Here is a report
on the state of things in SoCal. I can think of only one family member who has not gotten sick in the last two weeks. All the rest of us have got this strange lingering cold/flu thing. I think I was the last one to get it. I am going back to work tomorrow, so it better be a little better by then.

It may be because of the germs, but I realize how burnt out I am on things (I think I have been fighting off germs for 6 weeks). I am seriously thinking of giving up reading on the internet. At least giving up on certain things, like blogs (Christian) that tend to lead one into polemical thinking, arguing, etc. One reason for this is I have only so much time for reading. And I do have a long reading list. But I am tired of being forced to think about things that divert me from that which I actually want to be thinking/meditating about.

Here is a partial list of books that I have queued up to read or finish reading:

City of God - Augustine (forte)
Institutes - Calvin (mezzo forte)
Reformed Dogmatics - Herman Bavinck (forte)*
Kingdom Prologue - Meredith Kline (fortissimo)*
By Oath Consigned - Meredith Kline (fortissimo)
The Schilder Trilogy - Klaas Schilder(fortissimo)
Covenant and Eschatology, the Divine Drama - Michael Horton (re-read)
Lord and Servant A Covenant Christology - Michael Horton (fortissimo)
Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol 1 and 2 - N. T. Wright (mezzo forte)+

I have a whole bunch that would be mezzo piano if I wanted to get out of my couch and look for them in the bookshelf.

The * indicates books for seminary classes. The + are two books given to me by my sister. I am wrestling with those because of issues about Tom Wright's criticism of imputational justification and his hermeneutics for getting there. They are interesting in that they are the kind of thing that would be helpful for unbelievers who have no sense of history that is 2000 years old (or older). Like my friend Sheldon who has resisted all overtures to believe the gospel. He has a pretty firmed up opinion of things as well as a thorough rejection of the Bible even though he has never read a page of it. I think Tom Wright's writing would open his eyes to the reality of history, (I think Pliny's Letters could accomplish the same thing) at least and the fact that the Bible is not a magic book that just popped into existence one day, in Christian bookstores on the shelf next to the Jeremiah 29:11 coffee cups.

At any rate, devoting two months to reading them is going to be hard given the stuff on the above list. But I probably should for Sheldon's sake.