The price of paperbacks and culture

Recently I purchased three paperback books. "A Patriot's History of the United States" by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen ($25); "The reason for God" by Timothy Keller ($16); and "The Lutherans in North America" (2d ed., used $10). It takes my breath away to pay that much for a paperback, but I think these books will last longer than anything on my computer, or access to their scanned versions on some future computer.

The history book--of which I've only read about 10 pages--is very well written, with copious notes and excerpts, and reverses many of the losses of the last 40-50 years in anti-American, anti-capitalism, anti-Christian trends in American history. It's so refreshing!

The history of the Lutherans I'm really enjoying too, because I love the layout. Unfortunately, it confirms something I've often thought--that the church has been losing to the culture for years. The story of Lutherans is really an immigration story, and at one time there were 48 squabbling synods. We have fewer synods today, but still battles are going on the congregational level. ELCA will be losing many congregations because of its unfortunate acquiescence to cultural standards of sexuality instead of biblical. Since the days when St. Paul wrote the first century church, Christians have been struggling with how to be "the church."

The Keller book comes highly recommended by friend Sharon, and we've chosen that for our next Monday morning book, having finished up the Kullberg book this week, a book I will reread many times.