Bartik is writing a book. It’s shaping up to be a cracker.

It’s only in draft stage at the moment, with 4 of the 10 chapters written, but this is something that’s going to revolutionise leadership paradigms all over the world: in business, politics, churches, and beyond.

Here’s the rationale for using Moses as a paradigm for effective leadership:

“Moses of course went on to become easily the most significant, prolific prophet and judge in the history of the Bible. Even in these early stages, Moses was headed for greatness.”

As I said, keep your eyes peeled. This will seriously change your life. Or someone else’s.

Finally, I find a justification (external to my own self-justifications) for owning all these books.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about Umberto Eco’s large personal library (containing thirty thousand books) in the introduction of part one of The Black Swan [via kottke.org]:

… a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

I don’t quite have 30,000 books. I do, however, have a few Eco books that I haven’t yet read.

I’ve spent a little bit of time this year with a bunch of Christians I didn’t know particularly well before now. If you’ve never been part of such a group, one thing that members often do to get to know each other better is share a bit of their life story. Specifically, how they came to be a Christian.

Something that struck me a few times was how common it is that people pick up a Bible, stone cold (for various reasons: whether in a hotel room, or an old one off the shelf, or prompted to do so by some momentous life event), and they start reading from the beginning.

Which makes sense. That’s where most books start. So too with the Bible.

Sort of.

I mean, that’s where it starts, but the stuff that I would want to point people to if they’re new to the whole reading-the-Bible thing would be the start of the New Testament – the gospels, the biographies of Jesus.

Because the ‘Christ’ bit of ‘Christianity’ is about Jesus Christ. He’s the one around whom the whole deal is centered.

Lots of people, however, when they start reading the Bible from the start, give up pretty quickly, as it seems to get irrelevant fast. If they’ve made it to Leviticus, they’re pretty committed, but they’re gone at the chapter after chapter of sacrifice offerings in ancient Israel. One can hardly blame them. I mean, if you’ve got no frame of reference, no Jesus who fulfils all this… then why is this stuff so significant?

So it got me thinking.

Why not print Bibles in a different order?

Rearrange the books inside.

Put the gospels up first. Get people reading about Jesus straight-up. That’s what we do with people if we start reading the Bible with them, so why not prompt others to do likewise?

We could do other things too, such as putting Luke and Acts together. Acts is the sequel, by the same author – why not have them together?

How about this:

• Mark
• Luke-Acts
• Matthew
• John
• Romans
• Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronomy)
• Hebrews
• New Testament Letters
• Prophets
• Writings
• Revelation

Something like this could present Jesus to the reader first-up, from a few different perspectives. Romans has been regarded by lots of people as laying out the fundamentals of Christian belief, so put that next.

The core of Israelite belief is fundamentally important to understanding what goes on the New Testament, so we go back and read the Law (Torah/Pentateuch), and reflect on it specifically through the letter to the Hebrews.

What do you think?

Principally, the distinction between testaments, or covenants, may be made unclear. This is especially the case if the books from the OT and NT are interspersed.

We also stand to lose a certain historical heritage. Tradition has been that certain books stand in certain positions, often for good reasons. ^[1] Most of us, however, don’t really know what those reasons are.

But do we stand to gain more than we lose?

Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.xvii.2:

Godly souls can gather great assurance and delight from [the Lord's Supper]; in it they have a witness of our growth into one body with Christ such that whatever is his may be called ours. As a consequence, we may dare assure ourselves that eternal life, of which he is the heir, is ours; and that the Kingdom of Heaven, into which he has already entered, can no more be cut off from us than from him; again, that we cannot be condemned for our sins, from whose guilt he has absolved us, since he willed to take them upon himself as if they were his own. This is the wonderful exchange which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us; that, becoming Son of man with us, he has made us sons of God with him; that, by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that, by taking on our mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us; that, accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; that, receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred his wealth to us; that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness.

Found for us by a dear friend at a church fete.

Love that one-piece.

Uggh.

Someone once told me that you can tell everything that is worth knowing about someone by looking at their bookshelf, and their record collection.

Two choice titles spotted at a doctor’s surgery today:

Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice.
Endoscopic Interpenetration.

I wonder what kind of music he listens to?