Readings in Bible and Theology, History, Philosophy, Science, Literature, Art, & Contemporary Culture

Learn and Grow with Christian Thought Leaders including Dallas Willard, John Eldredge, R. C. Sproul, Randy Alcorn and many, many more.

Explore significant ideas, people, and events from a Christian worldview in a format that fits your busy life. A Faith and Culture Devotional will help bridge the artificial gap between learning truth and loving God…

And from Amazon:

Explore significant ideas, people, and events from a Christian worldview in a format that fits your busy life. A Faith and Culture Devotional will help bridge the artificial gap between learning truth and loving God—inspiring you with the wonder at the genius, power, and beauty of Jesus Christ.

Kelly Monroe Kullberg and Lael Arrington offer a daily guided tour through many of the paintings, laboratories, rock arenas, great books, mass movements, and private lives that have shaped the ways in which we think and live. This educational devotional will inspire us to go beyond critique to creativity as we discover the wonder of God in seven subjects—theology, history, philosophy, science, literature, art, and contemporary culture.

The book’s editors Kelly and Lael have also created a blog and will be posting regular updates with more insights along the same vein as their book.  Be sure to check it out, it sounds really interesting!

Anyways, I found an interesting passage that really resonates with me.  It’s about God’s Will, and how it is possible that everything happens according to God’s Will, even though we have free will.  This has always been something that I’ve had a little trouble wrapping my head around, but in Book 2, Chapter 3 (“The Shocking Alternative”), C. S. Lewis reasons through this in a way that makes it sound so simple:

But anyone who has been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another.  It might be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, ‘I’m not going to go and make you tidy the schoolroom every night.  You’ve got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.’  Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate.  That is against her will.  She would prefer the children to be tidy.  But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy.  The same thing arises in any regiment, or trade union, or school.  You make a thing voluntary and then half the people do not do it.  That is not what you willed, but your will has made it possible.

Why didn’t I think of it that way before?!