Bob Horn was the General Secretary of UCCF while we were students and young staff with the British IFES movement. He was a significant influence on me (and many others) and a lovely man.
Shortly before he died he recommended I read Harry Blamires' 'The Christian Mind'. I found it in the smallest second hand book sale I've ever come across (there were about 50 books on a table, and I can't remember where we were) and snapped it up. I only started reading it at Easter but it's a superb little book. The writing is ascerbic and incisive and the thesis important - who cares that it was written in the 60s and represents an England that has changed enormously since then?
When I've finished I'll perhaps review it but here's a quote (from a chapter called 'The Christian Mind: its awareness of evil'):
A peculiar quality of the Christian mind is that, knowing the weakness of human nature, it expects conflict in the moral sphere. It assumes that the powers of evil will exploit every possible occasion for drawing men into the mental confusion of blurred concepts and twisted values. There is about the Christian mind a peculiar hardness - a refusal to be surprised at evil and depravity; an inability to be overcome by shock; an expectation that evil will be at large when God is not. Hence its cultivated suspiciousness of that which currently passes muster, in any powerful worldly circle, as the right thing. Hence, in the moral sphere, its zealous attention to the thin ends of wedges. It knows how evil grows.
This is one eminently quotable book. If you see it lying around in a second hand shop, buy it without hesitation and give it a good home.
Shortly before he died he recommended I read Harry Blamires' 'The Christian Mind'. I found it in the smallest second hand book sale I've ever come across (there were about 50 books on a table, and I can't remember where we were) and snapped it up. I only started reading it at Easter but it's a superb little book. The writing is ascerbic and incisive and the thesis important - who cares that it was written in the 60s and represents an England that has changed enormously since then?
When I've finished I'll perhaps review it but here's a quote (from a chapter called 'The Christian Mind: its awareness of evil'):
A peculiar quality of the Christian mind is that, knowing the weakness of human nature, it expects conflict in the moral sphere. It assumes that the powers of evil will exploit every possible occasion for drawing men into the mental confusion of blurred concepts and twisted values. There is about the Christian mind a peculiar hardness - a refusal to be surprised at evil and depravity; an inability to be overcome by shock; an expectation that evil will be at large when God is not. Hence its cultivated suspiciousness of that which currently passes muster, in any powerful worldly circle, as the right thing. Hence, in the moral sphere, its zealous attention to the thin ends of wedges. It knows how evil grows.
This is one eminently quotable book. If you see it lying around in a second hand shop, buy it without hesitation and give it a good home.
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