Must Reads

I want to tell you about two books that I have loved in this last month. Add them to the stack on your bedside table and let me know what you think!

Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin was written in 1960 based on experiment conducted in the fall of 1959. Mr. Griffin was a white writer living in Texas when he decided to become a black man and experience life in the deep south. Through medication he turned his skin dark and then shaved his hair to take on the identity of a black man. The book chronicles his experiences in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia. Mr. Griffin changed nothing else about himself for this experiment. He kept the same name, wore the same clothes and was honest about his profession to anyone who asked. What he lived was a life so completely different from his own that he was forever changed.

The book was written strictly for social and political change but I began to think theologically about it. What must it have been like for Jesus, still being God but trapped in a human body? How lonely he must have been for home! The miracle and mystery of the incarnation leave my mind twisted up and my heart full anytime I try to contemplate them. While I can choose to be fairly empathetic, I can't ingest the sacrifice of wanting to understand another so entirely that you give up yourself.

I have mentioned before reading Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard. I was, in effect, dared to read this one. It was a challenging read. Mr. Willard presents so much meat in his writing that you really have to slow down and digest all that is being offered. I prefer to speed read but this one forced me to take a chapter every other day so that I could think through all that was being offered on the plate.

I took from this book the simple truth that all humans are being formed spiritually. Some humans are being shaped into the image of Christ while others are being shaped into the image of evil but all are being shaped, even those who don't believe. Whether I am conscious of it or not, I am being shaped at all times spiritually. That seems elementary I suppose but the far reaching effects are astounding! Before you jump onto the fear bandwagon that claims the importance of "see no evil, hear no evil", Willard challenges Christians to engage evil so that we come to recognize it. That one should leave you chewing for a while...