Books that changed my life

Contrary to the claims made on innumerous hardcovers, very few books will change your life. There are approximately 1000 books in our home, and few of them live up to that claim. People have changed my life, organizations have shaped my life, experiences have been transformative, and even a few sermons have changed my life. But on rare occasions, a book does more than delight or inform; it leaves an indelible imprint upon you.

To the best of my knowledge, these are the books that have personally shaped me:

1. Horton Hatches the Egg by Theodore Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) is the subject of my earliest memory and the first book I read (if you define "reading" loosely). At the age of 2, I memorized the entire book and could recite the words that went with each page; my parents still have an audio cassette tape to prove it.  "I meant what I said and I said what I meant / An elephant's faithful, 100 percent." That quote has come to define my life.
2. Creation and Time by Hugh Ross radically changed my understanding of Christianity and science, and of Genesis 1... but at first I didn't want it to be true. In 187 pages this book obliterated everything I thought I knew about this subject - things I had stubbornly insisted to be true - and left me with the disoriented feeling of a man who has just been told that what he thought was North is actually West, or that it is Tuesday not Sunday. I thought I had been taking the Bible literally, when in fact I had not. But ultimately, it liberated me from a fear of unsettling scientific discoveries, made me at peace with astronomy and geology, and gave me a new appreciation for God's Word and His handiwork. It also planted in me a healthy wariness towards anti-intellectualism and a reactionary approach to the world.
3. A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss by Gerald Sittser met me where I was, lost in the desert of 4 miscarriages and a failed adoption, and showed me the path back to trusting God. Sittser, a theology professor, instantly lost his daughter, wife and mother in a car crash. He writes not as a lecturing expert, but as a grieving man who has seen God bring some good out of evil, while also having the intellectual tools to wrestle with terrible loss.
4. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hildebrand is not just a gripping adventure and an extraordinary true war story. This bestseller (releasing as a movie this Christmas) is a testimony to the redemptive power of forgiveness that hinges upon a conversion at a Billy Graham crusade. At a time in my life when I still had so much anger that it gave me migraines, this book showed me that if we do not give in to bitterness and hatred then our suffering does not break us.
5. The 1st Letter to the Corinthians by The Apostle Paul was the subject of over a year of manuscript study by The Lady and me. Our only guide was a chapter in a background commentary (by a Baptist). We went in with nothing but curiosity and a vague dissatisfaction with church as we knew it; we came out with a strongly sacramental worldview, a new vision for what the church was, and a deep appreciation for the theology of the body. If there is one book that led us to the Anglican way, this was it.
6. I read Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts in the middle of our time in India. He describes the harsh realities of life in India matter-of-factly (except for the caste system) but reserves his passion for loving depictions of the place he, an escaped convict from Australia, called home for nearly a decade. It doesn't hurt that Roberts is a first-rate writer who tells an utterly fantastic story, "loosely based on his life," that touches on nearly every aspect of human experience. It helped me to fall in love with the culture, articulating what makes that land and that people so enchanting: "The truest thing about India and the Indian people is that your heart will always guide you better than your head, and there is nowhere else where that is quite as true."
7. The Folly of Prayer by Matthew Woodley is one of many books on my shelf I have not yet read in entirety.  But one chapter, discussed in a class at our church that was led by the author, showed me how to pray at a time when I thought I couldn't. I learned that lament could be a form of prayer.
8. What Went Wrong? Case Histories of Process Plant Disasters by Trevor Kletz revolutionized the way that process industries approach safety. Kletz demonstrated that what we call "accidents" are most often the result of systemic flaws in design, reckless operation, miscommunication, and ultimately a leadership failure on the part of management. It left its mark upon on me professionally (a big part of my life in itself) but Kletz's key observation rings true in many arenas: "Marginal failures usually have complex causes. Catastrophic failures usually have simple causes."
9. The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard opened my eyes to the Kingdom of God as a reality here and now. Willard (1935-2013), a Quaker and a professor of philosophy at USC, was just barely within the bounds of evangelicalism, and was clearly uncomfortable with substitutionary atonement (though he did not reject it outright). But he had a higher view of Jesus than most Christians, and therefore he not only gives the best exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, he showed me a new facet of my Savior: "Jesus is not just nice, He is brilliant."
10. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, doesn't fully live up to the hype that surrounds this social-science popularizer. He commits some of the same errors as in his other work - such as  over-reliance on anecdotes and unpublished studies - and demonstrates a not-so-subtle disdain for wide swaths of this country (along with a profound ignorance of American agriculture). But this book demonstrated that success is often the result of seizing opportunities or exploiting advantages that are neither obvious nor universally available; made me think about how to provide my children with the best opportunities in life; and changed my mind on affirmative action. It also helped me to understand the true meaning of Proverbs 19:4, "Houses and wealth are inherited from parents - but a prudent wife is from the Lord."
11. Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl survived the Holocause (his wife did not) and used his experiences to found Logotherapy before encapsulating his philosophy in Man's Search for Meaning, one of the few original contributions to psychology. The history of psychology in the past century shows a steady progression from treating people like advanced animals, to a more implicitly Biblical grasp of human nature. Abraham Maslow believed that people seek "self-actualization" - i.e. power and achievement - above all else, and his theories shape the corporate world to this day. Sigmund Freud believed people seek pleasure above all else, and although Freud tended to reduce "pleasure" to "sex," John Piper's Christian Hedonism is built on a fundamentally Freudian view of human nature in addition to an Augustinian understand of God. But Frankl argued that ultimately, human beings seek a meaningful life - which, it should be added, no other creature does - thus opening the possibility of embracing suffering and living with unfulfilled desires.
12. Shout It From the Housetops by Pat Robertson and Jamie Buckingham was published in 1972 - long before Pat Robertson ran for President, sold CBN, became incredibly wealthy, went into business with a war criminal, and successfully outdid both Rush Limbaugh in political hyperbole and Dennis Rodman in public lunacy. The Pat Robertson in this book is as different as the latter-day Charles Colson was from the Nixon hatchet man - but here the chronology is reversed. How did a once-great Christian leader self-destruct? That story isn't found here - but this book warned me to "be on my guard" (Luke 12:15).
13. Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright is essentially a popular-level version of The Resurrection of the Son of God. The fact that I am listing the former, because I have not read the latter, is proof positive that I am a fake intellectual. (Although I prefer to be called a faux intellectual, because French sounds more sophisticated). In an age when our view of Heaven is more escapist and than concretely hopeful, Wright calls us back to the centrality of the Resurrection as a true ground for hope.
14. Can I admit to loving a cliched work like Wild At Heart by John Eldredge? Eldredge sits solidly in the Romantic tradition, and at times he sounds as silly as Ralph Waldo Emerson. His later books quote popular movies more than the Bible and classic literature combined. But his most popular work has endured for a reason. In between the nods to open theism and attempts to canonize William Wallace are genuine insights into the nature of masculinity, and the chapter on spiritual warfare ("A Battle To Fight") is worth the price of the entire book.
15. The Book of Common Prayer.