This string of posts began with a list of my three favorite books. I'm not always up for lists of favorites, though I've created a few for this blog, but I was inspired after seeing this post to try and think through what books influenced my life the most. It's also a fitting question since I just asked my students to write a one to two page paper on the topic of "whether a book can change someone's life." Without further ado, then, here is my best guess at the books that changed my life. Note: they are in no particular order.
1. The Gospels; especially Luke and John. It was a close reading of the gospels during my first two years of high school that solidified my commitment to the Christian faith.
2. Job. Having suffered from childhood cancer, the problem of pain has been at the core of my life. Job helped create a context for beginning to wrestle with that question.
3. The Oresteia. Aeschylus' handeling of the problem of pain, especially in the character of Cassandra, continued the meditations set in motion by Job.
4. The Lord of the Rings. I read this before I read Job, and I think it has shaped my thinking more than any other work next to the Bible. Again, you'll note that it deals with the probelm of suffering and death.
5. The Idylls of the King. If the Bible is number one and The Lord of the Rings is number two, then The Idylls of the King is number three. This book had a heavy impact on how I view social and political problems. It also made me love Goodness.
6. The Iliad and the Odyssey. Here, I found the only true alternative to the Christian world-view, but I found Jesus here too, staring right back at me. The more I look, the more I become convinced that Christ is in all possible worlds. He is the question and the answer. Look wherever you will, and you will find Him.
7. The Geneology of Morals. Once I read Nietzsche, the twentieth century made sense.
8. Orthodoxy. The perscription is not more cowbell, it's more Chesterton. Like Philip Yancey, every time my Christianity needs refreshing, I turn to G.K.C.
9. Jane Eyre. For years, this was my mother's favorite book. It's another meditation on the problem of evil. I don't know that I'm sold on Bronte's via media, but her strong emphasis on Providence and severe mercy has shaped my understanding of suffering.
10. The Abolition of Man. I'm an educator, and I think I first really began to understand what eudcation is and what it's for when I read Lewis' essay.
11. The Scions of Shanara. Somehow, ever since I read this quadrilogy in jr. high, this work has shape my image of the Church. Weird, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
12. The Lays of Beleriand. This book cemented my interest in epic literature. I wish Tolkien had finished the poems found in this collection. It contains some of his best stuff.
13. Kingdom Triangle. J.P. Moreland's masterwork opened up the wider possibilities of life in the Kingdom. Much of the last few years has been spent wrestling with the ideas in this book.
14. The Hobbit. I picked up a copy of this book on a whim when I was in fifth grade. I created a love of reading in me practically ex nihilo.
15. Phantasties. Don't know what it did, but it did something profound. Tolkien baptized my imagination, but MacDonald may have chrismated it.
16. Democracy in America. I got the twentieth-century when I read Nietzsche, I got America when I read De Tocqueville.
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