Hello fellow educators, welcome to podcast number 62. Last podcast we started a series on the Christian Educator’s reading list. I spent most of my time talking about how I read; using the technology of audible books I have tripled my reading volume. Admittedly, you do give up the ability to underline or focus on a specific passage. It does make it harder to quote or pass on a book. But I am able to cover so much more material. I have another confession to make. I have always found straight reading a challenge. Don’t get me wrong, I have pushed through all my life. The joy, sadness, fear, delight, intensity and life lessons that jump from the words of a book have, from my youngest memories, called on me to push beyond my mental and physical discomfort. From my boyhood favourite, by Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows, to my adult favourite, Dostoevsky’s, Crime and Punishment, I have pushed through to enjoy the mental wonderland that lies within the printed page. I suffer from a very mild form of dyslexia where my mind sees a slightly different variation of a word or a letter on the page. Nearly 10-15% or readers suffer from this. When I read aloud, something that brings up nervous tremors from my past school days, I am often surprised by how my wife will correct the simplest words I just didn’t see. Perhaps this is one reason why I love the audio book.

Let me finish one more point on being life-long learners. As educators we like to use this phrase and suggest that one of our goals in education is to encourage our students to become life-long learners. As I said last week, this isn’t going to happen unless we ourselves, as teachers, are modeling this. Obviously, reading is not the only way to do this. Learning a new skill, honing an existing ability or mastering a process are all parts of life-long learning. As educators, we have chosen a life that presents itself through literature and books. We use textbooks and stories to demonstrate the life lessons we want our students to gain. Books are our life. The educator that doesn’t read will quickly find that their own experience isn’t enough to build and develop the mind of their students. Thus the Christian educator must cultivate a habit of reading or if you are technically savvy, listening to audio books. By the way I have an audio version my book, Discipling This Generation for a Digital World, that I will make available to anyone who requests it, details at the end of the podcast.

Last week I started the list by giving you my three all time favourites in the area of Christian Theology. I made the category very broad for the sake of time. My two must reads were A.W. Tozer’s, The Knowledge of the Holy and C.S. Lewis’s, Mere Christianity. I am soliciting your lists the next couple of weeks as well. Rene Maxwell, from our campus school, gave this contribution:

“I also wanted to give you a list of theology oriented books that have strongly impacted me, unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to limit it to just two: The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproule had a tremendous impact on me in seminary, along with The God You Can Know by Tim Stafford.  Both of them offer a comprehensive theological study, although Sproule might be a little heavy for some people without a theological background.  For those who want to be challenged  a little more, anything by Phillip Yancey is great, but Disappointment With God, Where Is God When It Hurts, The Jesus I Never Knew, or What’s So Amazing About Grace? Are some of my favorites (Yeah, I’m a Yancey fan.)”

Thanks Rene, I too am a Yancey fan. I consider “What’s So Amazing About Grace” to be his best work. It caused me to think in ways I never experienced before.

Our friend and Heritage Christian Online teacher, Bev Scholman, suggested a book I haven’t heard about until now:  “Thank you for your podcast today. You asked about your listeners’ favourite theology-related reads. Mine is The Christian in Complete Armour, by William Gurnall  in 1655 and more recently revised, abridged, and published by World Challenge. Gurnall addresses each of the pieces of the armour of God and explains its necessity and intent. It is insightfully written and is worded in such a way that is readable but challenging.”

A quick Google search helped me find the book on one of the best websites on the internet. The Christian Classics Ethereal Library, www.ccel.org. I have spent many hours of reading and printing whole books from this website. It is the most comprehensive library of Christian literature from the Church fathers right until the turn of the last century. Gurnall’s book opens like this:

The Christian in Complete Armour;

A Treatise Of the Saints' War against the Devil:

Wherein a Discovery is made of that grand Enemy of God and his People, in his Policies, Power, Seat of his Empire, Wickedness, and chief design he hath against the Saints.

A Magazine Opened,

From whence the Christian is furnished with Spiritual Arms for the Battle, helped on with his Armour, and taught the use of his Weapon: together with the happy issue of the whole War.

Thanks Bev. Way to get our appetite for Classic Christian literature worked up!

This will lead into our next category, Classical literature. I am not a huge fan of perennial styles of education although I love classical literature I think we must find our style of education for each generation. I think it is important to spend some time reading some classical literature and not just about classical literature. Let me then give you my two must reads from the huge volume of classical literature.

My first is the very short yet important piece of literature from Plato, The Apology of Socrates, or just know as Plato’s Apology. Of course it can be found online, in fact nearly any well known book or essay older than 100 years can be found online. I first began reading some of Plato’s works when I inherited my Grandfather’s set of the Harvard Classics. This was the volume of work a Harvard Scholar was supposed to have read. I have spent many evenings picking through this twenty feet of bookshelves picking out some of the great pieces of literature. In the Apology, Plato recounts the famous trial of Socrates where he defends himself from the accusations that he has, “corrupted the young, refused to worship the gods, and created new deities.” It is here that some Greek scholars point out that Socrates was probably a monotheist in the Greek polytheistic world. Probably more importantly, the sense of Greek justice and fairness is presented in this famous “defence.” It rings of the modern courtroom drama where the attorney using only words can turn the heart of the jury.

My second pre-Christian classic is Homer’s Odyssey and the Iliad. These great tale of adventure are important because so much of it is referenced in our culture today. Without reading the classics you will miss much of the common metaphor and idiom we use to this day. Such as; the Greek gods Athena, Zeus, Poseidon and Neptune described in these pages, also Achilles, the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, the Lotus-Eaters and the Sirens. Reading these classics will enable us to understand the foundations of our culture and the world in which the Christian faith so readily took hold.

If I was going to point you to Christian classic literature I would send you to Milton’s Paradise Lost. This classic poem divided into 12 chapters or books tells the story of the fall of man. His imagery of Adam and Eve before and after the fall help us to understand how dramatic the sin in the garden really was. Milton’s language is strong and often a bit difficult but this is an important volume of poetry for the Christian seeking great literature and important theology. My second book to recommend in this category is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. This little book is far more accessible for the young reader. It is probably the most notable allegorical book in this category. It is the story of “Christian” who is an “everyman character.” It is the story of his journey from his home town, “The City of Destruction” to the “Celestial City.” On this journey Christian encounters many trials and temptations such as the Giant called Despair, the Doubting Castle, the City of Vanity and ultimately discovers the cross of Christ as the only true means into the Celestial City. In part two Christian’s wife and sons embark on a similar journey to end with Christiana joining her husband beyond the “River of Death.” Their four sons stay behind to support the Church. Its allegory is very plan and doesn’t require much interpretation yet it will find significant relevance to any Christian’s journey.

While we are on the topic of classics and allegory there are two very important and very different books that I think every Christian Educator must become familiar with. This first selection may surprise you. It is crucial in our present world of technology and science that any and everyone with a bent towards science should read Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein. Amazingly, she was only nineteen years old when she began writing this incredible piece of fiction. The story is about a young scientist driven to understand the deepest secrets of life itself. He obsesses to the detriment of all around him and ultimately to himself and creates the monster that has been feared for the last 200 years. He then struggles to contain and kill the monster he has created which ultimately ends in his own destruction. There are so many layers to this book as we can identify with the young scientist, his family, his friends and the monster he has created. What is so important about this book is the stark warning it gives us as we try to satisfy our human hunger for the next discovery and the next creation. The book forces us to look at the ethics of science, something we rarely do in science and technologically driven culture. Though the book wasn’t written as an allegory Frankenstein’s monster can be thought of in allegorical terms to reveal some of today’s hideous inventions of modern science. I made all of my science oriented kids read this important work and quizzed them about the discoveries in these pages.

My next important allegorical classic has been somewhat controversial in our circles. Some have also said that it really isn’t an allegory but rather a pure version of fantasy. I am referring to J.R.R. Tolken’s, the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. I realize that this is a series of books but combined together give us the most comprehensive work of fantasy available today. We really don’t know how much allegorical messages are in these pages. Many have pointed to Tolken’s experiences in the Boer war and World War 1 as the source of these stories of immense conflict. I mentioned that the books are controversial in many Christian circles, more recently, from the advent of the Peter Jackson movies which stay as close as possible to Tolken’s story. If you can get past the magic, the terrifying creatures, the use of wizardry, elves and magical trees there are some very important things to be gleaned from Tolken’s work. Unlike some of the modern day magic stories such as the Harry Potter series, Tolken has created an environment or world where there are no easy magical solutions. The rules of middle earth function very within the order of this world. He doesn’t cheat to use magic to break the rules, in fact the entire story line is about the danger of such cheating and using magic to gain an unnatural or unethical advantage. Thus the little Frodo and Sam embark on a long and treacherous journey to destroy the magic held in the ring of power. The allegory abounds as we compare ourselves with the people of middle earth. The lust for power, the evil that takes one when we seek to wield power in a way that God did not intend. The supreme battle for good and the enormous sacrifice this will require. The power of friendship and loyalty, the importance of history and our place in the journey. All of these themes abound in these books. It was reading these books as a teenager that gave me my first real love for reading long yet fulfilling works of fiction. I have since reread the books along with my own children and of course have seen each of the movies. My two oldest kids made sure they read the books before they saw the movies. I would recommend the same. If you children are not old enough to read the books they probably are not old enough to watch the movies.

While I am talking about series of books, science and fiction let me mention one of my favourite modern authors, Orson Scott Card. He has written extensively in the Science fiction genre but I wouldn’t really classify him as a science fiction author. He is most famous for his Nebula award winning book, Ender’s Game.  This book tells the story of a boy chosen for training in preparation for a conflict of survival with an alien species. This young man must overcome prejudice, preferential treatment, conflict, bullies, extreme circumstances and then his own intuition about the ethics of what he has been trained to do. From this book three other book series branch off into very different stories. Card has some plausible ideas about how space travel, the speed of light and time all blend together. Orson Scott Card is also a Mormon whose worldview comes into the books later on. He has a very strong sense of right and wrong and yet the difficulties and flaws of the human experience and the human conscious create very interesting and realistic character development. These would be great books for any middle or high school student who has a bent towards science fiction.

I have mentioned before my all time favourite fictional book, because of the same reasons I love Ender’s Game, is a tale takes place on the streets of St. Petersburg in late 18th Century Russia. It is a tale of a horrible impulse that takes over a man that we would consider a Christian. This is, of course Dostoevsky’s, Crime and Punishment. The book peers into the inner thoughts of the conscience and the tormented mind of Raskolnikov who believes that he has the intellectual fortitude to deal with his own horrific actions as a murderer. Eventually he succumbs to the guilt and seeks to pay for his crime. His companion Sonya serves as a spiritual guide through the story to lead him to repentance. This work demonstrates Dostoevsky’s Christian worldview and his own struggles with his conscience as he tried to reconcile his own duplicity of life and faith. Like Charles Dickens, he brings us a picture of life and people from that period of history, that include not only the outward actions but the hidden secrets of the innermost thoughts of his characters.

Next week I hope to move away from fiction and begin to tackle some of the important works in the categories of History, Biography, Personal Development, Leadership and Education. I also hope to have at least one or two of your all time important reads in the categories of the classics, allegory and fiction. Please email us your comments and thoughts on today’s podcast. Also, if you would like us to mail you a free copy of my book or send you the download link for the audio version of, Discipling This Generation for a Digital World, simply send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and let us know what type of an educator you are, home schooler, classroom teacher, school administrator, or interested parent. Please let us know how you heard about the podcast and, of course, please include your mailing address. Thank you for listening and thank you for your commitment to discipleship-based Christian education.