comments:
Oh absolutely I think every Christian should read the books I had, even if they aren’t deconstructing. They have some really good information in them. I think that if people are basing their lives off of a religion, it’s important that they understand it and make an informed decision about it! Also, I’ve made more detailed replies under this post that you’re welcome to read, but I didn’t leave the church solely because of the hateful behavior. That did play a role, but the bigger part was that through actually studying the Bible, it sort of fell apart for me. When I first began studying the Bible in depth, it was to try and become a preacher. I wasn’t going in with the intention of disproving it, it just disproved itself through research, in my opinion. Everyone is welcome to their beliefs, and I’m not knocking yours, but I do disagree with jumping straight to “church hurt” being the reason someone might leave when there are plenty of other reasons to be found if you look. In any case, here’s a list of the books I’d recommend from my early shelf, with links to where they can be purchased! The Cultural Background Study Bible The Bible Knowledge Commentary (both Old and New Testament) The Bible Dictionary by Tyndale There are more there, like the “Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English lexicon” and “Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible”, but those are the big bulky books you see on the bottom left of the first shelf. And they don’t provide other information, they’re more like reference guides. They were also dummy expensive when I bought them in 2021, so I can only imagine the price on them right now. If you were to buy one of those, I’d recommend Brown-Driver-Briggs over the other because it has more useful information than a concordance for a casual reader.