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This year, consider making the time to read these extracurricular treasures that force you to broaden your perspective, deepen your understanding of life, and enrich your college experience.
Reading takes work. In our omni-digital and hyper-distracted age, it can be hard to put your screen down and just read printed words on paper pages. There’s no music. No swiping. No next video. It’s just you, the author, and the words running through your mind. But those words are important because they contain meaning. They unlock new ideas. They challenge your views, teach you something, and ultimately help you understand this life a little better. At least, that’s what good books do.
If you’re a college student, I’m sure you’ve got a long list of books that you are required to read for your classes. That’s a good thing. You’re paying to be there, remember?
While your syllabi provide a solid foundation, reading beyond their horizon is crucial for your mental, spiritual, and intellectual growth. As Walt Disney once said, “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” By exploring additional readings, you can broaden your perspectives, deepen your understanding, and enrich your college experience.
So, I want to direct you to some buried treasure of extracurricular reading. In this two-part series, I’m going to recommend four books that I think every Christian college student should make the time to read this year. Some are theological, others address cultural issues, and one is arguably one of the best works of fiction from the 20th century. All of them contain gold — you’ll just have to dig through the pages to find it.
In part one, I’ll discuss Orlando Saer’s Big God and C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. In part two, I’ll introduce David Gibson’s Living Life Backwards and Aaron Renn’s Life in the Negative World.
Happy hunting.
1. Big God: How to Approach Suffering, Spread the Gospel, Make Decisions, and Pray in Light of a God Who is Really in the Driving Seat of the World, by Orlando Saer
I’ll confess that I am going to cheat on this recommendation just a little bit because I read and reviewed this book back in 2014. But that’s how good it is. Ten years later, I still think it’s one of the best short books that explains the doctrine of God’s sovereignty and applies it directly to four major areas of our lives as Christians.
In Big God, Australian pastor Orlando Saer explains that he wrote the book to help others think better and more biblically about “the way God works in the world, and particularly the way his work co-exists with ours.”
Saer is concerned that too many Christians have “shrunk God.” That is, we fail to rightly understand just how amazing and comprehensive God’s perfect control is over all of our lives. He writes, “There’s no doubt about it: that God is getting smaller—and has been for a long time.” How has this happened? He argues that “the really, really big factor that tends to lie behind God-shrinkage is the question of where we fit in the scheme of things…God gets smaller because we get bigger.”
As I wrote in my 2014 review, “When we get bigger, and God gets smaller, it’s because we’re allowing more than the Word of God to inform our view of God. Biblical binoculars are what we need, but too often we trade those for me-shaped microscopes.” Thus, Saer wants to help us “reverse the shrinkage process . . . and rescale the God of hearts upwards, without just saying ‘I don’t know’ to all the questions and challenges of those who’ve opted for a more diminished God.”
As he unpacks God’s bigness, Saer applies God’s sovereignty to four areas of our lives as Christians: suffering, sharing the Gospel, making decisions, and prayer.
If you’re a Christian, you will suffer at some point. How will you respond? As a college student, you will soon be faced with some major decisions. How can you make those without giving into paralysis or anxiety? If you’re trying to follow Jesus, you’re going to want to tell others about the Gospel. How can you do that without letting the fear of rejection get your tongue? And if you want to know God more, you must pray. But what will you do when it looks like your prayers go unanswered?
Saer addresses all of these conundrums in Big God and provides biblically grounded and insightful answers to each. He wants you to know that the “God who holds the furthest reaches of the universe in his hands is interested in the most minute details of your life and mine.”
I read Big God when I was in the early stages of my career. I wish I had read it sooner. So, learn from my mistakes and Saer’s wisdom and read this book ASAP.
2. That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis
Practical theology is important, as is good science fiction — especially science fiction written from a Christian perspective and by one of the best writers of the 20th century, C.S. Lewis.
An epic battle between good and evil is playing out on earth and in the heavenly realms. The ancient wizard Merlin comes back to life. There’s a disembodied talking head, dystopian technology, evil bureaucrats, prophetic warnings about what will happen when a “progressive” man decides that he can make his own “god.” All that and more is waiting for you in That Hideous Strength. Need I say more?
While That Hideous Strength is the last entry in Lewis’s “Ransom Trilogy” (the other two books being Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra), it can be read on its own.
The story is set in a world where advanced technology and the manipulation of human minds are at the forefront of a secret society’s evil agenda. The protagonist, Mark Studdock, is a sociologist who becomes involved with the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.), a powerful and sinister organization that seeks to create a new world order (sound familiar?). N.I.C.E.’s ultimate goal is to control the minds of the masses through advanced technology and the elimination of individuality.
As Mark becomes more deeply entrenched in N.I.C.E.’s activities, his wife, Jane, is drawn into a parallel struggle involving a group of supernatural beings who are fighting to preserve the forces of good. Jane’s involvement with this group leads her to develop psychic abilities, which she uses to help combat N.I.C.E.’s sinister plans.
As the story unfolds, Mark and Jane are forced to confront their own beliefs and values, ultimately choosing which side to support in the battle between good and evil.
In a 1945 review, the famous novelist George Orwell wrote,
“There is nothing outrageously improbable in such a conspiracy…Plenty of people in our age do entertain the monstrous dreams of power that Mr. Lewis attributes to his characters, and we are within sight of the time when such dreams will be realizable.”
I don’t want to give too much away, but if you want to understand the dark worldview behind modern organizations like the World Economic Forum or the World Health Organization and the philosophy driving the heinous transgender movement, you need to read That Hideous Strength.
Finally, one of the most powerful lessons of That Hideous Strength is the deadly danger of peer pressure. Mark Studdock, the main character, is swept up in all the horrible activities of the N.I.C.E. not, fundamentally, because he is a bad man but because he cares far too much about the praise and acceptance of seemingly important people — who are very bad men.
You might not find yourself unwittingly involved in a secret plot to create a new world order, but the college years are full of peer pressure nonetheless. So, too, is real life in the years long after college. That Hideous Strength reveals just how foolish it can be to “go along to get along” and how far greater spiritual realities are at play in our everyday lives than we ever dare to imagine.
Read Part 2 of “Four Books Every Christian College Student Should Read in 2024” here.
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