The Most Influential Books of My Life

In a couple weeks I'll be a full-time student again, which means that for the next five years what books I read will be mostly dictated to me (by professors or research necessities). It's been nice to read what I want these last three years, and as this season is coming to an end, I've been prompted by my friend Nate to make a list of those books that have been influential to me thus far (not including the Bible, the most influential book of all, of course). In order to help me think through this list, I've decided to list them chronologically by seasons of my life (and to artificially limit it to four book from each of my first two seasons and eight from each of my last two). See my brief explanations at the bottom of my list. Here we go:

The High School Years
(1) C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
(2) Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises.
(3) Annie Dillard, For the Time Being.
(4)  Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart.

The College Years
(5) Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline.
(6) Andre Dubus, Selected Stories.
(7) Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Everything You Think You Know about Politics . . . And Why You're Wrong.
(8) John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus.

The Seminary Years
(9) Roger Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities.
(10) Chad Meister, Building Belief.
(11) Thomas Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate.
(12) Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will.

(13) John Hick, Faith and Knowledge.
(14) William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religion Experience.
(15)  Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief.
(16) Thomas Finger,  A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology.

The Adjunct Years
(17) Greg Boyd, Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church.
(18) Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology.
(19) John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism.
(20) John Roth, Choosing against War: A Christian View; "A Love Stronger Than Our Fears".

(21) Ron Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity.
(22) John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching World.
(23) John Howard Yoder, To Hear the Word. 
(24) Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir.

Explanations
(1) is the first piece of intelligent Christian writing I ever read. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Lewis, but I can't deny the importance of this book for my life trajectory. (2) opened my world to good literature. I have since read nearly every novel by Hemingway as well as his contemporary Fitzgerald. (3) was my first real encounter with the problem of evil and helped me to realize that questioning God is a necessary part of loving God. In a longer list, it would be coupled with Elie Wiesel's Night, which was the first and perhaps only book I've read in a single sitting. (4) complexified my until-then naive understanding of missions and the impact it can have on cultures if Christians aren't careful (and sometimes even if we are).

(5) represents a maturation in my understanding of the Christian life in college and in a longer list would be paired with Dallas Willard's The Great Omission or Spirit of the Disciplines. (6) includes some of the most powerful and compelling short stories I've ever read; incidentally, this is the book I brought with me on my honeymoon months after graduation. The title of (7) pretty much says it all; I read this my senior year for a class on the 2004 election process with Dr. Haas and it killed a number of sacred (political) cows I previously held. I actually had a tough time getting into (8) and it wasn't until rereading it years later that I got more out of it. Still, no one who knows me well today would deny how much I've been influenced by the perspective of this book. 

(9) came at just the right point in my life, as I was being bombarded by combative Calvinists in seminary while trying to understand my own theological background and beliefs. (10) made the list because of the friendship and process that the book represents. I followed this book at every stage of its development, including using it later for a very formative church small group. Working through (11) caused me to become an analytic philosopher, and the paper I wrote interacting with it turned me into a scholar. (12) is one of the finest pieces of analytic philosophy I've ever read and pretty much solidified my already strongly held belief in libertarian free will.

(13) - (15) were three books I wrestled through for my thesis, each influential on my thought in their own way. (14) might actually rival (12) as the finest piece of analytic philosophy I've read, not to mention one of the most difficult. (16) fleshed out the theological trajectory I was heading on and was thus influential on my self-understanding, though I've since read better books on the topic.

(17) further solidified my theological trajectory and gave me categories for explaining it to the everyday people I encounter (rather than merely to other theologians and philosophers). (18) caused me to realize that I wasn't an analytic philosopher after all but was actually a theologian. Incidentally, this book found its way into the concluding chapter of my thesis as something of a corrective to the approach of books (13) - (15). It also has one of the most memorable lines that has shaped how I approach theology: "The problem for Christians and non-Christians alike is the Christian inability to live in a way that enables us to articulate what difference it makes that we are or are not Christians" (231). (19), in my opinion, is a more powerful argument for Christian pacifism than (8); it is shorter, has a more forceful punch, and doesn't get as bogged down in academic minutiae. I would recommend anyone interested in reading Yoder to begin with (19) and go on from there. (Of course, I'm leaving off a number of his books from my list, but pretty much everything he's written [see here] has been influential to some degree.) (20) makes the list for similar reasons as (17) as well as the friendship that the book represents. I would also highly recommend Roth's trilogy on Mennonite Beliefs, Stories, and Practices, each of which would make it on a slightly longer list.

(21) broadened my understanding of the importance of Anabaptist theology beyond nonviolence and into the everyday world of economics and consumerism. (I wish I could say that this book has impacted my lifestyle more than it has!) (22) helped me to fall in love again with the church after a time when I had become a bit jaded and cynical; now I can't imagine being a Christian without the practices of the church. (23) helped me to understand and articulate how and why the Bible is authoritative in the face of all of the hermeneutical and historical challenges that seem to trip so many people up these days. Finally, (24) humanized the discipline of theology and therefore confirmed my life-calling. Incidentally, I finished reading this book one year ago today, the day my father died, and I was so moved by the book that I sat down that evening and wrote a letter to the author.