New article on Johannes Gutenberg

http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/indepth/17348-johannes-gutenberg-c1398-1468

The Book that Made your World

Vishal Mangalwadi’s The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization is a wide-ranging look at the impact of the Bible on Western culture. After hearing the Bible attacked by Arun Shourie, a prominent public intellectual, Member of Parliament, and governmental minister in India, Mangalwadi decided to study the impact of the Bible on culture. In particular, he wanted to find out if God’s promise that all the nations would be blessed through Abraham was true. His conclusion is that not only did the Bible create the modern West, but it is also responsible for creating modern India.

Mangalwadi looks at a tremendous variety of subjects (music, language, literature, human rights, concepts of heroism, technology, science, family, economics, freedom …) and demonstrates that modern concepts in all of these areas have their roots in the Bible and the worldview it created. While I did something similar in Why You Think the Way You Do, Mangalwadi goes into far more detail than I did and engages the historiography of the subjects far more directly. What is particularly illuminating is the impact these ideas had in Mangalwadi’s native India, a subject about which I knew nothing.

Although I found myself disagreeing with some of Mangalwadi’s details—his historiography is sometimes dated, and I have a higher view of medieval Christianity than he does on some issues—overall the book is superb. If you are interested in understanding what the Gospel of the Kingdom looks like in practice, this is a great place to start. At the same time, it is a sobering read, since it shows the degree to which the West has turned its back on its roots and highlights some of the dysfunction that has resulted. For those committed to living out a full-orbed vision of the Gospel touching all areas of life, this book is a wake-up call and a reminder of what is at stake for us today.

How do you use your time?

Some thoughts from T. M. Moore, teacher and theologian, on making the most of our time heading in the New Year.

Broken Stories

A blog post from my daughter Elizabeth on life, The Lord of the Rings, and The Hunger Games. She's got some profound thoughts here, and I encourage you to read it.

One Week In

We’re a week into the New Year. For those of you who have set goals for the year, how is it going?

• Have you written them down?
• Have you reviewed them daily?
• Have you shared them with anyone and enlisted their support?
• Have you taken steps each day toward your goals?

Remember, you need to take action if you want this year to be better than last year. If nothing changes, nothing changes.

The actions don’t need to be dramatic—in fact, dramatic changes are the ones least likely to stick. Small, daily decisions create the habits that let you accomplish big goals.

I leave you with a thought from Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is a habit.” Let’s go for excellence in all areas of life this year.

New article at the Colson Center

The next article in the series, "Christians who Changed their World" is up at the Colson Center. It's on William Carey.

http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/indepth/17309-william-carey-1761-1834

From Mind to Heart

Who you will be in five years is determined by the media you consume and who you associate with. These two areas are always either helping you move forward or holding you back because both shape our thinking about the world and about ourselves.

Media does this by putting images, words, and ideas into your mind. Electronic media in particular bombard us with images and information at a pace that does not allow us to think it through or analyze it. Instead, it embeds itself in our minds and from there into our memories, thus shaping our souls.

If you want to grow your mind and soul, pay careful attention to media. Reading is a particularly important tool for personal grown, since unlike other media, we read at our own pace, which allows us to ponder, reflect, meditate, think, and therefore to direct our intellectual growth more effectively than other media.

Because we are relational beings, the people we hang with may be the single most important factor in determining our self-image, our outlook on the world, and our values and priorities. They shape the mind and the soul even more powerfully than media.

Although it's difficult and potentially painful, you should also evaluate your associations if you're interested in personal growth. If the people around you are not helping you grow, you need to find people who will. This doesn’t mean abandoning your family or old friends, but you will need to consider carefully how much influence you want them to have over your life and adjust the time you spend with them accordingly.

Our words are also important. The things we hear ourselves say pass into our subconscious, which is programmed to take what we say seriously. For this reason, affirmations and verbal confessions are important tools for personal growth. If you doubt this, read the book of Proverbs and notice how much is said about the tongue and our words.

Our mind provides food for the soul as we spend time pondering ideas and allow them to captivate our attention, as we build meaningful relationships with other people, and as our words filter into our subconscious. Over time, these activities  will capture our imagination, shape our values and convictions, and inform our will to pursue those things that we truly value.

From there, the soul moves the heart, the center of our life. Probably the best way to discover our hearts is to ask ourselves what makes us sing, what makes us weep, what elevates our spirits. I suspect most people don’t know how to answer those questions, but they are worth pondering.

In the end, our hearts will be molded around the real values of our souls, whether for good or ill. As Christians our hearts are a battleground between what Paul calls the “flesh,” which refers to the on-going effects of original sin in our lives, and the Spirit. Our hearts are thus divided, which is why the Psalmist prays,  "unite my heart to fear your name." (Ps. 86:11)

So for New Year, I suggest you join me in resolving to cultivate our whole being, starting with our bodies and minds which will then shape our souls and hearts, and to do this out of the love of God; to strive to know and obey His commandments from the heart; and to find ways to live out our love of Him through the love of our neighbors in practical acts of service and in our professional lives.

Write down concrete goals in each of these areas, review them daily, and commit yourself to putting small, specific actions into your daily schedule to help you to achieve them. If you do, next New Year will find you much more the person you were meant to be, and you will have set a course for a much more successful and satisfying life.