Deserted Islands and Prison Writings

As one learns a language one sees that a language has a certain turn of phrase, an idiom, a proverb for every situation.


There is so much social information that informs when it is appropriate to say [oh well] with a rising tone denoting in some situations when one is saying sarcastically or triumphantly "See, I told you that particular negative outcome would happen and you didn't listen to me!" or if you say [oh well] with a falling tone often meaning, "That outcome was mildly disappointing but it is not too important to worry about." (Well, at least that is what I mean by it).

There is one particular phrase that we English speakers use often to introduce a situation when we want to ask a person to make a very limited choice about something from a large set through the medium of an extreme hypothetical situation. To make that last statement make sense...here is the phrase,

"If you were stuck on a desert island which X would you choose?"

Its a pretty good feature of our language, enabling you to extract information from a potential marriage partner with juicy tidbits like, "If you were stuck on a desert island and could only eat chocolate chip cookies or oatmeal raisin which would it be?"

While this phrase is an extreme hypothetical situation, however, sometimes it is not very far off from reality. This is an issue for us as we decide which books to bring to Africa. Our limiting factor for bringing stuff is limited to our airline baggage so bringing many heavy books is not an option. And where we are going there is no good Christian English literature to be bought. So, we must choose the few books that we will take with us on that Puritan deprived "deserted island" that is Central African Republic.

I (Adam) have been thinking about this for about a year and I have come up with my short list of about 10 books that I will bring. My main criteria for choosing these books was how well the book answered these two questions, "What book has been the most consistently helpful in encouraging me in my Christian walk? and What is a book that is written about something that I would like to learn more about in the next three years?" After choosing the books I noticed that the books and their authors have some similar features.

1. Almost all of the books are written by or written about (biographies) men from the 17th and 18th centuries.
2. Almost all of the men were pastors.
3. Almost all of them are Puritans.
4. All of them believed in the sovereignty of God in all affairs of their lives. In other words, God was in control, planning/allowing the suffering in their lives often through the wicked acts of other men.
5. Almost all of them were either being hunted by authorities for execution, in prison, (or consistantly threatened with both) and wrote their books in the midst of these difficulties.

Interesting, huh?

Although I didn't plan it that way that is the way that it happened. It is not a coincidence.
Why are the most heavenly minded books written by those who at any point in time were faced with the end of their lives?

The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7:2, "It is better to go to a funeral than to a party because this is the end of every man and the living take it to heart."

A party makes you think about relationships and fun and pleasure (all these things are not bad within themselves). But a funeral makes you think about God and eternity. And if you are constantly forced to deal with those realities in light of the good news of Jesus then and only then do you become helpful to those people in the relationships, fun, and pleasure.

Christians who have the most miserable circumstances in life or who are threatened with/close to death often are the people who can give you the best perspective on life, because their ropes are much more loosened from the moorings of this transient world. They can see the glorious light of eternity much clearer as the dull, thick, sunglasses of this age are removed.

So I couldn't help but ask you and myself, if some Christian were stuck on a deserted island and you (or your life metaphorically) wrote a "book" about Biblical truth. Would someone pick you?