Ode to Good Books

Books.

They are almost human-like in their ability to arrest our interest, fill our thoughts long after the cover's closed, give us new ideas, inspire our own creativity, stretch the boundaries of our knowledge as they force us to wrestle with complicated subject matter; they carry us off to new worlds, and even comfort us when we are lonesome--for reading is really nothing more than a long conversation that cannot be heard outside our heads.

A 2010 count by Google revealed nearly 130 million individual book titles in the world today.That is a truly staggering number of written works.

I come from a long line of voracious readers. I can remember winter evenings of my childhood spent at my grandparents' house, in which the grown-ups sat around the living room reading books, papers, magazines, commentaries, etc., and we children pored over stacks of decades-old yellow-tinged comic books. All the aunts and uncles who married into this strange family quickly grew bored with the dull company. But for those of us who had the Reading Gene, such evenings were the epitome of delightful.

My family's house today has bookshelves in every room of the house (with the possible exception of the bathroom--with lots of people living in one house, bathrooms are in far too high demand to have any leisure time in there!).

I outgrew the bookcase in my bedroom, and last spring the floor in front of it was piled high with stacks of books I couldn't bring myself to dispose of. When I moved away (temporarily), the first thing we put into my new cottage was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, which looked so roomy back in July (now it's almost full).

Why the obsession with books? Consider the statistics: After graduating from high school, ONE THIRD of adults will NEVER AGAIN read another book. After college, it's worse: 42% of college graduates will never read another book in their lifetimes. In America today, HALF of the adult population is UNABLE to read an 8th grade-level book with satisfactory comprehension. 80% of American families have not bought ONE BOOK in the past YEAR, and nearly two-thirds of the nation's population has not been inside in a book store in more than FIVE YEARS. We are a tragically ignorant nation.

But it's not that just going out and starting to read will fix the problem. Not any book will do. Much of the written material available will do more harm than good if consumed. I have friends who consider themselves avid readers, yet have consumed only from the fantasy genre for the past decade! While good fantasy has its place, a decade-long diet of it is as unhealthy as eating dessert in place of breakfast, lunch and dinner for a year. You will be unwell, imbalanced, addicted to it, and unable to appreciate other foods.

For my girls, the thirteen girls I've been praying for and writing to for nearly a year, I have been seriously thinking, planning, and praying about a decision that will take things up a notch. A big notch. We are going to reverse the trend of non-reading and frivolous reading. We are beginning to collect the Good Books of each of the following genres, and read them together. Such subjects are rarely heard of outside the classroom, but they are truly foundational if young women are to be insightful into their world, knowledgeable of its history, aware of its future, and if they are to become vital contributors and contenders in their culture. We live in an age and in a country in which ignorance is inexcusable. By the grace of God, we will make up for lost time, put away foolish reading, and instead fill our minds with only those things that spur us on to harder thinking and a deeper understanding of our Lord and His created order, that we might comprehend and appreciate His nature more, and become more useful in His hand as instruments of light on a darkened planet.

The list will change as we add to it, but for now, these are the things we deem most important with which to fill our minds. The list of book titles for each genre is also growing as we labor to compile a curriculum of only the truly Good Books.

·         Theology & Doctrine

·         Philosophy

·         Economics, Business, & Finances

·         Law & Government

·         Politics & Current Events

·         History

·         Basic Sciences

o   Biology

o   Geology

o   Geography

o   Chemistry

o   Physics

o   Mathematics

o   Geometry

o   Botany

o   Engineering

o   Astronomy

o   Ecology

o   Technology

o   Genetics

o   Anthropology

·         Medicine, Nutrition, & Health

·         Household Management

·         Culture/Art/Aesthetics

·         Music

·         Self Defense and Firearms

·         Communication, Language, & Literature

·         Trade Skills & Agriculture

A Terrible Story

I finished the book of Judges tonight, reading chapters 17 though 21. These final chapters don't really advance the chronological timeline of Israel's history, but rather give us a terrifying glimpse into the moral depravity of that era. "Chaos" should be the defining word for this period. As the book closes, we come across what may be the single most sickening, repulsive story in Scripture; the account of the Levite and his concubine.

A few things to note:
1) A concubine was a female servant, whose primary purpose was to bear children, thus expanding her master's household and power. Sexual relationships outside of one-man-one-woman-for-life are never condoned in Scripture, and without fail, every time one is mentioned, we are able to observe the heartache and tragedy that accompanies it.

2) Ancient pagan cultures often practiced polygamy (one man with many wives and/or concubines), and its influence infiltrated the Israelites throughout their history. Again, it is always wrong and a sin against God.

3) Women were devalued in the ancient Near-East culture. The advent of Christianity deserves much of the credit for raising women's status above the traditional, devaluing status of household slave. Keep this in mind--as modern liberal feminists tout the "oppression" of Christian gender roles, remember that the age of grace brought to women an increase in the way they were valued.

Back to the story: you are probably familiar with it. It's one we often try not to read aloud, and we might skip over quickly when reading, but it is in Scripture for a reason, it is part of the inspired word of God himself, and it is there for our instruction. First, the unnamed girl, the concubine of a Levite man, ran away from his house, back to her father's home. Don't misinterpret this as an innocent escape. She left---why? To "play the harlot." A harlot is a prostitute. Although we may pity her grisly demise, we must also understand that she condoned, pursued, and participated in acts of sexual wickedness. You reap what you sow, and in many ways, the tragic harlot's death suited the path she had chosen to follow.

After retrieving his runaway concubine, the man and his entourage journey homeward, stopping to rest in the city of Gibeah. Gibeah was not a foreign city; it belonged to the tribe of Benjamin---fellow Israelites to the traveling Levite. Even so, the city proved so debauched that it was no safer than the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (in fact, this account parallels the Sodom and Gomorrah story very closely, as if to say--look! Things are no better now than they were then!).

In the course of the evening, the Levite's group is taken in by an older man, and sure enough, as night falls, the sickly wicked men of the city came to the house, wanting to have the Levite man handed over to them for homosexual purposes. Wicked yes, but even more repulsing is what the Levite and his host opted to do in such a dire situation...save their own necks by tossing out the concubine girl to the crazed men. The word Scripture uses to describe these men, "Belial," is used in the New Testament as a name for Satan. The men abused the girl all night, and as daylight came, they left her in the street. She dragged herself to the door of the house where her "husband" was snuggled up cozily in his bed, and she died there on the doorstep.

The story goes on to say how he discovered her there and told her to "Get up, and let us be going." My ESV study Bible notes, "the Levite's matter-of-fact reaction to his concubine's death illustrates his callousness." And then, to incense the country over the incident, he butchers her body into twelve pieces and sends a piece to each tribe in Israel. I can't help but wonder if he did this to shift the blame onto the debauchery of the men of Gibeah, and downplay his own responsibility for the crime by tossing her out to save his own skin? It would seem to fit. And, it did work: Israel erupted into a bloody civil war, and the Levite man slinks into obscurity, and is not mentioned again.

Wow, what a terrible story. Instead of diving into the myriad of ways we could extract moral lessons from this story, I want to use it as a marker on your road, to emphasize why it is important for you to understand the purpose, design, and precious value God places on manhood and womanhood. When humanity deviates from his perfect blueprint, chaos ensues and treachery reigns supreme. Don't be duped into believing that our own culture is not so debased as Sodom, Gomorrah, or Gibeah. The specifics may change, but the heart of mankind remains desperately sick and full of darkness.

And, although we like to sympathize with the poor girl in the story, whose pitiful life ended in a nightmare-come-true, we must own up and realize that we are guilty perpetrators of the wickedness around us. When was the last time we poured out our hearts in intercessory prayer for our brothers, near and around the world? When have we taken responsibility for the ominous crusade of feminism that has poisoned our era and crippled our men? When have we admitted that we women are all harlots at heart, desperately in need of a Savior?

It is time. There is no need to despair, no need to crumple in fear. It is time to assess the hardness of our own hearts and the wanton affections that we let reside there, little seeds of destruction that grow and choke our souls. Return to your Savior, precious girls, now while you are young and full of life and energy, now while the compass of your life can still be set. Take joy, take hope, and take up the torch of your noble-hearted sisters throughout history: for, "I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Phil 3:13-15)