Help! My Friend is Reading a Dangerous Book

Your friend is gushing about that book she’s been reading. It’s on the Christian Living bestseller list, but for whatever reason you suspect the book is more influenced by the spirit of the age than by a biblical worldview.

This is the scenario Noël Piper (author of Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God), Gloria Furman (author of Missional Motherhood [review]), and Kathleen Nielson (director of women’s initiatives for TGC and co-editor of Word-Filled Women’s Ministry) tackle in this new six-minute roundtable video.

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Piper talks about how to start a constructive conversation by asking good questions. Furman suggests steering friends with limited time to more edifying books. Nielson cautions against the overcorrection of reading only the Bible, since reading widely can actually enhance Bible reading, and Piper warns against becoming the kind of reader who only reads books from your own “tribe.”

Watch (or listen below) as these three women discuss how to foster spiritual discernment in reading through friendship.

Related:

You Are What You Read (audio) by Rosaria Butterfield
15 Discernment Diagnostics by Kevin DeYoung
Word-Filled Women’s Ministry edited by Kathleen Nielson and Gloria Furman
TGC Book Reviews

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In Tim Keller’s short ebook, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness: The Path To True Christian Joy, he explains how to overcome the toxic tendencies of our age一not by diluting biblical truth or denying our differences一but by rooting our identity in Christ.

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Kathleen Nielson is an author and speaker who loves working with women in studying the Scriptures. She has taught literature (PhD, Vanderbilt University), directed women’s Bible studies in local churches, and served as director of The Gospel Coalition’s women’s initiatives from 2010 to 2017. She and her husband, Niel, make their home partly in Wheaton, Illinois, and partly in Jakarta, Indonesia, where Niel helps lead a network of Christian schools and universities. They have three sons, three daughters-in-law, and nine grandchildren.

Noël Piper is wife of John Piper, mother of five, and grandmother of twelve. She is author of Treasuring God in Our Traditions.

Gloria Furman (MACE, Dallas Theological Seminary) is a wife, mother of four, cross-cultural worker, and writer. She lives in the Middle East where her husband, Dave, serves as the pastor of Redeemer Church of Dubai. She is the author of Glimpses of Grace: Treasuring the Gospel in Your Home (Crossway, 2013) and Missional Motherhood: The Everday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God (Crossway, 2016). You can read her blog at GloriaFurman.com.