David Gifford

Books I especially enjoyed in the last year or so, though not all came out that recently:

• Ultralearning, by Scott Young
• Index, a History of the, by Dennis Duncan
• Building a Second Brain, by Tiago Forte (about personal knowledge management)
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman
• Dominion, by Tom Holland (not the Spider-man actor, but the other one. This book is about church history from a fairly sympathetic non-Christian perspective)
• The Enemy of All Mankind, by Steven Johnson (he writes on the history of innovation and has an addictive writing style, I highly recommend all his books)

I just posted my reading/re-reading list for 2017-18. 

I feel like some of your statements are half truths that could be misleading. Your next to last paragraph, taken as it is written, would seem to undercut all verbal evangelism. Yes, we shouldn't feel superior to others and see them as problems, but they still have a spiritual problem that we are called on to provide solutions to. Yes, we don't 'own' Jesus, he owns us, but we do have a fellowship with him that is necessary to have if one is to be saved, and so we urge others to have fellowship with him, too, so that our joy may be complete (1 John 1.3-4). And yes, I agree we don't 'save' anyone in and of ourselves, that saving people is the Holy Spirit's work (although, see James 5.20). But our testimony to people who don't believe is a crucial element in their being saved (Romans 10.14), which God does desire (1 Timothy 2.4). And so God does want us to communicate Jesus and his message to people who don't believe, so that they will be saved.

Motivated by the poor level of discourse on the Internet, I wrote up a 'Bill of Rights' for people who write on religious topics online. http://www.giffmex.org/blog/?p=80.

To be fair, though, a big part of the problem is that in my experience, churches are not safe places for people to be vulnerable, share freely their doubts and frustrations, and work through their differences. There are so many taboo topics and taboo ways of expressing oneself, and so people feel stifled. We seem to be more concerned with appearances and status and politeness than we are with 'speaking the truth in love'. For this reason, feelings get bottled up in church, and come to expression on the Internet under the cover of anonymity. And many of the people speaking their mind are the people who felt repressed in our churches. So I think we owe it to people to be patient with the excesses of both Christian and non-Christian 'jerks' online, while still pushing everyone toward excellence and charity.