100 Books Like Surprised by Hope

This book helped me release shame after a colleague of mine told me my work wasn’t “science.”

Here’s the truth: to create a healing platform, I needed to tap into ways of thinking that academia sees as “woo woo” and “savage.” I looked to the stars. I meditated. I did rituals and read myths.

Dr. Kimmerer, trained as a traditional botanist, realized that the Indigenous myths and stories she was told as a child contained scientific knowledge passed down for generations by her tribe.

She realized there were scientific truths her community knew for millennia that traditional scientists only discovered within the last 100 years. This is the power of Ancestral Intelligence, disregarded by the same science that ultimately created AI.

What stories, fables, and myths have taught you valuable lessons about the world?

I’m so not a country gal! No to ‘roughing it’. No to the scenic hikes and the bugs that got under my socks and inside my shirt! And the bear I thought I saw crossing the road ahead of me and my friend. So to love Mary Oliver’s poetry of nature came as a great surprise.

Her observational poems bring me to another space. One where there is a curiosity about things I might take for granted: bogs, streams, mushrooms, owls. Her poems bring calm and are soothing when you’re having a painful knee. Mary Oliver almost makes me want to go on a long walk. Well almost!

This book was my gateway into Christian climate action 16 years ago.

When my older brother came home from a semester abroad in New Zealand and told my conservative Christian family that he was now a vegetarian because of his environmental convictions, he handed me this book to help me understand why.

It was the first time that I was given permission to engage pollution, environmental destruction, and climate change because of my faith, rather than in spite of it. Nothing has ever been the same.

I love that Rah calls lament prophetic because it shines a light on the hard realities of pain or injustice. I needed to hear lament described as a conversation that happens best in communities hoping to be heard and helped by the Divine.

Rah is a professor and pastor, allowing him to bring intellectual rigor and empathy to his work. The book was born of a teaching series whose goal was to make room for stories of struggle instead of focusing, as American evangelicals typically do, on success and positivity.

This book traces through the songs of lament that make up the Book of Lamentations and honors the fact that sometimes laments end in minor key since they refuse to bury, bypass, or force a happy ending.

B. J. Oropeza’s 99 Reasons Why No One Knows When Christ Will Return was written in 1994 when there was rampant speculation in some circles that the year 2000 would be prophetically significant. Nevertheless, the book remains a worthwhile corrective against end-times speculation and date setting. Each of his reasons deals with popular speculations concerning the soon-appearing of Christ. Each reason is concisely stated (1-3 pages, except for reason 40 concerning the return of Israel to Palestine [5 pages]). Oropeza deals with multiple reasons why date-setting is counterproductive and concludes with a chapter on what we can know about the future and guidelines for interpreting prophecy. While somewhat dated, the book is enjoyable and makes one shake one’s head that people could have had such bizarre eschatological views.

The issue of eschatology, and the so-called “millennium” in particular, are the subject of multiple, often wacky, interpretations. Stanley Grenz’s The Millennial Maze cuts through the nonsense. His is one of the best comparative analyses by a single author of the major millennial views. He looks at the history of millennial thought and the development of postmillennialism, historic and dispensational premillennialism, and amillennialism, which he characterizes as, respectively, essentially optimistic, pessimistic, and realistic outlooks concerning eschatology. His approach is irenic, and he notes the virtues that each view brings toward our overall view of eschatology. In short, Grenz’s book is a good and balanced introduction to the subject.

One of the best ways to deal with controversial subjects is the “point-counterpoint” method of having a proponent of each major view state his or her own position and then be critiqued by proponents of other views. The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views does just that, utilizing the following proponents: George Eldon Ladd, historic premillennialism; Herman Hoyt, dispensational premillennialism; Loraine Boettner, postmillennialism; and Anthony Hoekema, amillennialism. The book is compact enough so as not to be intimidating for the general reader, yet the major points of each view and critique are sufficiently articulated. While this is a good introduction to the subject, Hoyt’s and Boettner’s presentations are, in my opinion, considerably weaker than Ladd’s and Hoekema’s. 

I love this story of hope and the resurrection of civilization after a human-caused disaster. The story reminded me of the fundamental goodness of people and their need for connection, both to each other and to something bigger than themselves to which they can belong.

It’s also the story of a man who stumbles into a new life and of the growth within himself of his own sense of value and purpose. In the midst of all the darkness and malevolence around us, it speaks to us of the profound aspirations and truths of human life.

Some of the big topics within Bible prophecy are the Great Tribulation Period with the Antichrist at the helm, and whether Bible believers will be raptured before or after this period of distress. The authors tackle this tough question with sound biblical evidence to support their claims.

Unfortunately, their findings go against many popular opinions of the modern Church and there is great debate amongst believers about the Rapture. This is why their book is very important to provide much needed information for those who hold differing views.

I love a book that makes me laugh. But if I immediately feel guilty or disturbed for laughing, if the story makes me re-examine my values page after page, that is a home run.

This – the first of the Dancers at the End of Time series of books and short stories – had me pondering the boundaries of scientific reality as well as right versus wrong while also being galactically entertained.

The (objectively awful) main characters are time- and space-hopping immortals. Virtually all-powerful, they can change their own appearance and environment at will. When one of them decides to experiment with the concept of Love…everything, and nothing, starts to change.

A vicious, delicious satire of unchecked indulgence that tests the bounds of good taste.