The Important-Good Distinction March 28, 2009
Posted by Dan R. Dick in Church Leadership, Critical Thinking.Tags: anti-intellectualism, Christian Education
13 comments
I have long made the differentiation between “good” and “important” books. In my experience, all good books are important, but there are many important books that are anything but good. The Shack is an important book, (but in few ways good) as are The Prayer of Jabez, The Secret, The Purpose Driven Life, and The Seat of the Soul. Each of these books became popular best sellers, exerting an enormous amount of influence, but are deeply flawed by horrendous theology and an egregious lack of intellectual integrity.
These are important books because people are reading them — they 
connect with some basic human hunger and offer an appealing source of sustenance. But what they offer is of inferior quality at best. They offer simple answers to complex questions — a smorgasboard of materialistic, simplistic, shallow, cheap, superficial and innocuous solutions to the most challenging of life’s problems. No wonder they are popular.
