The Bookies in the Church
By: Ian McKerracher
I have a quote to start this blog. I found it on someone’s Facebook page and I stole it to put on mine because it was that good!
“At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page
of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning.
Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened.
You became, irrevocably, a reader.
(Alberto Manguel; A History of Reading)
Do you remember that magical moment when you became a reader? For me it was a process and maybe not an instant that I can pin-point. Poetic license aside, I do remember my father packing up Mom and the eight kids in the station wagon every second Wednesday for a trip into the city from the army base where we lived, to the library where we were allowed to pick six books each to last us until the next trip. My parents spawned a whole household of readers, much to their credit.
I remember cutting my reading-eyeteeth on picture books with multi-coloured birds and animals in them. Then they were populated by dinosaurs full of teeth and scales. Then I graduated to books written by Thornton W. Burgess and the adventures of various anthropomorphic creatures of a small forest. That was a step away from pictures on every page. I remember being thrust into the pages of history with a string of historical novels about kids about my age who lived the great moments of our past. The series was called “We were there…” as in “We were there on the Santa Maria”, We were there at the Battle of the Bulge”, or “We were there with Byrd at the South Pole” …Excitement all around!! Then I made the leap into Outer Space to have death-defying adventures with Tom Corbett and the Space Cadets. Often, long into the night, after my parents thought I was sleeping, I was under the covers with a flashlight, drifting towards a star about to go nova in a disabled spaceship…Good times!
Books are truly a doorway into anywhere we can imagine. They can transport us to galaxies faraway or inform us of how to grow tomatoes in our backyard. They can educate us or offend us with their content. The Great Library of Humanity is the collected thoughts of people long past and contain the seeds of the visions of people who are yet to come. From the pictographs on a book page the size of a cave wall, through clay tablets, papyrus, vellum, and paper, they have recorded our thoughts. They can make us laugh and cry. They can make us think or veg. They can form into seminal ideas in our own worldview or stretch us into the worldview of others, with or without effect. They can describe, impel, caution, push, pressure, and entertain. They are truly an amazing development of human ingenuity.
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When I came into the Kingdom of God at the ripe old age of 21 years old, I was a mature sinner with a scattered smattering of limited knowledge about what is contained in the pages of the Bible. Soon after my conversion, I received what I believe is the first scripture that was delivered to me via the Holy Spirit. I was experiencing something of having “itchy feet” after being a traveller for some time. Reading in the Psalms during a private prayer time, I came across Psalm 46:10. “Be still and know that I am God.” That set me on a voracious consumption of the Bible, enjoying reading all the books of this amazing library given to the Church to help ground our Faith in an objective source. The biblical illiteracy of the present Church, pointed out in most demographic studies into this issue, is really sad because most of our life’s problems can find solutions in its (the Bible’s) pages. You can read this article from Biola University and get as concerned as I am. https://www.biola.edu/blogs/biola-magazine/2014/the-crisis-of-biblical-illiteracy
Lately, I have found a new way to enjoy a book. Who says that a guy getting close to 70 years old can’t learn new things? The new way is through a book club. Up until this recent foray into a social crowd, specifically gathered to discuss a particular book, the enjoyment of books was a private affair. That, of course, is other than the two common uses of collaborative reading. The one is in education where the whole class was looking at the same material and the second is when there is a serendipitous connection through the delight at the discovery that another is reading or has read the same book you are presently perusing.
This notion of reading a book collectively and discussing its finer points was not something I ever considered. Even in this case, the idea was someone else’s which rose organically in a conversation. It was after the last conference of Faith Beyond Belief when I was tasked with the message board and chat room for one of our speakers. In the chatroom, a conversation began around a wish for some added material on how to share our faith with those around us. Having read the informative book called “Tactics” by Greg Khokl, I suggested that they pick up the book and read it. Someone else suggested that they meet with a group and read and discuss the book together. I heartily agreed that a book club would be a great idea. That was when one said the immortal words “So, Ian, are you going to lead the Book Club?” So here I am.
The first go around, I am afraid, was a bit of a disaster. Suffice it to say that much of the troubles were of my own making. Thankfully, it was only a stepping stone into the round table format around chapter-by-chapter questions. The present Book Club members are enjoying the endeavor as much as I am, for which I am utterly thankful. Not only have I been given another peek into a familiar book, Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, I have met and enjoyed the company of a great group of people, albeit through Zoom. It has a double blessing attached to it. The first is informing us of the vistas that the Christian worldview offers through the descriptions of a master wordsmith, and the second is distracting us from the bleak social landscape forced onto us by Covid restrictions.
It has been my great pleasure to expand my reading into this communal idea. We have covered the first three books of Mere Christianity and, starting early in January 2022, we will be finishing the anthology by covering Book 4, Beyond Personality. One of the things I like about this work from CS Lewis is that it is an easy read, though dense with thoughtful discourse. It may be quite life-changing in its content, but the bites are small enough to chew. If one would want to join us in the new year, they would find no difficulty in catching up to the place where we will start. They would also find a collection of thinking people, all growing together in their understanding of this amazing worldview that God has called us into.
It has been said “Those who read, lead”. Having this Book Club to attend has been a pathway to that truth. The insights that we all share with our book club bookies are profound and illuminating. Faith Beyond Belief believes in it so much that we are offering it free of charge to anyone interested in coming along for the ride. We won’t say no to a donation, but you can join for the price of the book. Come on inside and read with us. You would be most welcome. Look for the invitation to attend the Book Club and enjoy the 4th book of Mere Christianity. We could all become bookies in the Church!