W: ORP: NTW: "Simply Christian"

In a discussion of good books to read about Christian living with my friend Bob, the following book caught our eye: "After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters" by N. T. Wright. But as I was reading the introduction I noticed that it was a third book in a series that NTW has been writing as introduction to and summary of the Christian Faith. Being a concrete sequentialist in learning style especially to deal with abstract-random or philosophical thought, I naturally wanted to read the book series in the order they had been written. My friend Bob is likely more than half done with "After You Believe...", but I will eventually catch up to have discussions about the book.

This book introduces the Christian Faith from a philosophical approach using a few examples that point to the eternal longings of most of humanity. It makes me wonder if he had read Don Richardson's "Eternity in Their Hearts" as part of his preparation for this approach. I won't go into a massive analysis of the text because of lack of time and one can piece together the gist of what the book is about from all the reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. The problem of my usual approach of quoting passages from works that I consider here, is that with NT Wright, like CS Lewis, there is so much one would like to put down that one may as well quote the entirety of the work and be done with it. NTW does write better for the average reader in America than CSL, but he still says some important things and has familiarity with philosophy and culture that I find refreshing.

Here is a small lesser passage that shows how easy and relaxed NTW's prose can be:

The real problem with Epicureanism in the ancient world, and Deism in ours, is that it has to plug its ears to all those echoing voices we were talking about earlier in this book. Actually, that's not so difficult in today's busy and noisy world. It's quite easy, in fact, when you're sitting in front of the television or hooked up to a portable stereo, one hand glued to the cell phone for text messaging, the other clutching a mug of specialist coffee...it's quite easy to be a modern Epicurean. But turn the machines off, read a different kind of book, wander out under the night sky, and see what happens. You start wondering about Option Three.