Back to the books

I've been getting back into some serious leisure reading (is that an oxymoron?) and its been pretty great for my soul. The non-stop action of work and grad school has had me on a pretty long hiatus from consistent reading, so cracking open a good book over the past week has been extremely enjoyable. Its amazing the significant effect of what I put into my mind on my daily life and outlook.
I've almost chewed my way through Collin Hansen's Young, Restless, Reformed. The book is a journalists attempt to uncover the progress of the Reformed Christian movement by traveling across America and interviewing some of the key leaders who have influenced and shaped Reformed Christianity today. John Piper, C.J. Mahaney and Mark Driscoll are some of the big names the author gets to pick the brain of, but he also stops in at university campuses, theological seminaries and conferences to engage some of the twenty-somethings about why Calvinism has changed their hearts toward the Lord and thus, changed the way they live their lives evangelically and morally. I loved the way that, although there are differing perspectives held by a lot of these leaders on secondary theological issues such as the charismatic gifts, covenant theology versus dispensationalism, baptism, eschatology and the degree of cultural engagement a church should take, many of the leader's humility and love for the gospel creates a point of convergence that trumps all these disagreements. A love for the sovereignty of God, a knowledge of the fallen sinfulness of man and the enormous grace given through Christ's life and death and resurrection, a commitment to display and share His glory, an urgent call to evangelize to a fallen world...these leaders are like-minded about what matters most.
Charles Spurgeon sums this up well, as he often (always?) does:
The doctrine of election, like the great act of election itself, is intended to divide, not between Israel and Israel, but between Israel and the Egyptians- not between saint and saint, but between saints and the children of the world. A man may be evidently of God's chosen family, and yet though elected, may not believe in the doctrine of election. I hold there are many savingly called, who do not believe in effectual calling, and that there are a great many who persevere to the end, who do not believe the doctrine of final perseverance. We do hope that the hearts of many are a great deal better than their heads. We do not set their fallacies down to any willful opposition to the truth as it is in Jesus, but simply to an error in their judgments, which we pray God to correct. We hope that if they think us mistaken too, they will reciprocate the same Christian courtesy; and when we meet around the cross, we hope that we shall ever feel that we are one in Christ Jesus.
Amen, Spurg, amen.