Against Nothingness

My time as a student at Regent was most definitely a time of expanding my reading and study. Regent majored on the life of the mind and the Professors there were keen to introduce us to key primary source material at every turn. For this I am ever grateful. One of the men who had a key influence on my reading was Prof. Paul Williams. Two of the books that make it on to this list of 40 are there because of him, and this is the first.  Before I move on to the book, I will add that Prof. Williams influenced me in more ways than this. He modeled for me a dialogical form of teaching and led me into a deeper understanding of leading and teaching well, specifically in a group setting. He deepened my appreciation of the carefully and wisely spoken word, both by example and by rebuke (for which I am still grateful). He welcomed me with gracious hospitality in several ways and thus shared with me the grace of God while showing me more of how to do the same. Lastly, he taught me how to make a...

In my second year as a student at Regent College I read The Way of the (modern) World: Or, Why it's Tempting to Live as if God Doesn't Exist. I feel fortunate to have not only read this book, but had the opportunity to study with the author. It is an incredibly important book by a deeply wise and intelligent man: Dr. Craig Gay.  Not only is this an important book in general, it was also a very important book for me at the time. There were a number of places of intellectual wrestling in my life during this season. I wrestled with my critical feelings towards the many churches that seemed to have given far too much ground up to modernity. I wrestled with what kind of minister, pastor, or teacher I could be in our culture and ways of doing both church and school. I tried to think through the varying philosophical options and through my own tendencies towards both luddite-ism and my equal propensity to get sucked in by new technology and gizmos (to be clear, I tended towards reject...