One More Thought About Secular Books

The other day, I posted about Christians reading non-Christian books. I don’t mean anti-Christian (although this could be included). I just mean not specifically Christian. Some Christians say you should never.
I made a case for why I do.
Here’s one thing I didn’t think to include:
Many Christian books are Christianized versions of secular books; therefore, they are not usually as good.
Btw…
The same can be true of Christian contemporary music. “Oh, the world likes pop love songs? We can make pop love songs about Jesus.” These tend to ring empty. I once heard an artist explain why: (paraphrased) most people writing love songs are in love with someone and expressing intense, genuine feelings. But, sadly, that won’t be the case with love songs to Jesus.
Not all, but maybe most of them are copies and you can just tell.
Whoever is writing these songs likely has a relationship with God by faith, but for all of us, it can be hard to feel the appropriate feeling about that, because faith is sometimes hard to connect to experientially.
It’s faith. That’s why, every Sunday, people recite the most amazing, life-altering, universe-exploding truths in every church as they inspect their nails and consider lunch.
Turning back to books, I once read an engaging psychology book, No More Mr. Nice Guy, by Robert Glover. It was quite profound to me at the time, and it was non-Christian with some non-Christian values endorsed, such as sex before marriage.
As a Christian, I could look past those aspects because I knew the author was a nonbeliever and that, of course, I wouldn’t agree with all his morals.
But I was looking for the principles that reflected eternal, even biblical, truth.
The book celebrated honesty and courageous assertiveness and helped highlight the problem of people-pleasing while not realizing those are biblical concepts.
He was talking about dealing with sin while not recognizing it as such. I understood that the solutions he gave could ultimately be found in relationship with Christ. I also understand that many people who know Jesus still struggle to understand these topics. They would benefit from this book if they read it with discernment.
A few years later, a book called No More Christian Nice Guy came out. It was fine. It was written by someone who loved Glover’s work and wanted to Christianize it. It was fine, but not very inspired.
Because Christian authors start with the very noble task of wanting to write a biblically based book, they can only be so creative.
This goes back to the idea that creatingknowledge (which is what every “discovery” is) can only really happen when one is not seeking certainty, but truth. There can be no appeal to authority when seeking to discover truth.
I know this will be a confusing statement for us Bible-believing Christians.
But put on the hat you wear when reading the Bible and filtering the verses by context to decide if something that was okay for someone in the Bible is okay for you. Abraham had lots of wives. Is that okay for you? He also enslaved people. Should you?
You might be thinking, “Yeah, but it’s the Bible itself that helps us interpret those things.”
I don’t know. There certainly are verses that are anti-slavery. The whole Christian faith is anti-slavery, except when it isn’t. It was pretty easy for southern slave owners to use Scripture to justify the practice and convince slaves how blessed they were to be having such a humble, persecuted experience. (See what Frederick Douglass had to say about that.)
No, you must have a brain that understands logic and first principles. You have to be able to read, “Let us make man in our image,” and infer that men should not own other men. Or, “who the Son sets free is free indeed.”
By all means, use the Bible to interpret the Bible, but this can be an unending circular game if you don’t give preference to axiomatic first principles, such as:

1. God exists
2. Existence exists
3. You exist
4. Everything that exists has a nature and needs according to that nature
5. Man’s needs on this earth require freedom
6. Man is given stewardship of his life - autonomy
7. It is good to live (which is why life-affirming things make us happy)
8. It is bad to die (which is why moving in the direction of death makes us depressed)

These are just a few. So if someone comes along now and says, “Slavery is okay because look at the Bible,” you can say, “No, because look at the nature of reality according to biblical and logical principles.”
Slavery violates 3-8. It is violence to the life I’m stewarding to take away my freedom.
Wow, how did we even get here? Let’s remember that we’re making a point about how difficult it can be to interpret Scripture….
Because before that, we were making a point about how Christian authors can sometimes write books about great truths that are stale because the author was not able to be original since they are doing one of two things:

1. Copying someone else’s Christian book
2. Christianizing a ground-breaking secular book

Both will ring hollow.
Because you might have considered it, I will add to my list above some more axiomatic truths (irreducible truths).
9. Sin entered the world, and man has a sinful nature to go along with all this freewill and stewardship of life.
10. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He died for us to make us a new creation who is no longer a slave to sin.
Hold principles in your head and read what you’re interested in. I have a theory that God calls and moves me according to my interests, into which I’ll pour much effort and time into pursuing. This always rings like a calling and feels rewarding and productive. (Let’s explore this idea tomorrow.)
God bless you, and may you find God’s truth in the most unlikely places.