Books

It is clear from Scripture that God chose to use language as an important, even vital, form to communicate with mankind relative to virtually everything necessary to life.  Moses was ordered to write information, for blessing or cursing, so that history would testify of God to unborn generations.  The reference in Exodus 17 is to record the destruction of the Amaleks so to document that God is willing to permit warfare as society chooses it.  Mankind, even in common grace from God, is prone to use warfare to resolve differences.  If that is our way we will have it.  God permits some folly.  It is likely that his involvements reduce some horrors.  He will have a kingdom where there will be war no more.  He denied King David, noted for soldiery, the privilege of building the Temple, and gave it over to King Solomon, a man of peace. 

Critics of Scripture do not tend to understand the common/divine bifurcation of heaven and nature, of faith and science, of righteousness and sin, of God and mankind.  For God to summarily destroy it all would take away the time period in which mankind is permitted to experience freedom and decide what to do with it.  To yield freedom to God is to surrender human freedom for truth.  On earth mankind yearns for freedom, an understandable yearning.  The yearning is so great that many leaders argue that it is better to die for freedom than to live without it.  God meets that yearning in the context of truth as the containment of freedom.  Being perfect, God offers the freedom of his tableland, but it is not gained without obligation to righteousness (right/justice/love/obedience to truth).  Whatever God eventually holds for mankind must fit his definitions.  In that context some will be admitted into his kingdom and some will not.  All this has been declared in Scripture – a special Book from God prepared within the boundaries of mankind’s environment so capable of describing God’s expectations for the creation.  It is even written by persons he commissioned to write, not all of whom seemed cheerful about the assignment.

Other books not bearing his specific imprimatur, as Scripture does, presume to inform us about his expectations.  Some of the great books of history cast the Biblical meaning of human life journey either from God’s point of view or mankind’s.  Pilgrim’s Progress is read in every generation, and has influenced society in significant meaning.  The writings of Luther and Calvin turned some periods of European history and spilled over to the rest of the world.  The list of writers grows long.  Their works are given import, in part, in that they relate to Scripture, to life’s contexts and to the meaning of the future of mankind.  Books have been seen as the storehouses of knowledge and lights to truth.  To the degree that we read or hear to that degree do we advance in the understanding of who we are, what we know and believe in self defending argument and faith.  So great is that meaning Christians are ordered to read Scripture so to have at least the minimum understanding of who they are in the mortal and immortal contexts, and their obligations/privileges.  The writings of serious thinkers and doers of history aid in embellishing the life story in this or that context.  If electronic devices aid that process we can be grateful. If not we have lost something important in the life we ought to seek.  Early evidence suggests we may not be on the main road.  It appears that memorization of Scripture, and wise sayings of the past has declined; that choices of reading relate to lighter fare, even lowering standards (crime was recently noted as preferred public interest), and that the quality of daily language usage is often reduced to slang contexts.

It is interesting in stalking the stories of families to discover how many persons developed a better part of their lives in observing that their parents read to them from substantive materials applied in their lives – early and later.  We are informed that families taken up with individualism are now leaving this matter and formation as well, to others.  The teachers ought to do it, the church ought to do it – many children are left to make it on their own.  Publications of meaning and substance ought to be sought presenting thought and conduct to belief for the fully furnished mind.  We draw from the proverbs of wisdom.  The first of the sources is Scripture that informs us about meaning related to basics and successful life ventures.