Ten influential books.

The theme is 10 books which have had the greatest impact on me. It’s been bouncing round the internet, and Wednesday I got nominated to share my own list, and of course every book has a backstory. Giving the list without the context made no sense to me, so I got to writing.

Not nominating anyone else to share their 10, because I’d want to know the story behind each selection, and I don’t expect them to write 500-word essays on each of them like I did.

Not counting bible either, ‘cause that one’s way too easy. Any Christian who doesn’t have bible influencing them is asking for it. But any Christian who includes it is trying to escape 10 percent of their thinking.

So here’s the list.

Intellectual conversions—no such thing.

Decision-making is almost always emotional, and this is especially true with people who choose to follow Jesus.

When people make decisions, most of the time they make emotional decisions. They only make purely intellectual decisions under these circumstances:

• In the past, emotional decision-making has had horrible results, so they try to eliminate emotions from their decision-making process.
• They honestly don’t care which choice they make, so an intellectual choice will do.

And then there’s the self-delusional fun we can have with the emotional choice that appears to be an intellectual one—the emotional choice that’s backed up with a lot of intellectual reasons, but deep down is based on emotions. You’ve seen it before, especially in politics. “I chose that candidate because she’s a very moral person, and she wants what’s best for her community. So she was the only logical choice.” Never mind the fact that morals are emotional factors; after all, immoral people (no matter your standard of morals) are evil. And no one is morally ambiguous towards evil.

The proper use of apologetics.

Ever read Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell? It’s every high school student’s first introduction to apologetics. Youth pastors love it because whenever someone smart-aleck high school kid has a tough question for them, they can whip out their Josh McDowell and beat him over the head with it. McDowell’s a youth pastor, you know; he had a very practical reason for creating the book.

I like the book. Parts of it are questionable, of course; McDowell’s grasp of Aristotelean logic is shaky in a few parts; he’s awfully fond of the straw man argument, as many Christians are, and for some bizarre reason he quotes a comment by Napoleon Bonaparte more than once about Jesus. He’s pretty sure his big mound of evidence proves that Christianity and Scripture are true, and confronted with this evidence, people should just drop to their knees and accept Jesus as Lord.