SAVING TRUTH
BY ABDU MURRAY. This book made my "best book I read this year" a few years ago. Murray has an excellent take on how our culture has abandoned truth and what we need to do to recover it.
FOOL'S TALK
Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion, BY OS GUINNESS
Os Guinness wrote another winner. Combining Evangelism with Apologetics, Guinness does an artful job of laying out the process of restoring the art of Christian persuasion. I've read this book several times and continue to reap its gems.
APATHEISM
How We Share When They Don't Care. BY KYLE BESHEARS
Beshears makes the claim that in general, people don't reject the Gospel, they simply don't care because they're too distracted.
DISRUPTIVE WITNESS
Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age. BY ALAN NOBLE.
Alan Nobel wrote about the need to break through the distracted culture to the hearts of people. While Kyle Beshears reveals how the culture is distracted and apathetic, Noble gives a road map to reach them.
FULL DISCOLURE
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FAULT LINES
The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe. by VODDIE BAUCHAM.
One of the best books I've read on the social justice movement from a Christian perspective. Baucham is clear and compelling citing numerous incidents that fly in the face of statistics proving them erroneous.
This is not just recommended, but urgent reading.
CYNICAL THEORIES
How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody. By HELEN PLUCKROSE and JAMES LINDSAY.
Written from a secular perspective this book confirms the harm that Critical Theory is doing to everyone - even those who support it. I found this book to be extremely informing and full of background information, too. Must read if you want to understand the underpinnings of Critical Theory.
AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH
Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business, by NEIL POSTMAN
If there's one book I could point to that lifted the veil on culture for me, this is it. Postman was a terrific pundit on the way video affects our lives. He spare no one, though he is a perfect gentleman when he points out how the video world turns everyone into a showman.
His main point, however, is that video is making us dumber and he wrote this in 1985. Postman shows how reading is the best way to grow your mind and how video can make us mindless.
I recommend this book all the time. Aside from Scripture and several saintly books, this book changed my life the most.
There are several other titles by Postman that I would say are required reading today.
TECHNOPOLY
The Surrender of Culture to Technology, by NEIL POSTMAN
There are few books that I've read that actually frightened me. This was one of them.
Here Neil Postman explains how technology takes over a culture and becomes "technopoly." Whether we acknowledge it or not, we're living in a technopoly.
TACTICS
A Game Plan For Discussing Your Christian Convictions, by GREG KOUKL.
By far, this is the best book on keeping the conversation going. More than that it is a "rule book" for the conversation. What is acceptable? What crosses the line? When is the conversation over?
One of the best parts of the book is about asking the right questions. This book makes my "must read" list.
I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH FAITH TO BE AN ATHEIST
By Dr. NORMAN L. GEISLER and Dr. FRANK TUREK.
If you want an in depth study on Classical Apologetics, ala Geisler and Turek, this is it.
There isn't another systematic explanation of evidence for the existence of truth, God, miracles, and the reliability of Scripture that I know of. I constantly recommend this book as a way to understand the arguments against Christianity and how evidence refutes those arguments.
This must be on your bookshelf to refer back to time and time again after you read and study it.
A QUICK SOURCE GUIDE TO CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS
A Clear and Complete Guide. by DOUG POWELL.
Doug Powell has published a very useful guide to apologetics. As the subtitle says, it is a clear and complete guide.
I found Powell's book very helpful in articulating concepts that we find in apologetics. It is a thorough book, yet not a comprehensive one at Apologetics. What I mean that it is "thorough but not comprehensive," is that it doesn't explain everything fully. A book of this length couldn't explain everything fully, neither do I believe that Doug Powell set out to do that.
A NON-ANXIOUS PRESENCE
By Mark Sayers
This book is one of the best books I've read since Springtime. A friend recommended it, and by the title, I thought it would be something about psychology! It was anything but that.
Instead, I found myself replaying sections of the Audible version of it until I sprung for the Kindle version, so I could highlight what I wanted to.
I would give this book an excellent rating - it's a must-read. If you want to understand our times, Mark Sayers has a great take on it.
LIVE NOT BY LIES
by Rod Dreher
If I'm not thrilled with a book, I won't recommend it. Live Not By Lies was one I couldn't put down; it is another must-read. Dreher writes about how Marxism is taking over our culture. It is the "soft" version, not the "hard" version of violence. I'd say it is a quiet revolution, but a revolution nonetheless.
One emphatic part of the book is Dreher's interviews with people who lived with the impact of the Soviet Union before its fall. He interviewed people who were in countries behind the Iron Curtain, too. It's a gripping read.
Anyone interested in what's happening in our country ought to read Live Not By Lies.
LIVE NO LIES
By John Mark Comer
When I first saw the title of this book, I thought it was a take-off of Rod Dreher's book, Live Not By Lies, and I wasn't interested at first. However, the book kept coming to mind, and I thought I would purchase it. I was happily surprised.
Comer reads the Audible version of this, and at first, I wasn't thrilled with his reading voice. Again, I changed my mind as Comer drew me into his solution for living in an upside-down world.
Comer addresses the world, the flesh, and the devil as the three enemies we must master and does so with grace and power. Comer pulls no punches, and although the book starts slowly, it grows in strength and ends on a high note. I likened it to watching a baseball game that begins a bit dull, but as it progresses, the players start hitting and making great plays. In the end, Comer has you hanging on his words.
I was a bit put off by his political bent. I thought that was unnecessary for the content of the book. It's clear which way he leans; fortunately, the book is not riddled with his positions or perspective. It is unnecessary to make political statements as if everyone agrees with the author.
However, don't let my view of his political statements stop you from reading this book. Live No Lies delivers.
