Which book has had the biggest impact on your life (besides the Bible)

[rocklobster]

OK, what book really helped point the way for you besides the bible? I'd love to see what books helped you guys out. For me, the most inspirational, non-Biblical books I've ever read were:
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas

[Etoh*the*Greato]

Brian Jacques' redwall books were the first books I ever actually got on a moral level. I read them in Middle School. I think those books really shaped who I was morally and also developed my sense of honor before Christianity seriously stepped in to my life. A lot of my ideas of right and wrong come from those books... Except the ideas that certain species of people are just genetically predisposed to being evil.

[chibiphonebooth]

i think one of the books that really impacted me was "All the clever words on pages" by Paul Harrison.

It's an amazing book about a man who considers committing suicide, and then one of my favorite bands, mewithoutYou, takes him in and teaches him about love and stuff.

its a great book. <3

[GhostontheNet]

Jesus and the Victory of God by N.T. Wright
What Is Goth? by Voltaire
Religion and Nothingness by Keiji Nishitani
New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton
Exiles: Living Missionally In A Post-Christian Culture by Michael Frost

[mitsuki lover]

Your God Is Too Small by J.B.Phillips

[sharien chan]

White Oleander

In a lot of ways I related to the main character, and what I wanted to become when I was really depressed. But I still relate to the main character,, more towards the beginning ofthe book when she became Christian. When she lost her faith, that was how I was before I was Christian. But it helped me in a lot of ways that I can't explain.
I no longer read it just because I feel like the old me would still find it an attractive life style, and I'm not strong in my Christian identity yet to read it again. But I do read the parts where she goes to church and has faith, and first finds God.

[Angel Tifa]

Oh I have a couple;

1.Save Me From Myself-By Brian 'Head' Welch who is the former lead guitarist of Korn and how the Lord has found him. It is an amazing book and it also touched my soul deeply
2. A couple of Dr. Laura Schlessingers books "Stupid Things Parents Do to Mess Up Their Kids" and "Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives". Now I understand Dr. Laura may seem harsh to some, but after reading these books I was like "wow I could I'll have to remember all these methods for the future *____*!". I feel like I can honestly learn so much from Dr. Laura and have already .

[sharien chan]

[quote="Angel Tifa (post: 1210912)"]Oh I have a couple]

aw I like dr. Laura. My boyfriends mom got me one of her books "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands" XD I need to read it, but I feel awkward reading it in my dining hall XDDDD

[Angel Tifa]

aw I like dr. Laura. My boyfriends mom got me one of her books "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands" XD I need to read it, but I feel awkward reading it in my dining hall XDDDD

Yeah I know the feeling. I feel awkward reading some of my Dr. Laura books around certain people in the family who aren't very fond of her . XD.

[Maledicte]

Mere Christianity and Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Grimm's Fairy Tales
The Picture of Dorian Gray and Fairy Tales by Oscar Wilde. It's amazing how two completely different pieces were written by the same man.
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

[the_wolfs_howl]

Are we talking about books that have influenced our faith, or what? 'Cause lots of books have influenced me greatly, but in many different ways.

[Angel Tifa]

I think we're talking about how books had an impact on our lives in many different ways.

[the_wolfs_howl]

Okay, well, here goes. I suppose some of these have influenced my writing more than my life, per se, but as my life mostly consists of my writing....

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien - This, as well as The Hobbit, was what got me into fantasy, and still inspires me to keep on writing my pitiful little stories.
The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling - I have learned more than even I realize about writing from these books. She has such a way of crafting her stories; I can only dream of emulating her.
Teaching a Stone to Talk, which is a collection of short stories by Annie Dillard - These little stories have decapitated me, turned my head upside down, and plonked it back onto my neck. They have completely changed the way I look at logic and writing.
The Third Culture Kid Experience by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken - Since I am a TCK, this book obviously spoke to me quite a bit. Made me understand myself so much better. Possibly even pulled me out of the well of tears and despair that was my life at age 14.
Dating with Integrity by John Holzmann - This book gave me an entirely new perspective on dating, before I even had a chance to get caught up in all the confusing mess that is boyfriend/girlfriend relationships.
"The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges - I'm still not sure exactly how this little story has affected me, but I know that it has. It's sort of changed the way I think about the world, I guess.

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
What's So Amazing About Grace by Philip Yancey
The Adventures of Tintin by Herge
The Oath by Frank Peretti
The Circle Trilogy by Ted Dekker

[Sae-chan]

Hmm, hard question. I know there's a few more than the ones listed below, but I don't remember at this moment.

The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis - Morally, this book changed me. It got me to think about right and wrong and justice.
The Case for a Creator: Student Edition by Lee Strobel - I haven't read the adult version, but I want to. This book gave lots of evidence for Christ, and it got me to think about Christ and what is real.

Like I said, I know there are more books... but I just can't think of them right now.

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

SirThinks2Much, I just finished Mere Christianity several weeks ago. I agree and excellent book.

[Manillien]

Agree with warrior4jesus and sirthinks2much - C.S. Lewis' had a special gift! But Philip Yancey also writes good stuff..

[GhostontheNet]

Agree with warrior4jesus and sirthinks2much - C.S. Lewis' had a special gift! But Philip Yancey also writes good stuff..

C.S. Lewis was, in my opinion, the greatest popular level apologist of the modernist age. With the shift into the age of postmodernism, however, I think N.T. Wright takes over where Lewis left off. This is especially true now that he has largely shifted from writing works written for scholars (like his influential Christian Origins and the Question of God series) to writing at the popular level. His Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense gives C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity a run for its money, while his recent Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church is a powerful reminder that "heaven is important, but its not the end of the world" and that the Christian hope is ultimately for reembodiment at the resurrection and the new creation. To top it off, his For Everyone series of popular level New Testament commentaries takes over where William Barclay left off.

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

Gives 'Mere Christianity' a run for it's money? Wow, I've got to read that!

[Manillien]

Hmm yeah, that sounded impressive! I have read "The last word" by Wright, and it was good, so I'll read the one you mentioned as well... I also read somewhere - wikipedia - that Wright said, regarding the trilemma, that it "doesn’t work as history, and it backfires dangerously when historical critics question his reading of the Gospels."... Anyone knows what he means by this?

[GhostontheNet]

Gives 'Mere Christianity' a run for it's money? Wow, I've got to read that!

Yes, please do read it. Its quite excellent.

Hmm yeah, that sounded impressive! I have read "The last word" by Wright, and it was good, so I'll read the one you mentioned as well... I also read somewhere - wikipedia - that Wright said, regarding the trilemma, that it "doesn’] N.T. Wright writes his thoughts about C.S. Lewis in an article titled Simply Lewis: Reflections on a Master Apologist After 60 Years, which can be read by clicking on link just given. My friend Craig Blomberg argues in his book The Historical Reliability of the Gospels that Lewis' trilemma should be modified into a quadrilemma of Liar, Lunatic, Legends, or Lord. Wright goes into more detail on his objections to the trilemma in the article formerly linked to, where he writes the following.

But of course the real problem is the argument for Jesus’ divinity. And this problem actually begins further back: There is virtually no mention, and certainly no treatment, of Israel and the Old Testament, and consequently no attempt to place Jesus in his historical or theological context. (One of the “Screwtape Letters” contains a scornful denunciation of all such attempts, and lays Lewis wide open to the charge of ignoring the historical context of the writings he is using—a charge that, in his own professional field, he would have regarded as serious.)

I am well aware that some in our day, too, see the historical context of Jesus as part of what you teach Christians later on rather than part of how you explain the gospel to outsiders. I think this is simply mistaken. Every step towards a de-Judaized Jesus is a step away from Scripture, away from Christian wisdom, and out into the world of . . . yes, Plato and the rest, which is of course where Lewis partly lived. If you don’t put Jesus in his proper context, you will inevitably put him in a different one, where he, his message, and his achievement will be considerably distorted.

This deficit shows particularly in Lewis’s treatment of incarnation. Famously, as in his well-known slogan, “Liar, Lunatic or Lord,” he argued that Jesus must have been bad or mad or God. This argument has worn well in some circles and extremely badly in others, and the others were not merely being cynical.

What Lewis totally failed to see—as have, of course, many scholars in the field—was that Judaism already had a strong incarnational principle, namely the Temple, and that the language used of Shekinah, Torah, Wisdom, Word, and Spirit in the Old Testament—the language, in other words, upon which the earliest Christians drew when they were exploring and expounding what we have called Christology—was a language designed, long before Jesus’ day, to explain how the one true God could be both transcendent over the world and living and active within it, particularly within Israel.

Lewis, at best, drastically short-circuits the argument. When Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven,” he is not claiming straightforwardly to be God, but to give people, out on the street, what they would normally get by going to the Temple.

[Manillien]

Darn... I guess I have to read some of Wright's apologetics, then! I need a replacement argument for the trilemma... He had best come with some convincing stuff!

[MBlight]

Some of my favourite and most life-changing books are:

Velvet Elvis - Rob Bell
Safely Home - Randy Alcorn (i'm busy with it now, but it's shaking the ground I stand on)
Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller
Circles in a Forest - Dalene Matthee

and finally...

The Cross Examination of Jesus Christ - Randy Singer

[Bunny]

Some of my favourite and most life-changing books are:

Velvet Elvis - Rob Bell
Safely Home - Randy Alcorn (i'm busy with it now, but it's shaking the ground I stand on)
Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller
Circles in a Forest - Dalene Matthee

and finally...

The Cross Examination of Jesus Christ - Randy Singer

Your post excited me! I love Rob Bell and Donald Miller. Both of them have really impacted how I view Christianity. Blue Like Jazz made me want to stand up on the plane where I was reading it and yell, "I am not the only one who thinks this way!" It's just so uncommon to hear from someone who has the same problems with the church as I do but it really gave me hope in a lot of areas where it was lacking.

If you haven't read Sex God, I'd highly recommend it. It's not at all the way it sounds. It talks a lot about community and shared humanity. Wonderful.

[GwenneZ]

hmm I'd have to say its a tie between "The Dragon Keeper Chronicles" by Donkita K. Paul, and "The Door Within Trilogy" by Wayne Thomas Batson. Oh! then there's "Chicken Soup for the Teen Soul"!