Secondary to Primary

Matthew 15

You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophecy of you, saying, 

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.

Isaiah 29

This people draw near with their words and honor me with their lip-service, but they remove their hearts far from me and their reverence for me consists of tradition learned by rote.

We generally blank the slate in our rebirth with God. Then we start to grow hedges, organic-like, as we embrace His teachings:
This is right                             This is wrong
This honors God                     This dishonors Him
This is the truth                      This is falsehood
The hedges grow, and we find comfort in their presence, for their perceived protection.
In our wisdom,
we dig up the organic hedges and replace with stone walls,
from farmers to masons,
trading nature for precision,
from working in the dirt to finishing concrete.
As God-followers, we would do well to be in the habit of purging the precepts we take comfort in and expose ourselves to the direct influence of God.

2011 Books I Listened To

The introduction of downloadable audio books from the local library makes for nerd-fun.

• My Favorite: Golden Ocean - a non-Aubrey O'Brian
• Unexpectedly Good: the Cadfael series, which I have another dozen to enjoy.
• Unexpectedly Bad: World is Flat - when reading, I was able to skim through the endless repetition; I was not afforded the same when listening in the car. The book is excellent, and twice the length it deserves.

1. Fellowship of the Ring (dramatized) - JRR Tolkien
2. The House on the Strand - Daphne Du Maurier
3. Ben Hur - Lew Wallace
4. The Black Cauldron - Lloyd Alexander
5. Moneyball - Michael Lewis
6. The Wild Things - Dave Eggers
7. The Heretic's Apprentice - Ellis Peters
8. Doctor No - Ian Fleming
9. Monk's Hood - Ellis Peters
10. In a Sunburned Country - Bill Bryson
11. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
12. Brother Cadfael's Penance - Ellis Peters
13. Unnatural Causes - P.D. James
14. All Creatures Great and Small - James Herriot
15. In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
16. The Broken Gun - Louis L'Amour
17. Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson
18. Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
19. Surgeon's Mate - Patrick O'Brian
20. The Golden Ocean - Patrick O'Brian
21. A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans - Michael Farquhar
22. The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman
23. Genghis: Lords of the Bow - C. Iggulden
24. The American presidency: from Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan

2011 Books I Read

My 2011 reading list in reverse order...

A couple of these were not completely finished, either because the point was overdrawn (1434) or the writing just short of terrible (Templar, a vacation book, and O, a gimmick).

• My Favorite: Born to Run
• Unexpectedly Good: Freakonomic series
• Unexpectedly Bad: 1434, a follow up to 1421, was a 200 page book, stretched to 350, full of salesmanship of his theory of Admiral He's sole-source cause of the European Renaissance. 

1. Wanderings - Chaim Potak
2. Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis
3. 1434 - Gavin Menzies
4. The Big Short - Michael Lewis
5. Foundation - Isaac Asimov
6. Ordeal of Innocence - Agatha Christie
7. War - Sebastian Junger
8. The Burden of Southern History - C. Vann Woodward
9. The Legacy of Atlanta - Webb Garrison
10. When Character was King - Peggy Noonan
11. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
12. Fair Tax: The Truth - Neal Boortz
13. The Fair Tax Book - Neal Boortz
14. Thunderball - Ian Fleming
15. A Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie
16. Whose Body - Dorothy Sayers
17. Our Kind of Traitor - John LeCarre
18. The Templar Legacy - Steve Berry
19. O: A Presidential Novel - anonymous (didn't finish)
20. When Helping Hurts - Brian Fikkert
21. Leading on Empty - Wayne Cordiero
22. Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior - Ori Brafman
23. The Secret Pilgrim - John LeCarre
24. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - John LeCarre
25. True Grit - Charles Portis
26. Strengthfinder 2.0 - Tom Rath
27. Good to Great - Jim Collins
28. SuperFreakonomics - Levitt/Dubner
29. Freakonomics - Levitt/Dubner
30. The Complete Tales of Sherlock Holmes, vol. 1 - Conan Doyle
31. Born to Run - Chris McDougall