The purpose and goal of this website is to promote and encourage Christians to move beyond the “simple faith” Christianity which has crippled the church for far too long. Christianity is not simply a “faith,” it is a lifestyle. “Christianity is the life and death and resurrection of Christ going on day after day in the souls of individual men and in the heart of society.”[1] Christ called His church to a lifetime of discipleship, not only to believing certain things. Beliefs will always lead to actions—right beliefs to right actions and false beliefs to false actions. It is the belief of Christian Reader that the church has adopted many wrong beliefs about what Christianity actually is and this has in turn resulted in the church becoming ineffective and even counterproductive in the very world where Christ commissioned it to be “salt and light.”
To help combat this we offer this website as a starting point to get Christians thinking and acting positively and Kingdom-ly. The church will not be effective in the world until it gets its thinking oriented properly, i.e. thinking God’s thoughts after Him. We want Christian Reader to be a practical website, a strategic center of biblical thinking and cultural engagement. To this end we will be posting new material each day—some original, some not—that will help to re-orient and focus our attention on living the Gospel out in real ways in the real world. As editor-in-chief of this website, I pledge to not bog you down with pages and pages of reading. Some days may be longer than others, but I am a firm believer in being brief and I have no delusions of being able to solve the world’s problems with one or two articles. Modern problems often have ancient causes and solutions, so we would do well to regularly consult our history. We have a rich tradition that has preceded us for thousands of years and we ignore these writings and teachings to our own peril and impoverishment. With this in mind I will regularly post snippets and excerpts from classic Christian works that I find to be especially relevant and/or helpful.
Every Friday, I will be writing a review or synopsis of a book, DVD, movie, or some other thing that I think you should be aware of. Every book that I review will be available for purchase at the Reformation Bookstore, unless it is a critical review. Christian Reader, Reformation Bookstore, and Tolle Lege Press are a family of websites that work together to promote the Christian worldview in thought, word, and deed to the online Christian community. It is our hope that you will join us in this cause by shopping at the Reformation Bookstore, joining the conversation each day in the comment section of Christian Reader, and telling others about these websites. Together we can make an impact far beyond what each of us can do on his own. Let’s make a difference and learn together by reading together. We must become Christian readers before we can become Christian thinkers, and we must become Christian thinkers before we can become Christian doers. This is our challenge, this is our calling…now let’s get to work.
Eric Rauch
Editor-in-Chief, Christian Reader.com
[1] Thomas Merton, Introduction to City of God (New York: Modern Library, [1950]1993), xiii.
What is Tolle Lege Press?
Tolle Lege Press was founded in January 2004 by a father-son team, Raymond Vallorani and Brandon Vallorani, to bring great Christian literature from the past back into print for the modern Church. Our publications are all produced with one mission and goal: advancing the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our flagship resource, the restored edition of the 1599 Geneva Bible, has sold over 30,000 copies since it was released in 2006. Since its founding, Tolle Lege Press has expanded to offer several additional resources which equip today’s Christian family with thought-provoking and Biblically-sound resources. The name Tolle Lege comes from St. Augustine’s autobiographical work Confessions. Translated from the Latin and pronounced “tol-lay lah-jhay,” it means, “take up and read.” Augustine used this phrase when relating his own conversion experience as he described how God used a sentence in the New Testament (Romans 13:13–14) to suddenly convert him:
But when a profound reflection had, from the secret depths of my soul, drawn together and heaped up all my misery before the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by as mighty a shower of tears . . . . I flung myself down, how, I know not, under a certain fig-tree, giving free course to my tears, and the streams of mine eyes gushed out, an acceptable sacrifice unto Thee. And, not indeed in these words, yet to this effect, spake I much unto Thee,— “But Thou, O Lord, how long?” How long, Lord? Wilt Thou be angry for ever? Oh, remember not against us former iniquities;” for I felt that I was enthralled by them. I sent up these sorrowful cries,— “How long, how long? Tomorrow, and tomorrow? Why not now? Why is there not this hour an end to my uncleanness?” I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo, I heard the voice as of a boy or girl, I know not which, coming from a neighbouring house, chanting, and oft repeating, “Take up and read; take up and read.” Immediately my countenance was changed, and I began most earnestly to consider whether it was usual for children in any kind of game to sing such words; nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So, restraining the torrent of my tears, I rose up, interpreting it no other way than as a command to me from Heaven to open the book, and to read the first chapter I should light upon . . . I grasped, opened, and in silence read that paragraph on which my eyes first fell,—“Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” No further would I read, nor did I need; for instantly, as the sentence ended,—by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart,—all the gloom of doubt vanished away.” —The Confessions of St. Augustine (Book 8, Chapter 12)
