Building Blocks for a Biblical Prayer Life

By now, you're probably used to my theological and social opinions, and how I think about these issues. This week, we are diving into an even more personal level, since the topic is prayer. We're kicking off the month of April, containing Easter (yay!), with the Anglican layperson's take on the theology and experience of individual and corporate prayer. This has been on my mind to start the month, especially because the Lenten sermon series at church is titled "Pray Daily."

What do I mean by prayer?

Very short answer: a conversation with God. This is consistent with Martin Luther (who wrote A Simple Way to Pray), who defined prayer in his Small Catechism as faith's response to God's initiation and love. To expand on this definition, to pray is to speak to God in an attitude of praise, supplication (asking on behalf of ourselves or others), and repentance, as the occasion or portion of the prayer may suggest. Prayer is not merely individual, but also corporate (with a group of fellow believers, whether in a small group, conference, or church service). Prayer is not merely extemporaneous, but also scripted (as in the form of a collect).

In the interest of a broad look at this topic, I would direct you, if you're interested, to some outside sources on what prayer looks like in different faith traditions. Marquette University has a collection of prayers from Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), Buddhism, and Native American traditions. A potentially sketchier website is World Prayers, which collects submissions from laypersons globally. Encyclopedia Britannica, to which I refer frequently, has a nice summary article on prayer in different major traditions worldwide. Finally, at least one ecumenical Muslim has some thoughts on how to participate in interfaith prayer without being relativist. (I'm not sure if that's possible without pluralism, but I did look into tolerant exclusivism in the past and that seemed to be a viable option, at least for interfaith dialogue.)

How did I learn to pray?

For most of my life, I was educated at home, transitioning to public and private university settings. Because most of my childhood was spent at home or in the community, those places were instrumental in my learning about the theory, theology, and practice of prayer.

Parents and Family

It may be helpful to sketch my parents' and siblings' faith background here. On my father's side, Lutheranism was practiced for several generations back in an East Coast setting, influenced by periodic immigration from Germany and (then) Prussia. Teaching and practice of prayer in that blended cultural setting focused on doing the "right" things per Luther's Small Catechism, which was taught to all congregants past a certain age. On my mother's side, the German/Prussian influence was perhaps even stronger, along with exposure to the charismatic renewal (early 1960s and beyond) which spanned multiple Christian denominations. This renewal, contrary to much of the LCMS, was founded on a continuationist perspective on the "charismatic" (or more "expressive") gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as praying or speaking in a language unknown to the speaker. While both sides of my family were at best nominally Christian for the most part, more of her relatives preserved their faith and practice. This imprinted with varying degrees of strength on each of my siblings and me.

What were my takeaways from this childhood environment?

• Base prayer directly on Scripture as much as possible
• Write down prayers in order to remember them later and see how and when God answers (yes, no, or something else)
• Family simultaneous prayer time with 3+ kids is ideal but is impossible to do more than a minute or two per day
• Pray as often and as much as possible, preferably extemporaneously
• Praying in a tongue (glossolalia) is permissible, but only in private or (if in church) inaudibly

Church

My parents took us to a Vineyard church until I was in first grade, at which point we resumed attending a Lutheran (Missouri Synod) church. There, I participated in Sunday school, weekly worship, weekly Bible studies (youth and adult), and confirmation (7th and 8th grades). Major prayer-related takeaways I had from the formal instruction, informal instruction, included these:

• The Lord's Prayer is the most basic structured, scriptural prayer recommended for all ages. It covers all major areas that one would need to talk to God about.
• Luther's Morning and Evening Prayers are also basic and structured, but not in the collect form. If there is only time for one prayer, choose the Lord's Prayer.
• Within the church service (whether Sunday morning, midweek, or other for a feast or festival), the liturgy has no space for corporate/individual extemporaneous prayer.
• Prayer is a comparatively minor part of small groups, any of which (groups) must be pastor-led to avoid the risk of heresy creeping in
• God answering "yes" to a prayer is only by grace (the Lutheran understanding of grace, not the Reformed understanding of grace - here are two posts on differences between Lutheran and Reformed doctrine more comprehensively)

What has influenced my prayer habits over the years?

A key shift in my prayer habit occurred in college, another in young adulthood, and a third more subtle shift occurred within the last few years. It has been a fascinating path for me, to say the least.

Experience of my own prayer

I differentiate this sub-section from the parental/home influence section because external and internalized lessons don't always translate directly into personal behavior, because we have a free will (see Lutheran vs Reformed links above). Let's walk through the most memorable experiences chronologically.

• Primary grades: I kept a prayer journal starting in Sunday school, splitting my prayers roughly equally between thanksgiving and supplication. Here, I had the basic understanding that prayer should be at least daily and spring out of my love for God/my awareness of His love for me.
• Secondary grades: starting in 6th or 7th grade, my prayer was more influenced by reading through the Bible annually, which probably made my prayers more Scripture-based (but still with the primary-grades mindset), especially around when my last set of grandparents died.
• High school: I don't have too many prayer-specific memories here, but was trying to keep a consistent prayer time. I do remember being a spectator on many arguments between a brother and a parent on the "why" of prayer related to the doctrines around free will, predestination, and God's sovereignty. So, perhaps the reasoning behind the doctrine of free will was not taught to all of us as well as the assertions were.
• College: attending an LCMS-affiliated school, I went to student-led evening prayer (by the pre-seminary students in rotation) and experienced my first time praying in a tongue with awareness of the meaning of what my mouth wanted to say. This experience was quite unexpected, given the atmosphere around cessationism, but I accepted it and pondered it for a while.
• Young adulthood: once I was several years into the post-college work world, I kept attending a local LCMS congregation but also went to weeknight prayer groups at an Assembly of God church. AoG is in the Pentecostal/charismatic tradition, so this group heavily emphasized 1:1 meditation on Scripture and promptings of the Holy Spirit, laying on of hands, anointing oil as indicated, and prolonged intercession. I tended to journal my prayers much more extensively during this time.

Experience of others' prayer

Like many Christians, I have been on the receiving or listening end for others' prayer, for me or for others. I have just a few memorable experiences that come to mind in this category, although my journals likely contain others. The most immediate memories come from college and my current position. In early college, I was involved with a Christian student group reaching out to the substantial Muslim student population on campus. The leader prayed with me once, which correlated with my (uncommon for me) experience of being aware of God's presence. In the academic work world, I have been blessed with two department chairs whose simple prayers at the start of each faculty meeting show a deep integration among faith, life, and learning/teaching.

Bear in mind that, although I did select and integrate habits from my experiences in the AoG prayer group, there were many habits and teachings I consciously did not adopt. The subject of sifting doctrine and thinking through the logical consequences of one doctrine or another, or one's worldview, is more thoroughly addressed in Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (which I'm about halfway through!).

Church

From 1st grade through age 21 or so, I was a member of the LCMS congregation my parents still attend. Outside of the childhood formative experiences that were reinforced by liturgy and habit over the years, I would say that there was little to no additional influence from this point that changed my views or habits over the years.

For the next 10-12 years, I was a member of a more local-to-me LCMS congregation that was not quite as high-church conservative in a number of ways. Pertinent differences included (1) in-sermon prayers which had never been a feature of my previous congregation, (2) sermon series and other teaching on the practice of prayer, and (3) allowance for small groups without a pastor present, so long as the leader had been trained with a brief course reinforcing Small Catechism doctrines.

Since 2022, for precisely one liturgical year, Husband, Child, and I have attended (and recently transferred to) a parish in the Anglican Church of North America. Similar to the LCMS, the ACNA is liturgical, using the 3-year lectionary (which in the LCMS is an option alongside the 1-year) and plenty of collects and other scripted prayers. Differently, in the ACNA parish the prayers may be led by a male or female deacon, and there is space in each service for extemporaneous intercessory prayer by congregants. Besides weekly prayers in worship services, individual and family use of the Daily Office is strongly encouraged for continued spiritual nourishment and growth. This uses a different lectionary; here's why there is so much Scripture proportional to the amount of prayer for each day of prayer.

Undergraduate education

At the university I went to, the core undergraduate curriculum included two theology classes; one could choose a more basic level (surveying the Bible and major doctrines of the Christian faith especially Lutheran distinctive) or a more advanced level (Old and New Testament deeper dives). Looking back, I regret not choosing the more advanced pair of classes, but there may have been scheduling difficulties that were more pressing in my choice at the time. There was nothing new to me in the classes I took, but what I had learned previously was reinforced.

Marriage

Although early experiences were quite formative, I identify my marriage as the single factor with the most wide-ranging influence on my prayer life. He was also brought up LCMS, with relatives having wandered around from Church of Christ, through other denominations, eventually to Lutheranism. Additionally, Husband studied enough Greek and theology within the pre-seminary program (from which he eventually switched to majors in philosophy, computer science, and math) that he was thoroughly familiar with Lutheran and other traditions' doctrines on prayer and the philosophical frameworks that guide how various traditions think and have thought about prayer through history.

A particular influence has been his attitude toward reason. As you may have gathered from my references to Noll's book, and past posts, I do not appreciate the anti-intellectualism within much of United States Christianity. However, I also refuse to put reason above Scripture in terms of authority for thought, life, and belief. Properly situated, reason is used to serve our knowledge of God as revealed in Scripture, which was written to audiences in specific historical contexts. While this topic could be the subject of innumerable additional posts, for the topic of prayer it suffices to say that my post-marital understanding of reason's role past and present has changed what I read about prayer and how I react internally to my devotional life in various states.

How have my views on prayer shifted?

I've identified several time points in the previous sections where certain influences not in parallel with my past experience came into play. In synthesis, I can identify two major shifts in my views on prayer: (1) from solely within one's personal devotions and corporate worship services to small-group intercessory and (2) from a "requirement" (not from a justification standpoint but from a feelings standpoint as to the status of the strength of my relationship with God) to a "nutrient" (something to get as often as possible, but it's not deadly to wax and wane).

Let me expand on shift #1. The time point for this change was during my years attending the AoG weeknight prayer group. Before that, I had been a somewhat firm cessationist, in line with the teaching of the LCMS on this topic. During and after, I went farther from that camp because I could see and hear (and evaluate with sound reason) various gifts in action. Currently, I would direct you to theologian Craig Keener's Miracles in the Church Today.

Regarding shift #2, the corresponding philosophical shift was from Pietism (in which background I had grown up) away from this tradition. (Briefly, the Pietist movement started in early Lutheranism, swinging the pendulum away from "dead" orthodoxy of doctrine/theology, thus emphasizing a personal investigation of Scripture, individual prayer, and small groups.) Because a swinging pendulum, given well-timed force, tends to become more and more widely swinging, the focus on personal piety in the movement eventually crowded out the good things of well-thought-out doctrine. 

To expand even more on this point, I see strong parallels between Pietism and evangelical anti-intellectualism (Noll's book). (The New Yorker noticed the anniversary edition of this book in 2021.) A phrase I've encountered as very typical within both movements is "me-and-only-my-Bible." That is, one's personal interpretation of the English translation of Scripture (a "plain text" reading), without any aids based on centuries of biblical scholarship, is taken to be an inspired interpretation, and all scholarship be ignored.

Alisa Childers recently put out a video on the topic of tools to study the Bible, specifically Logos software. The guest referenced a 2009 paper based on an extensive Scripture engagement survey found that Bible reading at least 4 times per week was correlated with decrease in sinful behavior and increase in spiritual fruit. An interesting quote from the unpaginated paper: "Prayer is only predictive of a lower likelihood of getting drunk and having destructive thoughts about oneself and others." Unfortunately, a large majority of comments in the chat replay as well as the post-stream comments were from listeners who were convinced, in a Lockean view, that (1) scholarship was completely unnecessary to a believer's Bible study, and (2) any human scholar's interpretation was bound to risk leading believers astray. One could also draw parallels to the Montanist heresy, but I don't think that 100% of the commenters in question hold that view.

What does my prayer habit look like now?

These days, my prayer habit is pretty quiet, and consistent in the ways that matter to me (but not in the ways that used to matter). Husband and I have tried to do Evening Prayer in the Daily Office most days, usually the long version but lately the short version, which has helped us get continued exposure to the prolonged story of Scripture by daily Psalm(s), an Old Testament, and a New Testament reading. I do keep up the prayer journal, most days, but if a particular petition turns into a multi-day affair (which it often does), I don't feel the need to write something new in the journal each day. Additionally, Child is old enough now to sit when we pray the Lord's Prayer with him before bed, and participate babblingly in church services.

How did your prayer habit develop? How is it different from the previous season in your life?

Out Like a Lamb: Favorite Devotionals

When I started working on this post, I had a simple goal in mind: explore the theology behind the Christian devotional books I have found most dear over the years, although it has been years since I used a devotional book as part of my quiet time. Now, after I have read some major sources to inform the points I planned to make, there have been some changes. No matter where you stand on the devotional/quiet time spectrum, I hope you'll find something in this post to enjoy and inform yourself!

What are Devotionals?

Most of my readers, myself included, likely think of devotionals as "Christian books to use during daily quiet time." While devotionals are present in non-Christian religions as well, in this post I want to focus on the Christian aspect. You may notice some overlap with aspects of self-help books. According to Deck's (2022) post, components of devotions generally include Scripture and usually include meditation (in liturgical or other form) as well. Devotions exclude theological instruction, commentary, or textbooks.

What is my Devotional Routine?

I've mentioned previously that I was raised in a conservative, Lutheran, charismatic, pietist tradition and am now in the Anglican Church of North America. As a child, I had a more or less constant devotional routine of morning reading from the Bible and/or a book, writing a brief prayer in a private notebook, and sometimes working on memory passage(s). I modified each of these components as I grew older, and went in and out of highly pietistic seasons.

Devotionals I remember reading over the years ranged from early childhood to young adulthood (just having graduated from graduate school the first time around):

• Big Thoughts for Little People, which I think my parents still own. This is actually an ABC book written from a Christian perspective.
• Little Visits with God, a much more substantial book that was one in a series. This was fairly enjoyable as a solo endeavor. Looking back, I'm not surprised . . . it was written in 1958!
• A Gentle and Quiet Spirit, which I loaned to a friend in 2015 and haven't gotten back, and probably never will. My favorite aspects of this book were its small size and quality of meditations on the chosen verses. I do not remember the author, and none of the titles on Amazon look right, hence the lack of a link to this book.
• Portals of Prayer, a quarterly publication through Concordia Publishing House. The church I used to go to distributes this to attendees; it has Lutheran-style explanations of a longer passage of assigned Scripture reading, along with a selected phrase that is actually printed at the top of each day's page.
• Several books by Joni Eareckson Tada, all of which I think I have given away. These were helpful due to hardcover status allowing the readings to be slightly longer, but only chose a phrase or a verse as the subject of reflection.

Currently, my devotional routine looks significantly different, mostly because I have not used a daily devotional of any kind in more than 5 years. Constants through the years are (1) daily reading of several Bible chapters (I have read straight through or chronologically through the Bible annually since 7th grade), (2) gratitude journaling plus journaling about any other emotions and happenings of the previous day, and (3) writing (usually) an extemporaneous prayer or collect specific to the day's needs.

For reasons we'll explore as we move through this post, other components that are significantly different from what I've grown up with are (4) inclusion at any time of day of reading a book that actually teaches aspects of theology in a systematic way (many of which I have blogged about this year and last year) and (5) evening prayer using the Daily Office from the 2019 Book of Common Prayer. Sometimes Husband and I will substitute a theological audiobook for #5 if we're especially tired, or else listen to the Daily Office podcast.

How did Devotionals Come About?

(Most information in this section comes from a recent Christianity Today article.) In the United States, Christian devotionals originated around 1870, when evangelical tradition merged Puritan private prayer and Puritan private study. Prior to that, long-form Scripture engagement was relatively common--a reference in Justin Martyr, a second-century church father, indicate that readings in communal worship settings were lengthy, followed by congregant engagement with difficult issues in the text. This long-form engagement allowed people several benefits:

1. Familiarity with the entire scope of the Scripture canon
2. Confidence to engage with the teachings of the entirety of the Bible, not limited to single short texts or verses
3. Fluency and resultant wisdom to discern how Scripture applies to issues not precisely mentioned in the text

After the 1870s, the individual "devotional" practice was added to this long-form engagement in most traditions, allowing individuals to focus on private Bible reading, quiet listening, extemporaneous prayer, and waiting on God's specific daily guidance. In those early decades of private devotions, the focus of this individual quiet time was on intercessory prayer.

As the decades passed, the focus shifted toward passively listening for God's specific guidance for the day. People practiced less intercessory prayer and overall did not engage with the text in any sort of rigorous way. In 1909, the Scofield Reference Bible was published, identified by the Christianity Today article as a key event in the development of what quiet time looks like today. This Bible came from a dispensationalist perspective (a heterodox set of doctrines) and thus had a major effect of inflating readers' self-confidence to interpret the "plain meaning" of the text (in English translation) as "the" correct interpretation.

From there, what quiet time typically looks like today has several features:

• Lack of actual Scripture reading. A fifth of churchgoers never read the Bible, and during quiet time about two-fifths of practitioners read Scripture.
• Lack of contextual awareness of a verse. (In answer, Never Read Just a Bible Verse.) Space in this post will not permit me to speak at any length about the problems this causes . . .
• Lack of knowledge of what the Bible actually contains and teaches, because many people engaging in daily quiet time are not getting long-form Scripture engagement or systematic instruction/study elsewhere.
• Focus on meditating using the Bible rather than seeing it as "the authoritative teaching of God and His people."

I've mentioned several times the need emphasized by the CT article for long-form engagement to avoid Bible roulette. That may be a topic for another post. However, here I wanted to write some more about what it means to meditate, from a Christian, non-transcendentalist perspective. I'm grateful to theologian and pastor John Kleinig for sharing a 9-page paper on this topic. Please enjoy my notes:

• How to meditate like Jesus did, instead of not meditating at all, or meditating in the wrong way:
• Isaiah 50:4-11 describes a "master meditator" who always heard God's voice. Foreshadowing of Jesus Christ.
• Jesus' spiritual life is sketched thinly - prayed to recharge, at night; kept in verbal contact with the Father (as described in John)
• Luke: parable of the sower - meditation = we receive God's word and bear fruit: by patiently rereading, memorizing, and kept on our minds, we have changed behavior. Parable of the lamp - we need to keep thinking about the Word for illumination of our minds
• By meditating (repeating mindfully the Word), we are spiritually nourished and enlightened. "Enlightenment does not come from looking at Jesus and his miracles but from listening to his preaching and teaching" (p. 4, emphasis original).
• Mary, Jesus' mother - faith-filled listening to and repeating of the word spoken to her
• John - how do we meditate? Remain/abide in His word; base our existence on it; treat Jesus as our master; let our prayers be governed by His person and word; do so out of love for Him until His return, then we will recognize the Spirit within us and have a foretaste of the renewed Jerusalem

What are some Classic Devotionals?

(Most of the information in this section, outside of my experience, comes from a Soul Shepherding article.) Due to Amazon's preference for displaying more recently published works over older works in a given category, I would recommend going to one of the end pages of a search if that's where you are looking for a classic Christian devotional book. If you prefer a classic/"old" book, you're in good company with C. S. Lewis and others, including Jesus (who spoke with Moses and Elijah, the representatives of the ancient Law and the Prophets, as He was transfigured) and the reformers, who read extensively from the church fathers (who lived in the first 4 centuries of Christianity) and were influenced by their thought.

Given that so many important and insightful people valued older books in their devotional routines and spiritual growth, I picked out my favorite books from the website's list (here's a map showing the "family tree" of the various Christian traditions, and a 29-page document describing major denominations in more depth):

• Athanasius' On the Incarnation. Athanasius of Alexandria, Egypt, lived c. 293-373 A. D. and has been influential in the thought of multiple Christian traditions.
• Augustine's Confessions. Augustine of Hippo (now in Algeria) lived 354-430 A. D. and has influenced multiple traditions, including Calvinism (branch of Reformed theology).
• St. Benedict's The Rule. St. Benedict of Italy lived c. 480-547 A. D. and influenced monasticism, specifically within the Roman Catholic tradition.
• Thomas à Kempis's The Imitation of Christ. Thomas lived in Germany near the Netherlands border in 1379-1471, mostly in a Roman Catholic monastery.
• Luther's A Simple Way to Pray. Luther lived in Germany 1483-1546 and, while originally Roman Catholic, semi-unintentionally founded the Lutheran branch of the Reformation.
• Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. John Bunyan lived in England 1628-1688 and figures prominently in the Puritan tradition (post-Reformation).
• Brother Lawrence's Practicing the Presence of God. Brother Lawrence lived c. 1611-1691 in Paris and was a Carmelite monk in the Roman Catholic tradition.
• F. B. Meyer's The Secret of Guidance. Meyer lived 1847-1929 in London while traveling frequently to the U.S., writing and preaching in the Baptist/revivalist tradition.
• Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest. Chambers lived in Scotland and Egypt 1874-1917 and has influence well beyond his Baptist tradition.
• A. W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God. Tozer lived 1897-1963 in Pennsylvania, preaching without seminary training in Alliance churches, within the Protestant tradition.
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. Bonhoeffer lived 1906-1945 in Poland/Germany within the Protestant tradition, writing more ecumenically.

I hope you find something old and something new to you to enjoy in your devotional routine!

Spring Cleaning: Piles and Shelves

It's almost March 21, so it's time to celebrate the transition from the drab, monochrome cold wetness of winter to the gentle colors, fresh energy, and cool wetness of spring. Many people, myself included, get the urge around this time to do some spring cleaning, which includes dusting, washing, and general decluttering. But how does this work when at least half of your worldly possessions consist of books, and you're not the household librarian?

What Does the Internet Say About Spring Cleaning?

A whole lot! As I was going down rabbit holes for this post, I discovered that there are apparently as many "rules" for cleaning in general, and spring cleaning specifically, as there are whole numbers.

1. Spring clean once per year.
2. 10-minute rule, tidying up each morning. Almost identical to the 5-minute daily decluttering rule.
3. 80-20 rule, that most improvement comes from least cleaning.
4. 5 principles of cleaning products (more for industry than for homeowners).
5. 2-minute rule, identical to the 1-minute rule (if it takes that long, do it right away).
6. 20/20 rule, for the worth in time or dollars of an item to be decluttered. (I'm German enough that I rarely follow this.)
7. 10/30 rule, for putting things away or finishing the last little bits of a task in 10 footsteps or 30 seconds added on.

It was also interesting to see my plan (see below) being recommended for older adults. I am not an older adult, but I do have a toddler. Like 71% of spring cleaners, because of the toddler, I needed to spread out my cleaning schedule into an entire week of spring break. Also, I noticed that during spring cleaning, I gravitate toward a day-task schedule rather than a day-room schedule. However, during the rest of the year, I'll generally zero in on one room, or a part of a room, at a time. This is an extension of my general to-do list strategy: break up big projects (rooms) into tiny tasks, power through tasks, check off items, experience satisfaction.

What I Planned to Do

Since my personality doesn't really let me truly stop working for more than a few days, I made an ambitious task list that acknowledged my additional desires to (1) go outside as much as possible, (2) do enough of my paid job from home that I could save the PTO days for when I really needed them, and (3) get some more social interaction in. As fellow mothers of toddlers know, the need for adult conversation is quite acute before one's children learn how to talk at an adult level.

My plan for the house itself was the most thorough:

• Outside and inside surfaces of everything, especially kitchen appliances and toilets/sinks
• All bedding (resulting in 4 or 5 loads) because of recent illness in the household
• The languishing filing system in the office (in a pile in front of the cabinet for months)
• Sort, declutter, and potentially seasonally transition my and Child's clothes
• As much fresh air and sunlight into the house as possible
• As much cat hair out of the house and furniture and rugs as possible
• Get rid of the spots of dried coffee, milk, spit-up, and cat puke all over the floor
• Transition to some spring-type decorations . . . more on that in the next section!

In work-related tasks, I planned to catch up on busywork (continuing-education webinars, background reading, and syllabus development for a curriculum I am developing).

For the 1,500+ books we own as joint marital property, I knew that since Husband brought about 80% of them into the marriage, my cleaning decisions were limited. Currently, we have stacks of books on every surface except the shelves, as a massive TBR list of sorts, so the most I saw myself realistically getting done was dusting. Our current baby-proofing strategy, to keep Child from removing all books from the lower shelves, is to Velcro sheets of thin plexiglass across the bottom 2-2.5 shelves that he can reach so far. The trouble is, not all the Velcro is sticking. My next strategy is to keep my eye out for old bicycle inner tubes to prevent just enough access.

If I had been more ambitious, there's a whole process for spring cleaning one's personal library:

1. Remove all books from the shelves? (Nope . . . I don't maintain the organizational system!)
2. Dust bookshelves, covers, and edges? Can do!
3. Go one by one through the books to determine which ones to keep? Only for my personal books.
4. Repair books? Not needed, because we make sure to have intact editions.
5. Have a single library space? Yes, we already have our entire downstairs.
6. Scour one's physical TBR list? That is something we do year-round.

What Actually Happened

I am writing the bulk of this post on Thursday, having started cleaning on Monday. As you can see from all the arrows in the photo, some tasks got moved around. What you don't see, though, is the number of tasks that took multiple days to complete. Let's annotate the list from above to see what changes I made on the fly.

• Outside and inside surfaces of everything. This turned into a whole-week task; I felt really productive on Wednesday, so I tackled the entire kitchen, the main throw rug, and sweeping and mopping the indoors on that day. Toilets will happen this morning because I have company coming.
• All bedding (resulting in 4 or 5 loads) because of recent illness in the household. This got moved from Monday to Tuesday because the illness lasted longer than anticipated, so I didn't have access to the bedding until then.
• The languishing filing system in the office. Wednesdays are normally my most productive day for mentally intensive tasks like this, but it may need to wait until tomorrow or Saturday.
• Sort, declutter, and potentially seasonally transition my and Child's clothes. Happened on schedule, aside from cutting worn-out clothes for a rag rug that took 2 days.
• As much fresh air and sunlight into the house as possible. Aside from a day with random precipitation, this happened on schedule, with slight rearrangement of which rooms got aired out on which days.
• As much cat hair out of the house and furniture and rugs as possible. Done on schedule! Vacuuming, though, took 2 days, in no small part because Child is at the age where vacuum cleaners cause deathly screams.
• Get rid of the spots of dried coffee, milk, spit-up, and cat puke all over the floor. This happened on kitchen day.
• Transition to some spring-type decorations. On our front table, I currently have some faux bouquets from our wedding reception, which unfortunately the cat ("Fuzzypaws" to distinguish him from his usually-better-behaved sister) is eating. I knew because of the cats and books that neither Myquillyn Smith's Welcome Home, nor Marie Kondo's method, would work. I think I'll just switch around the blankets once there are no more snowfalls.

Additionally, I focused on sleep hygiene for myself due to Daylight Savings Time, which I hope will end very soon. Child, surprisingly, handled it like nothing happened. Keeping my books out of Child's reach is not difficult at the moment--he is preoccupied with the cat toys' ottomans, so my book ottoman with a blanket on top of it has been outside of his curiosity zone.

Will my TBR Change?

I don't think my list will change significantly. That said, I do need to work on replacements for my major distractors of phone and YouTube (cautionary articles about the dopamine-cleanse fad here and here; not how I planned to do it anyway). I can't quite work myself up to putting "Read for pleasure" as a planner item for all or most days of the week, because it feels like another new project, which I don't want to take on but want to have completed.

However, I did make a surprise addition to my TBR: Charlotte Mason's Philosophy of Education, which I got on the 15th by signing up as an ambassador with Smidgen Press. Very excited to read this ebook!

I Can Do Better: Theology of Self-Improvement

And now for something completely different! If you're anything like me, you are goal-driven and gravitate toward books that help you achieve your goals. But how do self-help books fit with the mind and life of a Christian reader?

What is a Self-Help Book?

Self-help books, briefly or circularly defined, are books written with the purpose of letting you help yourself by reading them. Originally, these books were written to help people deal with societal problems, or survive, or thrive, in society. This was before expressive individualism was dominant in the social imaginary. That is, people were more concerned with fitting in and conforming to the society around them than with living "their" truth. Currently, self-help books are, perhaps not surprisingly, geared toward helping people live the life they want to live, regardless of what other people think.

One danger with the older, or newer, mindset put forth in self-help books, is that the focus is taken off of teaching or enabling you to (reasonably) think for yourself. (The website I found while researching this post to support what I said so far in this section is, unfortunately, affiliated with "Christian" mysticism, recently expressed in New Age principles. Here's Reformed apologist Melissa Dougherty's playlist about New Age, out of which she came.) That same site does say, helpfully, that Socrates can serve as a positive example of self-help advice. That is, "good" self-help should describe examples to follow, rather than setting firm rules for the reader.

What is the History of the Self-Help Movement?

As far as I can tell, the self-help (book) movement started in or around 1790 with the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. In this (unfinished) book, he set forth principles and examples for healthy, prudent living. The history I'll weave together in this section is a composite of a "fascinating" take and an "insidious" take. (Side note, the author of the second source has recently been confirmed into the Anglican Church in North America, my "new" home denomination!)

What was society like around this time? (It's important to ask, because types of self-help books tend to mirror societal values at the time of publication, because authors want to write what people want to read.) In the United States, where Franklin lived, there were around a dozen states whose governments had ratified the Constitution, George Washington as first president was figuring out how to govern the miniature union, and the Revolution had officially ended in 1783. In Europe, the early modern period (after Late Antiquity . . . don't let people call it the Dark Ages any more!) was going on over the 1500-1800 AD window, including the Enlightenment and Industrial (and other) Revolution.

Although the Enlightenment had been a key step in the long, historical process toward the present focus on the individual, specifically the inner (mental/emotional) self, as supreme, the predominant focus of 19th-century US society, right after the autobiography's publication, was inner character. Moral fiber was viewed as essential to succeed in and fit into society, regardless of one's external circumstances. Other norms at the time included government non-interference, self-reliance, and the individual as the key component of society. A slightly later book, titling the self-help movement, was Samuel Smiles' Self-Help, With Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance (1859). Notably, this book included examples rather than rules.

Once the 20th century rolled around, the focus shifted toward personality being the most important, regardless of one's character. The book Quiet discusses this shift from an introvert-extrovert perspective. Urbanization of many cities and outlying areas led to increased competition, making a winning, extroverted personality a valued factor. Two big self-help/self-improvement names late in this century are Paul Meyer and Norman Vincent Peale (see two sections down).

Now that we're in the 21st century, the focus is still on the personality, but in an expressively individualistic way--we're working too much, so what we need is to be more efficient and effective with both work and rest, say the books.

What are Some Christian Self-Help Books?

According to Goodreads, quite a lot of books by Christian authors fit in the self-help genre. The ones from the "top 93" list I recognized were:

• Joyce Meyer's Battlefield of the Mind. The question of Joyce teaching heresy has been addressed on many other sites. That said, her name is very recognizable, in a positive or negative way, among many Christians.
• C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. This is one of my favorites, as it describes the core teachings of all denominations that can be called Christian. I'm not sure how it ended up on the self-help list, though, because it provides neither examples of people nor a list of rules/principles to follow. That said, living out one's theology is a rich topic and something people do whether they realize it or not!
• Stormie Omartian's The Power of a Praying Wife. I think my parents owned this at some point; it does fit in the genre because it has principles specifically for wives who pray. I hadn't realized that she is 80 (!) this year. I'm not sure of her theological background, but she has been a guest for Lutheran Hour Ministries (LCMS) and written in Christianity Today.
• Henry Cloud's Boundaries books. Years ago, a pastor loaned me a copy of Boundaries in Marriage for an unrelated situation; it proved more helpful as time went on, falling in the "principles" category rather than the "examples."
• Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology. If you know anything about systematic theology, you may be questioning, like I am, the thought process of whoever decided that the book should fit in the self-help category.
• C. S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory. Great sermon/book . . . not exactly self-help.
• A.W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy. At a stretch, this book could fit in self-help, because of its practical theological principles, but I'm still reluctant to put it in this category, for reasons we shall see shortly.

Does Self-Helpism Have Negative Implications?

The short answer is yes. While many internet sources have been written from a secular or psychological perspective on this topic, I will touch on that only briefly and focus on the theological aspect. I am not a trained theologian, but I am a reading, thinking Christian and a trained researcher. Also, this is by no means going deeper than a very surface-level examination of the biggest issues I see with self-helpism.

Let's ease into things from the research/psychology point of view. I said earlier that self-help books, and the movement itself, generally don't promote critical thinking and aren't based on solid data. Myths about self-help have several distinguishing characteristics in that regard: (1) limited, low-level, or absent research support (here's a link to the levels of quantitative [number-based] and qualitative [description-based] evidence); (2) assuming causation from correlation; (3) coming across as a sales pitch for a product, course, or workshop; (4) seemingly too easy or applying as blanket/absolute advice; or (5) doesn't make sense. (The caveat about "common" sense is that everyone thinks they have more than enough . . . but not everyone actually has enough.)

Examples fitting into each category include

1. 10,000 hours of practice (plus no talent) is the only ingredient needed to become an expert.
2. Smile in order to become happy. A 1950s Harvard graduating cohort who wrote out their goals earned more, so if you write out your goals you will earn more too. The law of attraction.
3. Barriers to success are only in your mind, so change your mind using my training that costs only $149.95 today!
4. Anyone can learn anything.
5. Over 90% of communication is nonverbal. (This person has obviously not read many print sources which are, you know, verbal . . .)

That said, I see overlap between theological problems and lack of critical thinking. Depending on your faith tradition, you may see the relationship between faith and reason in different ways. I view faith as supported by reason, the latter being the "servant" of the former but not its "slave." I also believe that, because God gave us minds to think with and set the universe and its contents in order, and because He left thorough historical records with which one can learn about the accuracy of the biblical texts we have, therefore the "leaps" of faith to believe certain things about Him are smaller than one might think.

Here are some definitions that come into play when thinking about self-helpism in a theological context:

• Theology = the study of God and how He relates to the world/all that exists
• Philosophy = the study of reality, being, and knowledge
• Ontology = theories or beliefs about what the nature of reality is, or what it means to exist. (Husband helpfully pointed out that there are at least 14 definitions of ontology, but for this post, this one is what I'm using.)
• Epistemology = theories or beliefs about what it means to know, or how one determines what knowledge is
• Morality = beliefs about right/wrong behavior and thoughts
• God = "that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress." (The nature of goodness is a whole other philosophical debate that is far outside the scope of this blog!)

Self-Helpism, which occurs when one buys into the principles of the self-help movement, has been well described in chapter 5 of Mama Bear Apologetics. The core belief of the "ism" is "I am the boss." The corresponding core belief of Christianity, by contrast, is "God is the boss." As Paul Meyer (1980s) and Norman Vincent Peale (1900s) would probably agree, a secondary belief of self-helpism (and the word of faith movement, for that matter) is that one can bring desires into reality with enough sincerity. The corresponding core belief of Christianity, again by contrast, is that only God can create and that His creatures work with what He has made. Let's break this down. starting with the creator question because we can't really talk about the boss concept unless we're squared on whether things exist to boss.

Who's the Creator?

The first sub-question I would ask in this category relates to whether the question can even be asked: Do things exist? (It would seem that the definition of creation, whether out of nothing or out of something, assumes that things do exist.) Ontology, as a branch of philosophy, takes a deep dive into this question. In my understanding at this point, the options for answering the existence question depend on your conception of knowledge versus certainty. That's an epistemological question, which Husband recommends starting with when you're just getting to know someone in an apologetics context. It is fair to say that certainty sets an impossible-enough bar (0% doubt) that Husband isn't wrong when he says that he is uncertain of my existence . . . but that he does know, and has a justified true belief, that I exist. 😍

If you are reasonably sure that things exist, the next question to ask is whether the things have always existed (steady-state theory) or came into being at some point in time (big-bang theory). Most scientists today do hold to the big-bang theory because it better explains the facts. They are, however, subdivided into those who believe that the visible/measurable universe is possibly/probably/definitely all there is (naturalism) and those who believe that some things exist that don't fit within this universe (supernaturalism). (If you want to dive down this rabbit hole, read up on cosmology.)

If you've come to the conclusion that things began to exist at some point in time, the next question to ask, for most people, is what/who caused things to exist. Immediately after that, how do we know once we've found the creator agent (another epistemological question)?

Finally, I would ask how the creator relate to the creation? Four major views that answer this question are deism, pantheism, panentheism, and theism. Deism states that God created everything but does not enter or intervene in this creation.. Pantheism states that God is, or is indistinct from, the universe (cosmos, all that exists). Panentheism states that God is in the world and that the world is in God, positioning itself as a middle ground between pantheism, deism, and theism. Finally, classical theism states that God, as described in the Bible, is distinct from His creation but choosing to be intimately involved with all aspects of existence.

Who's the Boss?

If we've established, in the previous subsection, that (1) things exist, (2) something/someone made them, and (3) that something/someone still exists and intervenes somehow with things that exist, we have more questions to ask. These are in no particular order and tie into your view of which of Phillip Rieff's three "worlds" you and yours fall into. Do you believe that laws or rules are ultimately from fate or various gods? Or, does law have weight because it reflects God's character? Or, does the only reason for a law stand in a god-less society?

The largest question I would ask is, of course, who the boss of me is. Is it me (myself), or many powers (polytheism), or a single power (monotheism)?

Regardless of my answer to that question, I would also want to ask who/what should/does direct my thoughts. Does my consciousness arise from or consist of chemical reactions internal to my body (physicalism)? Or is my consciousness and thought somehow separate from my physical body (dualism)? In my experience, physicalism tends to go hand-in-hand with naturalism, and dualism with supernaturalism.

Because thoughts affect actions and actions affect thoughts, I would ask who or what directs my actions? Is it my own thoughts, someone else coercing me, my believing that what someone tells me is good for me to do, something else, or a combination of the above?

Okay . . . What do I do Now?

As I said before, I am not a theologian, nor an expert on self-help. But I am a Christian, a reader, a writer, and a trained researcher. Based on each of those roles, here are my 4 suggestions if you have had enough of self-help books and want to avoid their problems.

1. As a Christian, remember who the Boss really is. He is the God of the Bible and your Father, regardless of any poor models of fatherhood you may have had. Remember also that the power to improve or do anything comes from Him; we are born spiritually dead due to original sin.
2. As a reader, take a dive into philosophical takes on ethics and morality, such as Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. I've linked to many Stanford philosophy encyclopedia definitions and articles in this and previous posts, for getting the requisite vocabulary to understand what I'm reading.
3. As a writer, take goal-setting/writing and self-discipline with a grain of salt. Writing has the power to alter the writer as well as the reader.
4. As a researcher, dive into the science behind self-help claims you see. PubMed is a great database that does not require a login or fee to view peer-reviewed research articles.

In Like a Lion: The Toughest Books

As the saying goes, March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Last week was very difficult for reasons I'm not quite sure about, so the topic of difficult books came to mind for this week. Have you read a hard book lately? Come along with me for an exploration of some hard books I've read, hard books I want to read, and how I plan to tackle these books. (And, in the spirit of Valentine's Day which is a few weeks past, bear in mind that a reading habit, regardless of the book difficulty, has been shown to make one more attractive!)

What Does "Tough" Mean?

Several possibilities come to mind when I think about what a "tough" book is and how to define it. By contrast, books that are "easy" look like this: simpler vocabulary and sentence structure (for the reader's grade level), clear and interesting illustrations, extensive use of headings and different font sizes or white space to indicate organizational structure, and familiar subject matter, even if the genre is fiction or fantasy. For me, an "easy" nonfiction book might be M is for Mama, for example.

Given the contrast, I can more easily define some characteristics of a "tough" book. Bear in mind that "tough" is not the same as "boring." An example of a book my husband found boring is Kant--he uses it to put himself to sleep sometimes, when his brain won't turn off. Kant is (in)famous for his convoluted writing style, regardless of what you think of his philosophical content. But getting back to plain old tough books, here are some clues:

• The content may be unfamiliar to you. My first forays into philosophical reading made this abundantly clear. There is a good reason that I am not a philosopher!
• The language may be complex. Again, many philosophy books fall into this category for me, though some authors are less clear to me than others (e.g., Anthony Thiselton, or devotional material that academic N.T. Wright has tried his hand at). One way around this that I have found is to read the text aloud, whether to myself or to Child, who interrupts with babbles after every few paragraphs to conveniently give my voice a rest.
• The visual layout may be distinctly un-aesthetic. I do not like small print (9-10 point or smaller) or narrow margins or very long continuous paragraphs, which is the primary reason I have, to Husband's amused chagrin, been skipping the page-long footnotes in Martin Hengel's The Cross of the Son of God. 
• The content may be emotionally or morally difficult. This may slow down or demotivate the reader from continuing, to get the book finished in a timely fashion. I'll speak more to this point in the next section to illustrate.

What Are the Toughest Books?

In my previous post, I talked a lot about the different genres available, in fiction and nonfiction. Here, I'll list the books generally considered "tough" only in terms of the two (or three) broad categories.

Fiction picks considered "difficult" (mostly because they are long, and the language is complex or archaic), include a lot of novels.

• Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville. I remember reading an abridged version of this as a child. The full-length tome is just under 500 pages, and slow-paced enough that most people spread out the reading to weeks or months.
• Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo. I read this a few years ago and, similar to my experience with Jane Austen, didn't wholly appreciate the literature quality the first time around. It's over 1,000 pages in translation, so set aside even more time to read this book.
• Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce. I haven't read this one; it is approximately 600 pages and written in parallel to Homer's Odyssey. Based on the summary, I might add it to my TBR at some point.
• Finnegans Wake (1928-1939) also by James Joyce. The argument of this 600+-page novel is that history repeats itself in cycles. That may be a topic for another post.
• Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace. I know nothing about this 1,000-page work that is apparently impossible to summarize, other than that it deals with postmodernity. I am unable to make a recommendation one way or another on this book.
• War and Peace (1865-1969) by Leo Tolstoy. Having read Anna Karenina but not this Russian novel (1,100+ pages), I would recommend it if you're interested in a philosophical, fictional take on 1800s Russian society.
• The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The undercurrent of this novel is a search for God in just under 1,000 pages. I haven't read it, so unable to recommend one way or the other at this time.

In the "poetry" category, one fun find I came across was The Chaos. Why is this considered hard? Its author tried to use every single spelling irregularity in the English language, resulting in around 800 examples. If you are in the stage of teaching a small child to read using phonics, this poem may not be a good idea at that exact time . . .

"Hard" nonfiction picks were trickier to find. Nonfiction is generally considered harder because it doesn't necessarily grip the imagination (according to the internet, at least). Still, I was able to come up with a list. Note that these vary tremendously in length and subject matter.

• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788) by Edward Gibbon. The six volumes of this historical work total almost 4,000 pages.
• Anything by Jacques Derrida (d. 2004). This French philosopher was a voluminous voice promoting deconstruction of binary ways of thought. From what I can tell (since I have not read his work), his writing style is the main obstacle for many readers.
• A Brief History of Time (1998) by Stephen Hawking (d. 2018). This admittedly secular work assumes the historicity of the Big Bang, which was developed by a Belgian priest-astronomer, Georges Lemaître, in (Christian) response to the previous (naturalistic/pagan) steady-state theory of the universe.
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) by Thomas S. Kuhn. I recently re-read this and found it much easier, but then again, I read a lot of harder books between the first and second times! The main barrier in this book is its complex thought.
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1999) by Douglas Hofstadter. Kurt Gödel (d. 1978), specifically his incompleteness theorems/hypotheses, is a favorite mathematician of Husband. However, the book itself assumes a naturalistic position, i.e., that consciousness can possibly develop from non-consciousness. I have major problems with that.
• Oxford English Dictionary. I don't think I need to tell you why this book is considered hard! 😂

What Are My Toughest Books?

For whatever reason, I haven't been that interested in novels for the last decade or so. A few books that have been boring (not hard) I have recently chosen not to finish. So, the hardest books I have read recently have been nonfiction.

The first recent hard book for me has been N. T. Wright's The Challenge of Jesus (not Dominic Crossan's series of the same name), a short-ish work that aims between the scholarly and the devotional level. In Wright's devotional work, since he is first and foremost a scholar with an 80-plus book biography (focused on the New Testament wherein he is the world's foremost scholar), I just didn't like the writing style. However, in actual scholarly work, the book was difficult for me on an emotional level instead.

I was raised in a Lutheran-charismatic-pietist environment (my journey into Anglicanism is something I've alluded to in some recent posts). As such, assumptions I grew up with included (1) a face-value reading of Scripture (with a concordance or study notes if available) is authoritative enough for daily devotions and decisions; and (2) although Jesus has two natures, fully human and fully divine, the human nature is mainly important for His birth and death, but not much in between. Assumption #2 wasn't helped by the lack of teaching in the Lutheran Confessions on the human nature of Christ.

So, by the time I got to chapters 2 and 3 of The Challenge of Jesus, I was struggling. Wright focuses the book on the historical context that shaped how people viewed Jesus and how Jesus viewed Himself. Philippians 2:5-11 is a central passage that speaks to how the two natures interact(ed). My struggle stemmed from my lifelong thinking of Jesus as though His divine nature were continually overpowering His human nature, so that human actions were attributed to the divine nature. Having not thought through what this meant and how this would truly fit in the historical context of first-century, second-temple Judaism, it felt like heresy to think about Jesus' human nature as acting, well, human (albeit sinless and without original sin). However, on reading further for more context and development of Wright's argument, I realized that a greater awareness of Jesus' human nature in all its fulness will increase the comfort one experiences from meditating on Him. (Here's an hour-long video from Lutheran theologian/pastor/professor Jordan Cooper on how to talk about the two natures non-heretically.)

The second recent hard book for me has been less intellectually and more emotionally difficult. Technically, it's a series, C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. As Husband has emphasized, Lewis was familiar on a scholarly level with the classics, particularly Plato and Aristotle. What I hadn't known as a child, though, is that the trilogy is not geared toward a child or young-adult audience. Parts are legitimately scary. My parents had the books next to Lewis' other works, so sometime during childhood I read Perelandra (#2). That was a mistake.

As Husband and I were working through the trilogy on Audible, the visceral memory of my first reading came back. I couldn't remember exactly what part of Perelandra had scared me until we actually listened to it, after which I was fine. Now that we're over halfway through That Hideous Strength (#3), there are more political or suspenseful parts that I make sure to listen to well before bedtime, but it's a lot easier this time around.

What hard books do I plan to read in the near future? Plato's Dialogues (hard because of length of individual dialogues because . . . Child does not take kindly to me reading more than a few paragraphs at a time, during times when I can read instead of work) and a review of Wheelock's Latin because it is waking up long-dormant neuronal circuits. This second book has gone way down in priority, as evidenced by my being stuck in chapter 1 and not having touched it in several weeks.

(Is it a good or a bad thing that I don't have other hard books on my TBR?)

How Will I Tackle These Hard Books?

I'm taking inspiration from The Art of Manliness, which I've linked before.

• Budget time - especially weekend AM and weekday PM time
• Set a goal reasonably time-bound - tell Husband for accountability
• Include some reading aloud to Child in fractious times - helps me concentrate a little better. (He seems to enjoy my reading of Martin Hengel's The Cross of the Son of God during our walks as I sit on a bench.)
• Use my black notebook to take notes. I've had this plain lined notebook for many years; it finally morphed into a reading journal sometime during grad school.
• Build momentum with short books (my most recent was Gavin Ortlund's Finding the Right Hills to Die On which I read in a day on Sunday)
• Keep the rest of life as simple as possible
• Put the phone down . . . which means getting my 5-7,000 steps early in the day so I don't feel a "PT" need to carry it around.
• Feed my brain - complex carbs, fats, etc.

What are your go-to strategies for hard books? What hard books have you read or do you plan to read recently? Share in the comments below!