The 10 Best Books I Read in 2014

Forewarning: most of these books did not come out in 2014. I listened to hours and hours of new music from this year, watched hours and hours of movies from this year, but I did not read for hours and hours pages from books that came out this year. So instead I am listing the top 10 books that I read this year, regardless of their release dates.

10. Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz

This year, I, for the first time, picked up several economics books. My favorite was Stiglitz' second book on globalization. I am currently working on a paper presenting a Christian approach to globalization, and this book is my main source. Stiglitz knows what he's talking about, and listening to his solutions would do the whole world a lot of good. It's just too bad the right people aren't going to.




9. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

I usually dislike reading fiction. I so easily get bored. What's funny is that for most people I talk to it's the other way around: they get bored reading non-fiction and can only read fiction. But I also kept hearing how beneficial reading novels can be for the creative imagination, and so upon a recommendation from a friend, I read Kundera's novel. According to Slavoj Zizek, the only good Kundera novel is The Joke, which I haven't yet read. I'm not sure what his problem with Unbearable Lightness is, though, because it's great. I love Kundera's style, and his character studies are just excellent. I'm glad I read it--and that says a lot for me.


8. The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell

One of the most enjoyable things I read this year was The Disaster Artist, Greg Sestero's tell-all about his many years with Tommy Wiseau, the writer, director, producer, and main actor in The Room, the most enjoyable bad movie of all time. What we find out is that Wiseau is more fascinating and hysterical than we could have ever imagined. Reading the book is as funny and baffling as watching The Room for the first time.




7. Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem edited by Heath A. Thomas, Jeremy Evans, and Paul Copan

I tackled two huge biblical topics this year: divine violence in the Old Testament and historical Jesus studies. Biblical topics with more literature concerning them probably could not be named. Today, these are leading subjects, with just about every scholar with skin in the game. I read 20 books, and at least that amount of articles. on divine violence in the OT. IVP's edited collection Holy War in the Bible was the most helpful introduction to the topic. He offers several different perspectives, most of which offer important insight. It is not a comprehensive collection, but it had the most to offer.

6. Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination and History by Dale Allison

On the historical Jesus, I read books from 6 different authors. The list of historical Jesus works that I've read now includes John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Raymond Brown, James D.G. Dunn, Simon J. Joseph, E.P. Sanders, N.T. Wright, Craig Blomberg, and Dale Allison. I am glad I read Allison last. After reading the others, I was not compelled in any one direction. They all had their arguments, but I didn't find any one of the more persuasive than the others. And then I read Constructing Jesus, and my views of Jesus were changed forever. Allison is by far the most well-rounded, nuanced, honest and insightful historical Jesus scholar I have read thus far.

5. Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture by Kenton Sparks

I used to want to be an apologist. I wanted to be the guy people went to for their tough theological questions. Yet even while I desired to be answer man, I hoped to God that no one would ask me about divine violence in the Bible. I just didn't know what to do with it. I finally dove into the topic late 2013. There has to be some magical explanation that preserves God's nature as love and biblical infallibility simultaneously, right?! After familiarizing myself with all the different views, I have discovered...there just isn't. This is the book that confirmed it for me. We have a choice to make: either the Bible is not infallible and we have to think about biblical authority differently, or God's nature isn't love as revealed through Jesus. Sparks chooses the former, and makes a supreme case for such a choice in this book.

4. The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi

After reading this book, I could no longer keep silent about injustice, about the ongoing oppression of disadvantaged people by those in power. There is an inequality not just of wealth in the U.S., but of justice, consisting of a lack of justice for those at the top, and rabid injustice inflicted upon those at the bottom. It was a rude awakening to a world so foreign to me, but so terribly real for millions of people. A must-read.




3. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy by Walter Brueggemann

Since finishing this book early in the year, I rarely discuss the Old Testament without thinking of it. Brueggemann's presentation of OT theology is altogether insightful, original, and even captivating. His description of OT theology as a process of testimony and counter-testimony through various mediators changed the way I thought about Scripture and revelation. OT students cannot afford to overlook this book.



2. God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy by M. Douglas Meeks

This year was a milestone for me, as it was the year that I decided against anabaptist Christian social theory and decided in favor of Social Gospel thinking. Extremely helpful after that turn was Meeks' incredible book on a Christian theology of political economy. Meeks effectively shows what God's ideal community consists of, and what its implications are for how Christians should think of the economy.




1. The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus by Dale Allison

Why am I including two Jesus books by Dale Allison? Because this is seriously the best book I've read in the past few years. I am not exaggerating when I say it changed my life. It had been a while since a book rocked me like this one did. Here, Allison tackles theological issues that come into play with historical Jesus research. Allison is, after all, a Christian, and much of what he says in his academic work is quite challenging to orthodox Christianity. Indeed, even I, no stranger to the unorthodox, was challenged by it. I remember reading Love Wins and for the first time feeling liberated by words on a page. There have been other books since then that have given me the same experience, and this was one of them. I felt it so much that I threw the book across the room at one point. Allison doesn't answer all the questions I would have liked him to, but he gave me a ton to think about.

Why We Shouldn't Celebrate Independence Day

Last year I didn't celebrate Independence Day because I was travelling. Flying on the 4th of July is cheaper because fewer people want to fly on a holiday.

As it turns out, I'm not celebrating it this year either because I'm travelling again, this time with my wife Debbie to Vienna. While I didn't plan either of these trips this way on purpose, I am somewhat glad I am not celebrating Independence Day.

Why? Because America is not quite a nation of independence. Not yet at least. I'll give you three examples for what I'm saying this.

1) Human trafficking

Not only is human trafficking a huge problem in the United States and one that receives too little attention, but so much of our daily lives depends upon slave labor. From our electronics to our food to our clothes, we are dependent upon slave labor for a multitude of the commodities we consume.

So, someone shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue finds a note from a desperate Chinese slave in a shoe (see story here).

So, Charoen Pokphand Foods in Thailand uses slave labor to produce shrimp that they then sell to Costco and Walmart (see story here).

I could list story after story. A country whose consumption of commodities depends upon the work of slaves is not a country of independence. We must make serious steps toward the regulation of companies in this area if we are going to call ourselves a free country.

Furthermore, a country that does little to bring justice to the thousands and thousands of slaves oppressed throughout the United States should not call itself a leader of freedom.

2) An Unjust Justice System

Did you know there are places all over the country in which all you have to do to get arrested is to be a minority in a poor neighborhood?

You might have read that and thought, "Ok, seriously? There's got to be more to the story."

Sure, except the "more to the story" actually makes them worse. Read Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Matt Taibbi's The Divide and you'll find out about countless examples of people's lives being ruined by the justice system over minor crimes (ones white kids don't really have to worry about being arrested for), or even for things that aren't crimes at all. Taibbi records stories of minorities being arrested for things like "obstructing pedestrian traffic" (a.k.a. walking/standing on the sidewalk).

Life in America for such groups is in no way free, because they are frequently being arrested for absolutely nothing, spending nights in jail, and forced to pay fees they can't afford, or even simply taken on a people-fishing van ride with the cops for a few hours as they pick up a dozen minorities--maybe a few of which are actually criminals--and then are thrown back out on the street, all while being completely innocent.

Or, they are guilty, but of minor drug offenses. They are singled out, discriminated against, their rights not appropriately respected, their cases not fairly tried, resulting in prison time, followed by massive fees after they get out of prison, and even more discrimination now that they are criminals. They can't get a job (or at least a decent one), and they have no voting rights. That's right, prisoners lose their voting rights. They can get them back, of course--but only after paying hundreds of dollars in court fees, which, without a job and with all the financial burdens that come with being an impoverished minority, is nigh impossible.

And this isn't just the case for a few. This is life for thousands. And it goes on while white collar criminals, neck-deep in all kinds of crime--from fraud, insider trading and money laundering to even things like supporting drug cartel--roam free.

This is simply not democracy. It's not independence. A country in which this goes on for years and years without any sign of real reform should not be called a free country.

3) Taxation without Representation

This last one is not quite realized in our country yet. That is to say, we haven't quite arrived at the "taxation without representation" stage, but in the last few decades we have made significant steps in that direction, and so it warrants mentioning.

Court cases like Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United v. FEC have made it possible for corporations to support political candidates with unlimited sums of money, essentially telling American corporations that our elections are for sale and if they want to pour millions into politics to have their interests preferred, they can do it all they want.

Bribing politicians and manipulating the system is not only fine, but all too common.

And so we have lobbyists who get a paycheck from corporations to be big players in politics, establishing relationships with politicians, and even writing and regulating legislature. Corporations are literally paying lobbyists to make sure our laws come out in their favor!

With such goings-on, our nation is becoming a plutocracy, in which the wealthiest citizens rule. While I don't think this will result in a transformation of America from a democratic republic to some kind of dictatorship, I do think it will mean we will live in a country where our influence in the government (i.e. voting) is utterly illusory and the real decisions are being made by the rich. 99% of the country will not have representation.

We are already seeing this, and if we don't make significant changes, we will only see it get worse.

"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and it's why we started this country in the first place!

Conclusion

I'm not exactly saying don't celebrate Independence Day on the 4th. Celebrate it with an understanding that we have a long way to go before we can be properly considered a nation of independence, and we need to commit to making the changes necessary to bring about that independence.

The signing of the declaration of independence was not a once-and-for-all event that deemed America a nation forever free. A vision of independence was affirmed over America that day, but it was also established as a goal, a goal that has not yet been fully realized.

Let's celebrate Independence Day by remembering our commitment to the vision of freedom and by making our own declaration of pursuing independence.

We have frequently printed the word Democracy, yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted. 

- Walt Whitman