Books I Plan to Finish Someday...

"The best laid plans of mice and men.........are about equal."

[These are now sorted into a list of  abbreviations that I use in the CTT writings...hope it helps. I have also begun filing previous years books in their own file--to shorten file access times. I have all of 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, and most of 1995books.

New acquisitions...(and old "I brought them in from the garage" ones!)...

Also, note that these books are NOT uniformly cited in the technically-correct fashion, but only to the extent needed to identify/find them yourself.

Note: as of Oct 2015 I will no longer be putting entries into this log for books purchased from Logos software [list of my Oct 2015 holdings at logos6_2015OCT.pdf ,578 pages, 8600+ entries, 3.3M]. Since citations from those works will be in-full, there will be no need for abbreviations and name-anchors. I will periodically post the purchase history somewhere (Logos_Order_History_2020MAY29 for now), though, as I can--so readers can see electronic resources what I find worth investing in.

What is new with the May 18/2020 update, is that several of these books were purchased with funds from Tank support gifts, from treasures in His family (smile)!

Oct 18/2021

[These include a large number of trauma/therapy books I bought in early 2021, which I had not planned on entering into this book list fully. But some might be useful or of interest to others, so they are now in here, with the CST prefix.]

July 16/2021

June 5/2021

Mar 14/2021

Feb 4/2021

I thought it might be good to point out a couple of books of possible interest to readers.

In western secular culture, there is a fairly vocal sub-segment manifesting 'unjustified arrogance'. They seem to delight in pointing to the numerous failures of 'the Christian religion', some of which would reasonably be called 'atrocities' and others 'intellectual disasters'. Of course, it is also easy to find/point out the moral and intellectual failures of individual Christians (but -- to be honest -- in the back of my mind is always John 8 ... 'he who among you is without sin...').

But -- as many have pointed out -- the very values that this subgroup uses to judge these events/people are in most cases BORROWED VALUES from 'core' Christian ethics. There was no real ethic of 'love for the poor' or 'love for you enemies' in the ancient world! Really... Roman patronage--for just one example-- was about "How Good You Looked"...

But aside from such an obvious disemboweling of their 'holier than thou' position, I find that position to be either woefully ignorant of history or shamefully hypocritical in their selective use of this data.

The benefits of Christ's teachings and sub-surface spiritual work on humans (and the precursor in the Abrahamic faith) have been transformative and unique in impact.

I draw your attention to just some of the credible work (some by Christians but some less-so) out there on this--to hopefully fill out YOUR UNDERSTANDING and ASSESSMENT of our tradition. There are no reasons to be dismissive or dishonest here--for either sides of the argument--but there ARE ETHICAL ISSUES involved in how one uses or ignores the data of history.

There are still massive issues in the organized 'expression' of the life of God (and even more so in the 'appropriation' of our LANGUAGE for oppression and manipulation by elites), but this doesn't stop me from giving thanks when I reach for a box of medical gauze and it has a red cross as part of the brand... Just my thoughts...
The Christian ThinkTank...[https://www.Christianthinktank.com] (Reference Abbreviations)