Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Top 7 Books of 2020

Episode Date: December 3, 2020

Keith and Patrick discuss their top 7 books of 2020 (plus a few extras). To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to Tim Minut Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. So Patrick, did you grow up being a reader? No, I did not enjoy reading much as a child. Not because I thought it was lame or I mean, I was pretty nerdy and lame and weird, so I don't know why it would have been bothered by those things. I just didn't like doing it. So did all that change when you went to private school?

Again, did not go to private school. No, it changed when I found, this is a weird story, but it's not. It's totally true. I found a copy of The Catcher in the Rye on the ground. I think my sophomore or junior year of high school. On the ground. Like you're walking on a nature trail. And there is a book, Catcher in the Rye. I know this sounds bizarre. It's true, though. I find this ratty, tattered up copy of The Catcher in the Rye. And I don't know why, but I almost took it like a sign or something. I should read this book. So I picked it up and I started reading it. And the main character in it, holding Caulfield is this guy who thinks that everybody else is a phony. And, you know, if you've never been

a loser in high school, then you can't possibly understand exactly how Holding Caulfield felt. Because I was a big loser and I thought everybody else was a phony. And so I'm reading this book. I'm like, oh my gosh, this guy is me. I think just like this guy. I love this guy. And I had this bizarre experience of connecting with something in a really deep way. And I thought, man, reading is actually kind of cool. And so that's, that got me started. I think I picked up Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse five next. So I started reading maybe two or three books a year, but it began to grow over time, and I read more frequently. Private School Patrick starts with Catcher in the Rye and then moves to Kurt Vonnegut. So do you still pick up things off the ground and read them? Is this still a normal way you get book?

No. What about you, though? Did you like reading? Yeah, I loved reading when I was a kid, but then when I went to school, I lost all desire to learn. It's a weirdest thing how school does that to you, or at least it did to me. I think it does to more than just me, though, is that naturally learning on my own, I just love it so much. But as soon as you started giving me grades and making me do things in the structured environment of school, I hated it. No one tells you what to do. Well, maybe it was more that I just became interested in, you know, other things. I became interested in sports and relationships and having fun.

So maybe it was just part of growing up. and maybe I shouldn't blame school, but I didn't like reading when I was in school. I read very little that I was assigned, unfortunately, and my grades reflected at no private school for me. But then when I became a Christian, I started to read again. So this is in college, and I started to read never my textbooks, never what I was supposed to do for class, unfortunately, but I got motivated to read other kinds of stuff. And now I would consider my only hobby in life reading. Wow. An interesting man. I don't know if it's interesting or boring, but it's the only thing I have to do.

So today on our episode, we're going to talk a little bit about some books that Patrick and I read in 2020. I know we're not quite finished with it, so there are top seven books. Well, I don't know. Patrick's into numbers. I'm just going to start vomiting out a lot here in a little bit. Keith has not picked his books at this point. I don't know what he is going to pick. He's giving me zero idea. I'm limiting us to seven. He gets three. I get three. We've both picked one. So we'll see where this goes. I have the feeling he's going to. to try to expand this, though, so we'll see. That's exactly right. So let's start with, tell us a book, what's a book that you read this year that you really like? And the reason I have such a hard time with it is because I liked a lot of books this year for different reasons. So tell us one book

you liked and why you particularly enjoyed that book. Well, in good sporting fashion, I'm going to stuff three in one for my first time. Mocking me for not having picked him. This year, I read three books by a British historian named Tom Holland, Dominion, Dynasty, and Persian Fire. And all these books, like I just said, are history books. One's about the Persian Empire. Dynasty is about the first, I think, seven or eight Caesars. And Dominion, it tells the entire story of the Christian faith from the beginning, you might say. Now, what's interesting is that guy's not a Christian. No, yeah, he's not, as far as I know a Christian, although I think he has some appreciation for it. Well, he's definitely not a Christian. I've heard him interviewed. But what I love about these books,

It is so easy to think that you live in the worst time or the most bizarre time in history until you start reading history. A good example of this for me was the emperor who killed some of the first Christians, Nero. He was famously mad and sadistic. Well, he did things that today seem very normal in our world. I shouldn't say very normal. What I'm about to say is not normal at all. But one of the most bizarre stories from his life was he had a wife whom he deeply loved, and he decided that it would be a good idea when he's not.

he got angry with her to kick her to death while she was pregnant. It's absolutely awful. So she dies, and he's mourning her. She's, this terribly said, he's mourning the person that he just murdered, the woman that he has kicked to death. And his solution is he needs to find someone who looks exactly like her. And do you want to guess who he finds? Their daughter. No, he finds a little boy. And that's who replaces his wife. This story gets worse and weirder. And he decides, because it's a boy that he would like for the boy to be a girl. And this is the first time that someone tried to pay for sexual reassignment surgery. He said that if anybody could prove that they could transition a male part into a female part, he would pay them extraordinarily to do this to his

boy lovers so that he could become more like his wife that he kicked the death. Now, we think we live in these cultural times where everything is going to hell and a handbasset and how awful culture has become. And we look at one of the Roman emperors who was alive during the time of Paul and Peter, and we realize nothing new is under the sun. And that's what I love about reading these history books. They helped me appreciate my Bible more. I mean, I began to understand who Paul was and what was the kind of world that he lived in when I understand the Caesars and the leaders who were in charge during his day. How's that for a salty story? Yeah, that's going to win the prize of the weird story. I don't even know what to say. Okay.

If that doesn't make you want to read, I don't know what will. So Tom Holland, that one was dynasty. Persian fires also great about the Persian Empire. Again, fascinating stories. Okay, Keith, When do you like to read? I figured out a way to read that doubles up my time. And it's kind of weird and it doesn't work for everybody, but it works for me. And that is that I read while I do the elliptical. So it's kind of bizarre. But I have this elliptical.

And when I go on a trip, like on a vacation or to a conference or something, not all ellipticals are the same. So I fortunately am blessed with an elliptical with a perfect setup for me to be able to read on my Kindle. Man. And so I pedal away, or whatever you want to say, elliptical away, make it into a verb, and I read. I read in the morning, because that's when I'm sharpest. I know a lot of people read before they go to bed, but I can't do that. I fall asleep way too quickly. That's a good life hack. Trying to find points in your life where you're doing something else, but you can maybe maximize that time by reading. I do similar things. I'm much more of an audiobook listener than you are, which frankly has grown out of just having more life responsibilities with kids and other things running around.

So I will very rarely do chores without listening to an audiobook. And it's because, again, I don't have a ton of time. And so if I'm going to be cleaning the dishes, folding the laundry, mowing the lawn, whatever it is that I'm doing, I'm going to get through a book. And that allows me to get through, I mean, at times about a whole book a week, just doing chores. So, I mean, anybody who does chores, you can get some books in. And obviously, riding in your car, driving to and from work. Yeah. It's another big time people listen to audiobooks.

And I like to listen to them as well. But don't listen to audiobooks. Listen to this podcast when you drive to work. I don't necessarily get as much out of an audio book as I do a book that I read. So here's one of the things I practice is that you have to look at a book and say, what do I want out of this book? And then depending on what you want out of it, it might make a difference on how you consume it. So, for example, if I really want to know an argument, to follow an argument, to go back and make notes, look at my notes, all that kind of thing,

well, then I'm going to read a hard copy, and I'm going to read it in the morning because that's when I'm at my best. But if I just kind of want the general storyline and I just am looking for some entertainment, something to take my mind off the problems of the world, then for me, that's a good place for an audiobook. But you do it a little differently in that I think you remember more and get more details of an audiobook than I do. Yeah, I'm more of an audible learner than I am, a visual learner. So the audiobooks work really well for me. Okay, Keith, tell us, tell us your book, your next book on the list. Number six, mine was number seven, because I went first. And it was also seven times three. Anyways, keep going, number six. Are these in order? They're not in any order. It's just

fun to count them down and make sure we actually only do seven. Well, now that you've done three, already, but you're going to hold me to, tell whatever it is. All right. So here's what I would say. I am going to go with being mortal by Atul Gawanda. I'm probably mispronouncing his name. He is a surgeon and he also writes for the New Yorker. He is a great writer. He must have more talent in his little pinky than I do in my whole body. Because not only is he a surgeon, but he also just writes great prose.

And being mortal discusses in narrative form the problems that we have dealing with dying in our society and how the medical profession is trained to keep us alive as long as possible, how nursing homes are designed to be as safe as possible, to eliminate all risks so that people stay alive. But in doing so, both the medical profession and the nursing home industry steal a lot of what makes life worth living. And he wrestles with those questions. How could we redesign nursing homes? how could we redesign the medical facilities that we have and the way doctors interact with patients to help patients get what they want out of life, to give them information that they can use to make their own choices. I loved it. Just for example, there was a nursing home that kind of a

different kind of doctor took over, and he just noticed how people were medicated and how they had just given up and they're just sitting around. So what he did is he brought in animals. lots of live animals, cats and dogs and birds and all kinds of stuff. And they saw these nursing home patients absolutely transform as they took responsibility to feed, care, walk these animals. And what we really want in life is to be useful to someone, even if it's an animal. And sometimes our culture has taken away the usefulness of older people. So I thought that was extremely well written, interesting. You can learn more about geriatric. doctors and why we don't have very many geriatric doctors. And so older people don't have doctors

that can help them with old age issues. If you get cancer, there's a doctor for that. But what about just the normal biological processes that come with old age? How do I handle that? Well, there's not many doctors around to help. In our last episode on Change, you said that you're afraid of growing old. Was this some sort of catharsis? Well, I think it reaffirmed why I'm afraid of growing old, because when you read about these nursing homes. And I've been in my fair share of nursing homes. They're just, gosh, I don't know. So Patrick, how do you decide what to read? Man, I should probably have a more intentional way of deciding what I spend my time reading. I don't feel like there's much intentionality behind it at all. I tend to pick things that are either, A, interesting to me,

be functional. So I like to read a lot of leadership, management, those types of books, because they help me do my job better, or C, help me teach. So I read a lot of Christian books and books by biblical studies type people because they help me know what the Bible says and teach it in a way that I think can connect with people. What I tell people is to read widely. Don't limit yourself to one genre. Read some fiction, read some history, biography.

I love biographies. I wish I loved biographies. You don't? I don't. Well, here's the way I think about biographies. The last two biographies I read, I read with you. Those are the only two I've read in probably the last two years. What were they?

There was the Robert Moses one. Oh, that was phenomenal. broker. It was phenomenal. It was phenomenal. And then the Frederick Douglass one we read. So here's one reason I like to read biographies is because you read a book that distills a person's life lessons down into a story. So you get to read the story of their life. What did they learn? What were the ups and downs from at all? But then you get to apply that at this point in your life, at the point that you read it. So I get to take all the life lessons

of Billy Graham, or I get to take all the life lessons of fill in the blank, Jonathan Edwards, or all the life lessons of Charles Schultz. And then I get to learn from them and incorporate them into my life while I still got years to live. So I just love biographies. But don't settle for one kind of book. Read widely. And one of the places that I get book ideas from are from people that I trust, you know, book recommendations. Or how about this book lists, you know, the New York Times will have a book list or the gospel

coalition will have a book list. or not Amazon recommends. Christianity Today has a book list. Well, sometimes Amazon, I mean, obviously they're just using an algorithm. That algorithm's got my number. They turn me on to some good books that I enjoy. Or pick an author. Like, is there somebody out there, a pastor, a Christian leader, a writer, a historian, a biographer that you just love the way that person writes? And then just read everything that that person has written. That was actually some of the best advice I got. I can't remember he said it. It was probably some celebrity pastor somewhere, but he said, you need to pick. He suggested three authors from ideally different time frames that you think

were among the best of their time and read absolutely everything you can read by them. One reason to read from authors who are not from our own generation is they tend to see our own blind spots. They'll point out things that we don't tend to notice in the present. But one way I've tried to do that, you're going to laugh at this, Keith, but I've become a bit of a disciple of NT Wright. And he thankfully... Disciple, devote. He's thankfully written far more than I will ever have the time to read. So I will never

reach the end of NT Wright's corpus. But it's a great way to pick books. I mean, I will sometimes just go online and search is, is there anything new by NT. Right? And if there is, I'll pick that up. I'll read that quickly. One thing by NT. Entie Wright is his books are worth a second and third reading. And you don't usually say that about many people's

books. Yeah, that's absolutely. I have read many of his books multiple times, and I rarely do that, which leads me to my next and fifth book recommendation, a book that I have read three times this year. Do you want to guess what it is? How God Became King, the Codling of the American Mind? I have read those books multiple times. However, that's not the right answer. The right answer is Scandalous Witness by Lee C. Camp, which we have referenced countless times on this podcast, and so he deserves a full-on reference here. This is a book where he writes down, I think it's something like 15 or 16 propositions,

about American Christianity. And he's arguing that as Christians, we need to be loyal, give our allegiance to Jesus first before our nation, before our political party. And he, I don't agree with everything in the book, but he writes a very interesting way. I like reading people who challenge me. I like reading people who say things that are a little bit, you know, on the edge of maybe being wrong, but I like those kinds of people. And Lee Camp is definitely one of those people. If you listen to some of our podcast about politics earlier in the year. A lot of that was based in his stuff. He pointed out to me things that I'd never really noticed before. For example, how in America, we tend to borrow language from the Bible. You know, we think of Ronald Reagan calling America a shining city on the hill,

and we turn America into the hope of the world, which of course isn't what the Bible says. The Bible says that Jesus is king. Jesus is the hope of the world. And he's helped me reclaim that hope in my life, which was really, really important during this political season when it is, at least for me, very tempting to look to a political leader to be my savior. It's funny that Patrick mentioned a scandalous witness because I was sitting on my elliptical starting to read that book. And I was probably, you know, it's not a very long book, but three or four chapters into it. And I text Patrick that I had found his favorite book from 2020. And he hadn't read it, hadn't heard of it or whatever. He's like, well,

what is it? And I told him that it was a book that he hadn't read yet, but it was going to make his list of best books. And here we are. You nailed it. It was scandalous witness. It took me about three or four chapters to think this has Patrick written all over it. So since Patrick took scandalous witness, which was on my list, I knew it. I am going to throw out one that I bet's on his list. And that is atomic habits. No, it wasn't. It wasn't. I do you would pick it. And I'm just so happy that I didn't even put it on there. Atomic Habits by James Clear. It's a phenomenal book that helps you develop and break habits. Now, I like to read theology. I like to read books about ideas, but I also like to read books that are practical and helpful in my everyday life. And that's

where atomic habits belongs. It is filled with really practical strategies about how to develop, like I said, the right kind of habits and break the wrong kind of habits. So if you're looking at 2021 and thinking, I want to change some things up, I want to develop maybe a Bible reading habit or I want to stop a habit that I have that I don't like anymore, then I would pick up atomic habits and read it. It's not long. It's not hard. But of course, in something like this, the real change doesn't come from reading it. The real change comes from applying it. I really liked reading it. Let's move on. Here, I'll give us our number three option. And like he said, we like to read different kinds of books. One of my favorite management books that I read in the last

year was the ideal team player by Patrick Lencioni. And you suck because I told you about that book too. Well, I guess that's where I get my book ideas from. We just figured it out. So one reason I love this book is that it's given me a framework that I have honestly used every single week, basically since I read the book with our team that can kind of give us some guiding principles for how we want to treat each other. Those three principles are humble, hungry, and smart. And Keith and I actually did another whole podcast. on this topic. So you can go get some of that information there. But I'd actually just recommend go pick up Patrick Lincione's book. He tells a little story on the front end of it that illustrates his points. It's a little parable. And then he lays out each of these principles. What does it mean to be humble? That's someone who doesn't think about themselves all the time. It's someone who's willing to admit their fault, someone who's easy to confront with their problems, someone who isn't proud and demands to have their way all the time. That's the kind of team player

you want to be. He also says you want to be hungry. These are people who are hard workers. They don't want to just come in and do their 40 hours and leave. They want to come in and actually add something to the group. They want to come up with new ideas. They want to invest above and beyond the normal hours expected of them to help the team succeed. And then you've got smart people, and this isn't just intelligent smart. These are people smarts. These are people who treat others wisely. They aren't unkind. They don't yell at people. They know how their words affect others. And those three things together in combination make you into the ideal team player. It's helped me out a lot in how I deal with people and how I treat people on my team. I've had to have a lot of moments on my team where I've

confessed. I wasn't humble and I'm sorry or I wasn't people smart and I'm sorry about that. And it's, again, it's helped build relationships. It's helped build trust. And so it's been one of the most influential books for me, at least, in the last year. Okay, Keith, before we get to our last two books, why do you read? What's your why? I like that. It comes from Simon Sinek's book. I caught you, right? Didn't read that one this year, so can't be on my list. No, I didn't. But it's a decent book, not a great book. The TED Talk gives you everything you need.

Exactly right. So I have lots of reasons why I read. I think one of them is that I need people to invest in my life. So everybody's looking for a mentor, right? Everybody's looking for their father, their mother. They're looking for someone to invest in them, someone to disciple them. But those are hard to find, especially as you get older, especially as you kind of get more leadership positions. It's just hard to find people to invest in you. So what I've done is that I'm going to allow people to invest in me through their writings, through their life stories, through their ideas, through their books.

So that's one big reason I read. Another reason that I read is because it helps me learn about the human condition. You know, what's it like to have cancer? What's it like to grow old? What's it like to struggle with poverty? What's it like to be evicted out of your home? What's it like to be an African-American growing up in Jim Crow era? Well, I don't know the answers to any of those questions, but if I'm going to be the kind of person who sympathizes with others and loves others, and if I'm going to be the kind of pastor that preaches to the needs of other people, then I need to learn about that. I need to learn what that's like. And the only way I know how to do it is through books. Now, of course, you could listen to podcasts, you can read magazine articles. So I don't literally just mean books, but I mean that books and podcasts and journals and all that is an opening to learn about the human condition, learn how to see the world from a different perspective. Those are great reasons. I'd add a few more.

One reason is that books help me communicate, which is funny because as we're recording this, I'm really struggling to communicate. But when I read books, they improve my own communication skills. I become a better writer. I become a better speaker. I learn so much just from reading great authors. Another thing is, I just like being an interesting dinner guest. And if you don't know much about anything, you'll never be an interesting dinner guest.

I don't know who said it, but they said, interested people are interesting people. And to be an interested person, you have to know enough about everything to ask interesting questions. And I know no other way of doing that than reading widely. I love sitting down with someone and they tell me what they do. And I've got lots of questions to ask them because I've read one book on the topic that they're really interested in. And they're having a great conversation. They get to be the expert. They can keep telling me more than I know.

But they love that they've got someone who's asking them questions that are actually informed and not incredibly stupid. Now, not everybody's wired the same way, but I am a little bit worn out with conversations in which you sit down. And every time you talk with these people, you talk about kids sports. I just don't care how fifth grade basketball is going. Right? I mean, it's just not my thing I want to talk a lot about. Check in, how's your family, that kind of stuff. But I don't want to spend all night talking about kids sports. Or in today's world, I don't want to spend the whole time talking about COVID and what that. Gosh, I mean, aren't you just worn out by those things? So what happens is you just end up talking about the same

things over and over and over and over unless people bring new ideas into the conversation. And a lot of times those ideas are come from something that you have read. So if you kind of start a conversation down a certain road by asking a question based on a book you've read or based on a story you've heard recently, then that gets the other person to start engaging. And you can have, I think, a lot more enjoyable, informative, fun night together than just talking about the same old things over and over and over and over. I've read entire books just to have a good conversation with someone. That might sound super weird. But if there's someone I want to get to know, someone who I enjoy spending time with, I'll invest in learning a bit about what it is they like. Okay, Keith,

Give us number two. Number two, meaning I get two more? Nope, meaning you get one more, and then we will both reveal our number one together. Oh, reveal like I bet everybody's just waiting with bated breath. I could do a little drum roll. Well, this was hard because I have so many books that I like. You have, how many does you say 18 books on there? I have 18 that I wrote down off my list.

And so I could say that I enjoyed When Crickets Cry, Cry, which is a novel that I read recently. Did you read any novels this year, Patrick? Listen to Keith packing them in here. I could have said this. I didn't say Winkering Scrial. It was a great novel. I could have said that I really enjoyed a book called Born a Crime, which is a memoir by Trevor Noah, which I don't know anything about Trevor Noah. He's on like some late-night comedy show,

but I enjoyed reading his book about growing up in South Africa, because, again, I learned something about him and his life. I could say my NT-write books that I read, read this year, simply Jesus and simply good news. I reread both of those. Both were excellent. How about his Romans commentary? I love that, but I don't think most people are going to enjoy that. I could say, here's a book. If you want to know, what's it like to be evicted from your house? There's a book called Eviction, and I think it's Matthew Desmond. And he is the author, I mean, and he follows, so it's a narrative. It's telling the life experiences of people in Milwaukee.

and these are people of various races, but they're all poor. They live in different parts of Milwaukee, but they all struggle to make their rent payment. And what does it like to be impoverished and to be always in and out of your house, always kind of running from the law, always trying to avoid your landlord. It's a really powerful book. I think it won a lot of awards. But instead of saying any of those, I think you just said all of them. But let's hear number two.

I could have also said the autobiography of Malcolm X, which I reread this year, gosh, you know, Malcolm X is not a guy I'm necessarily a huge fan of, but when you read Malcolm X's story, you go, okay, I understand how you get there. If you were faced with the challenges, if you grew up and the family he grew up in, I understand how you got there. But I won't say those. Instead, I'm going to pair two books together that are very similar. One is why we are polarized by Ezra Klein. And Ezra Klein, Klein and I probably don't agree on much politically, but he's smart and he's got good ideas. He founded Vox, among other things that he's done in his life. But he tries to explain why we as a nation are so

polarized. And he's saying it's not a bug, it's a feature. And I really enjoyed it. And then there's another book by a guy who I tend to agree with more on things by David French, is his name. And it is divided. We Fall. And so he's trying to argue for a kind of plural a way to let people live and let live so that we can have a diverse country and all kind of make it in life. And I can look at Patrick's face right now and he's taking great joy because I'm saying a book that he recommended to me. So did you like in the middle of Divided We Fall all of the potential future civil war options that he gives? Doesn't he give three different ways that we could end up in a civil war? Well, I don't know if it's civil war. I think what he says is he gives two approaches. He says. He says, He says he could imagine a world in which California and some other liberal states move out of the union, succeed, not really go to war. Did you say succeed or secede? Succeed. I don't know what I said. The other was for Texas, and he calls it Texit.

So you exit, not Brexit, but Texit. And you move out of the country or secede from the country because of conservative type issues led by Texas. But both of those books are interesting because they describe our current. political moment and what we're seeing it and feeling in the world. Okay, so our number one book, and both of us wanted to put this on our individual list, and I said, well, we're just going to share it. That's the only way forward. And that is Reading Wall Black by Issa Macaulay. Again, we've mentioned this book several times in our podcast. We did two episodes on policing, which were based on one chapter in that book called the New Testament Theology of policing.

I love books that challenge me. I love a book that makes me think differently, that forces me to see the world differently, even if I don't agree with it entirely. And this was one of those books for me. In the last year, I probably read six or seven different books by various people about the issue of race, a lot of critical race theorists. And in the world of Christian reading, I have read no book that I think more aptly describes both the problem of race that we face in the church, but I think also points a way forward towards reconciliation and how we can learn to appreciate each other. His main thesis is that there is that there is a problem. is a tradition of reading the Bible within the African-American church, which largely exist in the

pulpit. You're not going to find it in books. You probably won't find it on podcasts or online, but that this tradition is richly Orthodox, richly faithful to the Bible, and yet it is also challenging to some of the political structures and institutions which have upheld white supremacy and other issues inside of our culture. I think it's called Reading Well Black because Islama Khali says that when you read the scriptures from your own perspective, you see things in the scriptures that you wouldn't see if you hadn't kind of walked the path that you'd walk. And so as a black person who loves Jesus and holds tightly to Orthodox, faithful, biblical Christianity, but has also seen black people, and including himself, experience a lot of injustice.

How do I read the Bible in a way that is faith? to what God is saying, but also addresses some of the issues that my community faces. And I loved the book. Here's how much I love the book. I bought everyone in my family and a boyfriend and a girlfriend copies of the book. You have a boyfriend and a girlfriend of my kids. Okay, good. Good, good. Just wanted to make sure that was clear to everybody. Okay, good point. I have four kids, and one has a boyfriend, and one has a girlfriend. And one has a boyfriend and a girlfriend. And I bought everybody books and said we're going to discuss it at Thanksgiving, which is soon.

So we're going to talk about reading while black. There's at least one boyfriend frantically reading right now. Because we are less than a week from Thanksgiving at the time of recording. Well, probably, but maybe some of my own boys are doing the same thing. But we're all going to read. They're less worried about impressing you. And we're all going to discuss the book at Thanksgiving holidays. I can't give reading while black a higher compliment than to say I bought multiple copies,

gave them to people and said, we need to discuss this. So it's one of the best books that we've read. One last thing on that book. At the very end of the book, some people stop once the book ends. You know, you don't read the, I guess it's the epilogue at the end. But this book has, it's an appendix, really, that walks through a history of black interpretation of the Bible in America. And that chapter alone, that little appendix is worth the price of admission, especially for someone like me who has not really at all ever interacted much with that tradition. I was just historically uninformed, and I learned a lot from it. Just a little warning for you public school kids out there.

The reason they put that section at the end of the book is because it's kind of more academic. And so there's a reason they didn't put it in the main body because they thought, well, most people are going to check out on this book. So if you're like Patrick, then you're going to just love that part. I love you some appendix. If you're a public school kid like me, you know, look through it. You'll get a few things out of it. who lives in the footnotes. All the best stuff is.

Okay, I think we're going to make that our tagline on 10-minute Bible Talks. Hi, I'm Patrick Miller, and I live in the footnotes. Okay, God bless you all. Have a good Christmas. Read a book. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily.

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