Here are 5 books I recommend to understand Today.
That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
Read this to understand our times. Read it several times. Lewis lays out all the players on both sides of the war: tech gurus, a liberal pastor, lesbian police, shrewd politicians, mindless mystics, patient leaders, faithful professors, a band of rag tag friends, a friendly bear, and a young married couple.
Lewis reveals the spiritual dimension to the current battle. This is not just a battle of flesh and blood but also of principalities and powers. This deeper reality is something that 1984 and Brave New World completely ignore. Lewis also offers a path to victory in the battle: the faithful work of small, mundane tasks and waiting and praying.
Lewis lays out clearly the temptations for both men and women: men are afraid of being left out of the inner circle and women are afraid to submit. But the solution to both is Christian marriage. This book is the story of our time. And it rightly recognizes that a wedding is how it will all end.
Christianity and Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen
Machen understands rightly that Liberal ideology is a rival religion. He unpacks the reigning religion in our day of the brotherhood of man without reference to God. He also rightly sees that our battle is all about language. Liberals misuse and abuse language to get their way and then when they have control, they dismiss all dissenting positions.
Machen shows how Liberal man is ultimately trying to save himself apart from the gospel. But there is no materialistic solution to our spiritual issue. Only Jesus, as presented in the gospel, can solve our problems. True Christian doctrine is the solution.
While Machen is a fierce fighter, he also sets a high value on unity. This is why he fights. Machen sees rightly that true unity can only be found in the Gospel and that unity comes about through slow growth and maturation. All other so-called unity is false, hasty, and ultimately destructive.
Life After Google, George Gilder
Key work that unpacks the worldview behind Google, Facebook, and other tech companies. Nothing is free. If you are not paying for it, then you are the product. The big tech companies are running on a Darwinian social conditioning model. If you understand that, then you understand everything else.
The end goal for these companies is Artificial Intelligence. But these tech companies will not get there because the human mind is different than the human brain. The brain is the hardware, the mind is the software. A materialistic worldview can’t build a human mind.
But these tech companies are going to try to get there anyway. In the process, they will fulfill what Lewis saw coming: Man’s conquest of nature. Which is really some men who have conquered other men.
Planet Narnia, Michael Ward
The world is more poetry than we realize. But Lewis knew it. Ward explains how Lewis took the medieval and ancient divine virtues and wove them into his Narnia books.
Lewis gave each Narnia book a spiritual aura that borrows from the deep poetry of our world. This in turn gave his stories a long lasting and far reaching impact.
Ward does a wonderful job unpacking what Lewis is doing in these key poetic themes. Ward shows how empty and stale the modern world really is. The real world pops and fizzles and haunts. Reading this book will sharpen your eyes for God’s world.
Not A Chance, R. C. Sproul
R.C. Sproul knew virtual reality was coming. It is the next big revolution in education. It will bring many great developments but it will also hold a lot of dangers. One danger is the blurring of reality and virtual reality. Sproul argues that the key need of our time is Logic.
Sproul begins by unpacking the logical issues that plague modern scientists. Sproul is a careful thinker and he walks through in good detail some of the sloppy thinking of modern scientists, especially in discussing chance, relativity, and quantum theory. We need logic in order to do good science.
Sproul also shows how appearances are not as deceptive as we might think. For example, a bar of gold is made of lots of gold atoms and lots of air. However, I don’t see those atoms. The key is to realize that what I am seeing is not fake or illusory. The bar of gold really is gold and what I see is real. That is just not all there is to the nature of the bar of gold.
There are multiple layers of reality for all things in the world. This is true for people: we are physical, biological, spiritual, mental beings. We need to understand these layers in order to understand a thing. Sproul knew that we needed the tool of Logic in order to sort these things out.
Christianity&Liberalism, CSLewis, George Gilder, Machen, Narnia, R.C. Sproul
