Have you been in a bookstore lately? If you have, no doubt you’ve noticed that more and more the store is devoted to gifts and cards and CDs and DVDs, and less and less to books. Why is that? I suppose there are lots of reasons, but the facts are, reading books is becoming a lost art! Certainly the internet and electronic media have contributed to this and our ever shortening attention spans as well. Reading a good book is one of the best gifts you can give yourself.

 

I’m going to suggest five classics that I highly recommend you read. The reason I’ve decided to do this is because I know how much these books have meant to my spiritual life and growth and I want you to benefit from them as well. It was very difficult to narrow my selection to only five, but I truly believe every Christian should read these five books.

 

I want to recommend a book by C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. As the title suggests, Dr. Lewis’ purpose was to present Christianity in its most basic form and explain why he had come from an atheistic belief to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. He was a wonderful, deep thinker and was called the most original Christian writer of the last century. This is a book that you should read more than once. Let me quote from the chapter entitled “What Christians Believe”:

 

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about (Jesus): ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (Page 55-56)

 

What an ingenious and brilliant summary of who Jesus claimed to be and indeed who he is. This book is full of this kind of beautifully-written truth and doctrine. If you haven’t read it yet, you can easily find a copy or download it to your Kindle. If you have read it, it’s well worth re-reading. Again the name is Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis.