requires being able to cut through literal things to see the device or machinery behind eM! Some call this satyr, or satire ... I don't know as I am classed as not institutionally educated, or hard cast!

 

[Mendalla]

Recently I've become somewhat disenchanted with Progressive Christianity - it seems to rely too much on thinking and dry intellectualism, and not enough on soul and spirit. Jesus is much more than a subversive social worker and teacher.....

Funnily enough, UU'ism has suffered from this as well. The postwar fellowship movement in Unitarianism (this was before the merger with Universalism) in Canada, which spawned my church as well as many other small Unitarian "fellowships", leaned very humanist. They often had "talks" or even "lectures" instead of sermons and minimal ritual elements. Really, more like the current wave of Sunday Assemblies than a traditional church. My fellowship has moved beyond that to some degree though there is still some tension between those who prefer that approach and more "spiritual" folks like me. It isn't universal. Some of the old US UU churches that are more rooted in 19th and early 20th century liberal Christianity (e.g. former churches of the Universalist Church of America) seem, from what I have read of them, to be more traditionally spiritual, for instance.

I think that once you start engaging intellectually with the sources of your faith (e.g. The Bible), that intellectual approach starts to colour the rest of the faith as well.

However, this is probably another thread. Sorry for the derail.

 

[Luce NDs]

Funnily enough, UU'ism has suffered from this as well. The postwar fellowship movement in Unitarianism (this was before the merger with Universalism) in Canada, which spawned my church as well as many other small Unitarian "fellowships", leaned very humanist. They often had "talks" or even "lectures" instead of sermons and minimal ritual elements. Really, more like the current wave of Sunday Assemblies than a traditional church. My fellowship has moved beyond that to some degree though there is still some tension between those who prefer that approach and more "spiritual" folks like me. It isn't universal. Some of the old US UU churches that are more rooted in 19th and early 20th century liberal Christianity (e.g. former churches of the Universalist Church of America) seem, from what I have read of them, to be more traditionally spiritual, for instance.

I think that once you start engaging intellectually with the sources of your faith (e.g. The Bible), that intellectual approach starts to colour the rest of the faith as well.

However, this is probably another thread. Sorry for the derail.

Thus one should weave and wobble a bit and support the fabrics of the great weaver of what might manifest as myths ... enigmatically ... maybe not depending on where the observer wobbled in from ... drunk on wines, or poetry --- Charles Baudelaire!