The Bible vs. The Books
Are books on Christian living giving us biblical teaching or sanctified advice? I’ve been struck as we’ve been teaching through the last part of Colossians recently how briefly Paul writes to this young church about big Christian living topics: marriage, parenting and work (admittedly the latter is really about slaves and masters!). Look at any Christian bookshop or online retailer and you will find book after book (some of them really quite large), telling you how to be a Christian husband, wife, parent, employee, employer and so on. I’ve got quite a lot of those books myself and I’ve even read some. I’m trying to work through my parenting teenagers ones at the moment, as I’ve realised it’s not too long until it will be a bit too late to read them (I really ought to get rid of most of the younger children parenting ones now!). Let me say, some of those books have been very helpful (others inevitably less so). Furthermore, I understand that there is more in the Bible than just the few ...
