Why read old books?

Why read old books? Because they give our lives perspective. Why read old books? Because every piece of literature has some truth in it. Why read old books? Because the questions that the Classics raise apply to our generation just as much as they did hundreds of years ago when they were written to the audiences from ancient Rome to bustling St. Petersburg.

Dr. Burton proposed that Raskolnikov was the embodiement of Existentialism. Raskolnikov is a "tortured soul" and throughout the novel experiences redemption - he is Doestovsky's Lazarus being raised from the dead. Existentialism attempts to remove the mask from it's characters and from its readers. It focuses on the moment and quality existential writing will draw the reader into the plot so intensly that the reader will be forced to make split decisions along side the characters. I experienced this every time I turned a page in Crime and Punishment. He awakens the "nightmare quality of unredeemed existence". Dr. Burton also mentioned that existentialism percieves the paradoxes. We, as Christians, are "walking paradoxes". This intrigued me in class and I was impacted by the greatness of our God in transforming a SINNER into a SAINT. To use the phrase of our beloved C.S. Lewis, God has taken "the obstinate tin soldier" and brought him "beautifully and splendidly alive".

I appreciated hearing all this from a pastor. As a student and teacher of the most vital and transforming piece of literature available to man, the Bible, I expect pastors to be informed on modern literature and defend the Christian worldview when faced with challenging questions from the author.

Why read old books? Because every book, every article, every song, every poem, everything will have some shred of truth in it and as Christians we are challenged to discover God's truth within every culture, so that we may be that more informed about how to share His truth with the world...

EXAMPLE

"Do not let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity." 1 Timothy 4:12

Threefold Prayer

"God is the thing to which he is praying-the goals he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on-the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers." (163)

Points to Ponder-Mere Christianity

"Enemy-occupied territory-that is what this world is." (46)

"To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?" (59)

"the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts-we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body." (64)

"Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again." (101)

"That is the whole point. For the first time we saw a real man. One tin soldier-real tin, just like the rest-had come fully and splendidly alive." (180)

"But we must not suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in thier own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be jus as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world-and might even be more difficult to save." (216)

"It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own...Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it." (226)