(From the blog Doctrine, Theology And All That Jazz, Friday, October 07, 2005)

Books and My Life

One of my favourite things to do is rummage through used book stores. I have always loved books but it wasn’t until 2 years ago when I first began to attend school downtown that I came across the joys of used book stores.

Within a 20 minute walk of the University of Winnipeg where I currently attend class there are about 5 used book stores that I regularly go into. Aqua Books is by far the best used one of these. Dirt cheap prices, a friendly older lady who works there during the day (her son in-law own the place and he’s there is the evenings, also a nice guy) and a large Christian section.

Today I was searching through it and came across Sproul’s Essential Truths of the Christian Faith. Now this is one thing I like about used book stores; you come across books that you didn’t know even exist. I love to read Sproul, and have own many of his books, but I never knew he had written this one. So of course I bought it, it was $6 cdn which is a little bit more expensive then usual for a used book at Aqua but it’s hard cover and in near perfect condition, so I was very happy. I’ll have to post some excerpts from it in the future.

Last week I spent some time searching through another used store call “Red River Books”. Now this store is perhaps the exact opposite to Aqua Books in many respects. Aqua books is a nice clean and organized place; all the books are ordered and shelved and the staff goes out of their way to help you. At Red River Books the place is a disaster, the books are only somewhat organized by topic (they have religion and philosophy together), they have stacks of books pilled up on the ground all around the place making it very disorganized and frustrating to look through, and the staff seems to be more concerned about their movie and comic book order part of the business then their used books. For every eight times I go and search through Aqua I’ll go maybe once and seriously search through their religion section. This last time however went fairly well and I came away with Ryrie’s Basic Theology for $3. Now I don’t agree with Ryrie’s dispensationalism but who can turn down a systematic theology that cheap? Not me I have also bought Strong’s, Wenger’s and Berkhof’s all at used stores for $10 or under. I find it nice to have them around so I can better understand what other denominations believe when I’m researching a topic, and of course Berkhof is just simply solid doctrinally.

My favorite Systematic Theology however is one that I bought new. Lloyd-Jones’ Great Doctrines of the Bible. It is not perhaps technically a “systematic theology”, it is the printed lectures from studies on biblical doctrine that he gave Friday nights at his church over many, many years. It is well worth the price for it.

One of the nice things about owning many Christian books and being well read in them (and I still have work to do on this one) is that you can answer people’s questions on various authors. Today I had the oppuniuty to answer questions from a person at university about Jonathan Edwards. They had started to listen to sermons by John Piper and noticed his name mentioned and wondered what I thought about it him. This brough back memories for me, the first time I heard Jonathan Edwards mention was in the awesome song Return of the Revolution by the OC Supertones. After hearing how positively he was mentioned in it, I went and asked my older, and well read pastor about him and he gave me a glowing review of him. Today I had the oppunity to do the same thing and took advantage of it.

A Second nice thing about owning Christian books is our ability to borrow them. It does bring joy to borrow a book, so not only could I give a great review of Edwards I also offered to lend them Faith Beyond Feelings which is a modern english update of Edwards’ Religious Afflections. They might take me up on the offer they might not. I also was able to encourage them to listen to more, and start to read Piper. This was the first sermon by Piper they had listend to and they were apparently enjoying it. Now if there is a living author that God has used more then anyone else to show me His truth better it has been John Piper. The guy in my opinion is amazing; doctrinaly solid with a love for God and a wonderful ability to teach the truth about how to live our lives for God’s glory. Every Christian growing up today should be reading his work, and if I know you I am more then willing to borrow you his books.

A final thing I will mention in respect to joys that you get from owning and reading Christian books is that when you get a really, really good Christian book it will drive you to read the scriptures. There are a lot of good Christian books that you learn from, but there are some rare ones that just drive you to the scriptures. I finally picked up a copy of The Valley of Vision and have been reading through it every so often this week. Although my time with it has been inconsistant every time I read through one of those prayers I am drive to pray myself and to open up the scriptures. I understand why people pay big bucks for a leather bound copy and rave about it now. When I eventually wear out my soft cover one in a year or so I will definitly be investing in a leather cound one to keep with my bible in my book bag for the bus.

Bryan
SDG
# posted by Bryan @ 9:51 PM