Carl Wells Books

Inspired by Bob Russell’s thought-provoking book After 50 Years of Ministry: 7 Things I’d Do Differently & 7 Things I’d Do the Same, I spent the last two weeks listing things I would do differently in my life, if I could. Now it is time to list a few things I would do the same.

1/I worked at physical labor about 30 years. Sometimes it was work that I did not really like, other times work that I enjoyed. On the whole it was probably a good thing that I worked at physical labor so long. I didn’t earn a lot, but I earned enough to live comfortably and to save and invest. One can be a physical laborer and still be interested in books and ideas. Why not? There is no logical reason one would not be able to read and think, just because one works with one’s hands for one’s living. That said, I am glad that the last 20 plus years my work has been less physical–a clerk in a retail establishment. The older I get the less ability I have to do physical labor. So it is great that I was able to do less physically challenging work in recent decades. I have considered alternative careers I might have done. I might have been an accountant. I might have become a lawyer–I have theories about how I might have earned a living at that to the potential benefit not only of myself but also of others. Those would not have necessarily been bad choices. But I am content that I worked at physical labor so long. It had certain advantages, psychologically.

2/I said at #3 of May 17 that I would read more. Here I would say that there are two things I like about the way I did my reading. A/I would continue to reread books I loved. Yes, if I had not read Pride and Prejudice 22 times, I would have more time to read other things. But it was for the good of my soul that I read P & P 22 times. I needed multiple readings. If I keep living, I will continue to reread lots of books that have meant a great deal to me. B/I am glad I had a catholic taste in my reading–that is, a wide range of interests. Yes, this might have kept me from doing concentrated reading on one particular topic, but only because I didn’t often budget my time to do concentrated reading on a topic. Over one stretch of three plus years, I did concentrated reading on a topic, and still had enough time to do other reading. So my wide-ranging reading was not a problem even if I had to do reading on something particular. It was all a matter of budgeting time wisely. The benefits of reading outside a narrow range have been immense. It’s a big world out there.

3/If I had it to over again, I would gladly manage my money the same way. I knew by my early twenties that I would never make the big bucks, so it behooved me to plan carefully what I did with the money I earned. I lived pretty simply, without ever being in want the slightest bit. Early on as a Christian I came to the conclusion that tithing was required of me. As other people have told me, the tithe is a “blessing.” Correct. The tithe is more central to Christianity than most people realize. Christians average giving about 2.5% of their increase to the church–one-quarter of what God requires. (See the website emptytomb.) If we cannot do better than one-quarter of what we are supposed to be doing in the easiest category of all, giving, is it any surprise that we Christians as a whole are so disobedient in the weightier provisions of the law? (Matthew 23:23) Granted, tithing is relatively easy for me, since apparently I have the gift of giving. (Romans 12:8) It comes naturally for me, whereas for other people it no doubt is more of a struggle if they don’t have the gift of giving. But giving is something that can be cultivated and improved. The church as a whole is missing a blessing by being unwilling to tithe. I’m glad I budgeted my money carefully and glad that I tithed, and glad that I have kept a written record of my income and outgo for many decades.

4/If I had it to do over again, I would continue to not try to be a computer guru. I am not mechanical. I am not good with computers. This of course sometimes causes problems for me. Frequently I am able to survive my computer woes only because of the help of friends. One beloved Christian friend, addressing my lack of computer competence, told me, “Carl, you’ve published a dozen books . . . and I don’t know how.” Well, partly through his help, of course. Yes, it might have made my life easier if I had been more mechanical, but I don’t have a gift for it. It doesn’t disappoint me as much as it should. Maybe my conscience is seared on the topic.

5/I would continue to view high school sports a lot in person. As I noted in regard to things I would do differently, I would cut back on television sports and magazine sports. But I would not cut back on attending high school games in person. It got me out of the house, at the worst. I have always enjoyed sports, from my earliest days. I wouldn’t change the part of my life that got me to lots of high school sports events.

6/Once again I would keep a written record of my reading. I started doing that in the early 1970s. My only regret is that I did not start earlier. I wish I had started with the first book I read when I was a child. Probably I would revise the way I recorded my reading slightly. I would record magazine reading I had done. But keeping a written record of books read has been a fun exercise for me.

7/Once again I would keep a written record of my sleeping. I started that in December of 1986. My only regret is that I did not start earlier in my life.

8/If I had it to do over, I would once again read the Bible a lot, continuing to keep a written record of my reading. I would continue to record every complete reading of the Bible which I have done. I believe one can be a good Christian without a lot of Bible knowledge. But I think that the more we read the Bible the more we begin to understand the nature of God, and to understand what He requires and wants from us. As much a reader as I am by nature, Bible reading does not come easily for me. It is still work, still a duty, still something I have to discipline myself to do rather than something I do with great pleasure. This could be because I am a rotten Christian, or maybe it could be because the Bible really is a challenging book for most of us to read. It challenges us intellectually and morally. Reading the Bible is work for me, but the work is repaid in benefits to me. Multiple readings of the Bible eventually taught me that God deals with us covenantally, and also corporately. I think I have learned a lot about what is good, what is evil, and how the world is put together by God. And though Bible reading is difficult for me, it also has allowed me to get to know a lot of interesting people, such as Jonah the grumpy prophet/evangelist. I would definitely read the Bible over and over, as I have since my conversion. If I had been converted at an earlier age, I would have started serious Bible reading at an earlier age as well.

There we have it–a few things about my life that I would do basically the same if I had it all to do over again. Lots of things I would change (see May 17, 2018, and May 24, 2018), but a few things I would keep on doing.

Inspired by famed pastor Bob Russell’s book on things he would do differently, and things he would do the same, I am making a list for myself along the same lines. Last week I listed nine things I would do differently, if I could. Here are a few more of those.

10/I would be more aggressive in seeking investment opportunities. I never earned much, but I was a good saver. I invested pretty well in property, but could have done considerably better. I am thinking now of one particular time when I had the chance to inspect a property. It would have meant giving up a couple hours of free time. I turned down the chance to look at the property, because I was too leisure-oriented. I just wanted the free time rather than to do the slightly time-consuming work of examining the property. I suspect I turned down a winning investment. Multiply that episode by four or five other opportunities, and it becomes clear that I was leaving a serious amount of potential income on the table. We are told that time-preference is a good indication of class. Too often I displayed that I was not aristocratic or even middle-class enough! My time-preference was not good enough. It wasn’t horrible, because I did save and invest pretty well compared to most people, but it could have been much better. The point is not that I could have become wealthy. (That was never likely.) The point is that by having a time-preference showing a stronger willingness to delay immediate gratification for future benefit, I could have bought more time to read and to write.

11/If I could do it differently, I would be much more of a people person, more determined to take an interest in others. I would be more active in showing agape love to others. Agape love is the kind that wants the best for other people, even when we don’t like them. We can love our enemies, even if we hate them. (Matthew 5:43-48) I would work harder at getting to know other people, to care about them. I don’t mean just to get to know like-minded people (see #8 and #9 from last week), but to work at caring about all the people I come in contact with, even people with whom I have no particular natural sympathy. I would want to be a bigger person emotionally. I think this can be done without compromising one’s core principles. I needed to be less self-absorbed, more willing to be interested in other people.

12/I would have become more determined to self-publish books at a much earlier age. I have published 15 books, but I think that intellectually I was capable of 30, or even of 45. However, I really don’t want to be too hard on myself in this category. I was diffident about whether my books were really worth doing. Diffidence in general is not a bad trait–usually we could use more of it than we have. I am sure many people, if they read my books, would say that my diffidence would have been better rewarded had I published zero books rather than 15. Maybe I should have been much more diffident than I was! But I came to a point in my life–encroaching years concentrate the mind–where I knew that my books were not going to get published unless I went the self-publishing route. At that point I had to make a decision. I decided I should go ahead with them, that I would never rest comfortably in my grave (or during my remaining years on the earth) if I didn’t publish what I had written. It is a decision I have never regretted. Had I made that decision at an earlier age, I might have a much longer list of published books. Since I like all 15 of my books (and the sixteenth one is shaping up as one of my best!), I am guessing I would have liked the 15 or 30 books I could have published but didn’t. So, all things considered, I think I would have been much better off to have begun self-publishing about a decade and a half earlier than I did. Of course it doesn’t really matter what I think. I think the books are good, but I would think that, wouldn’t I? If the books are of little or no value (or possibly even of negative value), it doesn’t matter that I got a late start. However, if the books have some reasonable value, then I contributed only one-half or one-third of what I could have contributed, which is a shame. Rightly or wrongly, I wish I had started self-publishing earlier.

13/If I could do it over again, I would not have joined one particular church when I did. However, this is not a slam-dunk improvement in my life. It was a good church, and I was not acting with vicious intent. I knew I needed to be under the authority of a good Bible-believing church (which it certainly was). However, part of what they required of me, for me to become a member, was an unbiblical requirement. Their reasoning was plausible, but couldn’t really stand the light of day. I went along with the unbiblical requirement. With the benefit of hindsight, I believe this was a poor decision on my part. The results were not tragic. It was, as I say, a good Bible-believing church. But it would have been better not only for me, but for the church as it existed then, if I had politely refused to compromise on the issue when I sensed them to be in the wrong. If we always do the right thing, consequences are better than if we do the wrong thing, even if we do the wrong thing for reasons that seem practical and plausible. We all would have had better consequences had I turned down the opportunity to join the church right then.

Well, those are a few things in my life I would do differently if I could. Hindsight gets a bad press, but I have a vast fondness for hindsight. We can learn from hindsight, how not to do things in the future. If anyone reading this can learn from my bad example, and can avoid making similar mistakes, that would be very pleasing to me. All hail hindsight!

Next week I hope to list a few things that I would do the same way all over again. It’s a shorter list, but I’ll make it stretch out to last for one full blog post.

In October and November of 2017 I devoted four blog posts to Bob Russell’s book After 50 Years of Ministry: 7 Things I’d Do Differently & 7 Things I’d Do the Same. It is a wonderful book, and I would recommend it to anyone, Christian or non-Christian. It would be especially helpful to potential pastors, or to pastors at any stage of their ministry, but I think almost anyone to the right of Josef Stalin would get much good out of Mr. Russell’s book.

Inspired by Mr. Russell’s example, I am looking back on my own life and thinking about things I would do differently (if I could) and things I would do the same. This week I’ll start with some things I would do differently. They are in no particular order, but I will list a couple of big ones to start with.

1/I would be a better son to my (late) father. There were wrongs on both sides. God will sort out who was most at fault. My conscience hints that it was often me who was most at fault. If I had been a better, more generous-spirited Christian toward him, my example might have helped him in his own struggle with life. At the worst, he would have known that I loved him. One thing I particularly regret is that I put a stop to our occasional but regular visits to musical performances at a local university. My motive at the time was not vicious–I wanted to have more time to devote to research for a book that was important to me. But it was a foolish, ridiculous decision. I could have budgeted my time sufficiently to allow for those outings. We both loved those outings. May God and my father forgive me for that decision. My father was a man of strong virtues and strong faults. If I could go back and do things differently, I would be a vastly more loving and respectful son. May he, through Jesus Christ, rest in peace.

2/I would be a far more godly, less sinful person. This is a catchall category. I certainly won’t list specific sins or specific abiding faults, or we would be here all day. (The true motive of course is that I have not the slightest intention of revealing the worst of myself in print.) Long experience has taught me–rightly or wrongly taught me, as Bertie Wooster would say–that the biggest enemy we have is our own sinfulness. That at least is true for me. “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” (Hebrews 12:4) Bullseye, for me. Too often, I haven’t put up much of a fight. If I could do things differently, I would strive much more diligently to be a more godly person, to put up some kind of fight against personal sinfulness.

3/I would read more than I have. I have read a lot, but it is not enough. I wish I had read twice as many books, or three times as many. Or four times as many. There is so much to learn out there. I could be a much better informed person than I am, and could have read a lot more good fiction. (Even not so good fiction can be pretty good.)

4/I would watch less TV sports, and read less sports magazines. This goes along with #3, I suppose. Watching less TV sports, etc., would have freed me up to read more.

5/I would run fewer miles. It was great to be in shape, but not at the cost of so much time. I suppose I was trying to compensate for the overall failure of my life–I was trying to be good at something. Understandable, but still not a wise decision. I should have run enough to be in good shape, but should have limited the time expended on that so that I could read more. (See #3.)

6/If I could do it differently, I would be converted at a much earlier age. The earlier the better. As it was, I was in my mid-20s before I became a Christian. Of course, better late than never. Maybe, in the providence of God, it was better for me to experience misery enough to drive me to Christ in my mid-20s. If so, fine.

7/I would realize at a much earlier age that I was not a good candidate to be a husband/father. I should have been more objective and clear-thinking about that. I realize it now, but now I am pretty old. I could have realized it three or four decades ago. I can be a bit slow–three or four decades slow.

8/I would be much more aggressive in making new friends, in seeking interesting and like-minded people. I would do this even with the knowledge that most new relationships with people do not work out over the long haul. As a friend of mine has pointed out, if you go to bat one time and strike out, that is not a very large sample. Even Mickey Mantle may strike out, if only one at bat is his sample You have to bat ten or a hundred times. Then you might see some progress. I could have done a much better job of getting to know new people. That would have helped me greatly, I think. It could have helped other people as well.

9/I would have followed the man in the barber shop outside, and tried to get to know him. I think he could have been a friend. This is a specific example of #8. I sensed that this was a person I needed to get to know, but out of cowardice didn’t act on my instinctive knowledge. I wrote about this episode at length in Chapter 44 of my book The Way to Do a Thing Is to Do It: Essays. No family should be without three or four copies of this book. Available at the usual places, including from me via this website.

Next week I will plan to continue with a few more things I’d do differently, if I could. When those run out, I will list a few things I would do the same.

A few days ago I was in a veterinary clinic examination room. (No, I wasn’t the one being examined.) The people at the clinic thoughtfully had left a few magazines there, to help the two-footed among us have something to while away the time while we waited for the doctor. One of the magazines would probably be called a slick women’s magazine. I picked it up.

Somehow (providentially, perhaps) I stumbled on a short review of a recent book. The book was written by a male, published by mainstream and major publisher. The reviewer was a woman. The book was a novel about a woman who was plausibly linked to a school shooting in which large numbers of people were killed and wounded. She was in no way involved, except by coincidences that made it seem like she might be involved. The novel covered what happened to the woman after the shooting.

The reviewer liked the novel very much. The heroine “ultimately refuses to succumb” to “the collective hysteria.”

The reviewer says, ‘At a public meeting, she urges the town to dig a massive hole and bury the country’s firearms, arguing that peace is the only acceptable memorial for victims of violence. Like the Parkland survivors, she recognizes that silence is complicity, as is sticking to the same “solutions”: prayer, paranoia, and more guns.’

I haven’t read the book. Today I went to the publisher’s website, and there were excerpts from 14 reviews. The excerpts were unanimously glowing in their praise of the book and author. I went to Amazon, and there were another 19 reviews. The reviews were universally favorable, ranging from three stars (out of five) to (mostly) five stars.

I don’t want to read the book. The author may be a gifted writer. Maybe I am simply a grumpy old man. My grumpiness may be increased by the fact that I have to publish my books at my own expense, not being paid by a well-known publisher who likes my work enough to publish it at his expense. Plus, my books don’t get reviewed. I can’t even get reviewed on Amazon by friends and acquaintances. So maybe everything I say here is just envious sour grapes from a failed writer.

Still, I have to wonder. Digging a massive hole and burying the country’s firearms? That is going to stop mass shootings? That is a solution?

This kind of solution seems to me to be a form of magical thinking buttressed by self-righteous virtue signalling. You don’t like schoolchildren being murdered? Recommend burying the country’s guns. That will fix the problem. And if you don’t think it will fix it, clearly you are some kind of heartless conservative. You are paranoid, you are probably a Christian who prays, and you want there to be even more guns so more children can get killed.

Here I’ll make a wager. I wouldn’t bet the ranch on this–heck, a bet of more than a dollar makes me break out in a cold sweat, even when I have a sure thing–but I will wager that both the novelist and the reviewer are pro-abortion liberals. They are completely clueless that abortion is murder. They are cheerfully “complicit” in the murder of 57,000,000 unborn children in this country.

The reason I am willing to make such a wager is that I know how liberals think. People who live in a fantasy world about gun control are likely to live in a fantasy world about lots of other things. Which is exactly what we find in the real world–liberals living in a fantasy world on issue after issue.

I don’t want to be someone who just complains–as much as I enjoy complaining, I don’t want that to be all I do–so here are a few potential solutions to gun violence which kills schoolchildren.

1/Educate your children at home. Public education is a horrible aspect of socialism. You don’t have a moral right to force your neighbor to pay for your children’s education. Get your kids out of public schools. Put them in Christian schools or teach them at home.

2/Learn to use guns safely, and teach your children to do the same. Encourage your church to make this a constant focus. There are men at your church who would be good at setting up such programs and leading them.

3/Stop trusting the civil authorities. Many of them are clueless. (Some of them are evil.) The Parkland shooter was well known to the authorities. They were warned, over and over. They did nothing to stop what was coming. Granted, you may be fortunate in the quality of your local authorities, but don’t take a chance. The authorities bring you Waco. They bring you Ruby Ridge. They bring you preemptive wars that kill innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria.

4/Help build a brand of Christianity that is biblical and covenantal. (But I repeat myself.) Pietist antinomianism is killing the church. If we don’t change the quality of our Christianity, we are “complicit” in destroying Christian civilization. We need to learn to love more, according to what the Bible says is love. That will elevate the quality of our Christianity. It ain’t easy, but it is doable.

5/Begin to understand that you personally are very important in how world history plays out. Sure, you’re only one person or at best one family, but example is important. We never know how much one person can accomplish. I’ve used these examples over and over, but that doesn’t make them less true: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was one person, Ron Paul was one person, the little slave girl was one person (2 Kings 5:1-19), Jeremiah was one person. Each made an enormous difference for good in world history. God can use one person greatly, and often does so. Maybe we will make very little difference in our quiet backwaters, but “very little difference” is a lot better than no difference. Become a better Christian, and maybe God can use you more.

6/Consider the possibility that the country needs to break up into many smaller units. Let the liberals do their thing without let or hindrance–in their numerous and large countries. But also let the crazy paranoid among us have our few and small places where we make fools out of ourselves without costing the liberals any money, or any worry, at all. Wouldn’t both sides be happier? The liberals could bury all the firearms (except the ones the authorities have to keep everybody safe). The Christian conservatives could fire their weapons and kill each other off down to the last man. Everyone is happy, or at least gets what he deserves. What’s not to like?

I wonder. I think our love of ease is at war with our need to be productive. Maybe we don’t have a “need to be productive,” but then again maybe we do.

Theodore Dalyrmple is an English writer, formerly a doctor and psychiatrist, who has written many thought-provoking books. He continues to turn out essays and books and the occasional work of fiction. (He, at least, definitely feels a need to be productive.) In one of his books, If Symptoms Still Persist (1996; currently expensive on the Internet with the best price $16.90 shipping included at Amazon), he discusses something very addictive:

“There is, however, one thing known to me which is so utterly addictive that it confounds all human attempts to counteract its effects. I refer, of course, to the payment of Sickness Benefit, the very life-blood (to change the metaphor slightly) of hypochondriasis. How many invalids has it created, how many new and incurable illnesses has it spawned! The arrival of smallpox in the New World was scarcely more devastating in its effect on the health of the population. The British have as little resistance to the Sickness Benefit sickness as the Indians to smallpox” (p. 149)

I think he is on to something, and what he says of course applies not just to the British, but to all of us, Americans included. Pay us to stay at home and do nothing, and we are quickly addicted to such payments. This is true of every form of welfare payment.

So clearly most of us do not have an absolute need to be productive. We are readily willing to do nothing if we are paid to do nothing.

But, on the other hand, when we do nothing it works to destroy our character. At our deepest level, we do need to be productive–or we pay such an enormous price in psychological devastation that we are in a sense ruined for life. Most of us are certainly willing to pay that enormous price! I am not disagreeing with Mr. Dalrymple in the slightest. I am just saying that if we fail to recognize that we need to be productive, we end up harming ourselves (and of course others) to a tremendous extent.

Here is a thought experiment for you. You are offered $1,000.00 a week, tax free, for life. The only catch is that you are permitted to do nothing of value. You are permitted to entertain yourself, to read, to buy food, to exercise (but not run races which allowed you to compete with other people). Also if you exercise you cannot pick up any trash. You can’t have a job to earn money. You can’t mow the lawn or do other yard work; you could afford to hire it done. You cannot comment on Internet websites. You can’t run a Bible study, or try to help someone with biblical advice.

Such a life has its attractions! I would love to have more time to exercise and to read and to watch DVDs. But wouldn’t the price I pay be too great? If I read good things, that is wonderful. But I couldn’t tell anyone else about them. I couldn’t quote Mr. Dalrymple, or write about him on this (suddenly non-existent) website. I think I would be vastly frustrated.

I am better off, psychologically, to be earning a small income by doing work, to be at least trying to write productively, to be struggling to balance work and leisure, than I would be to be paid $52,000.00 a year tax free to do nothing. And you, I suspect, are just about like me.

We are all tempted by freebies we don’t deserve, and usually we fall. But it destroys us. God knows it destroys Christians just as it destroys non-Christians. God knows, and warned against it. The book of Proverbs is full of warnings about laziness. Here is Paul on the topic:

“For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone will not work, neither let him eat. For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10-12)

The fact that we are to work and pay our own way is just, but it is not only justice which is at stake here. When we are unwilling to work, we reduce ourselves. We are lying to ourselves about how reality is put together. We are willing to be parasites, rather than someone productive. That changes us, and not for the better.

Work is a very good thing. God gave Adam work to do–before the fall. (Genesis 2:15) Even if we had not fallen, it would be good for us to work. I suspect that in the afterlife we also will have work to accomplish. Being productive is something which is a psychological benefit for us. We can and usually do find a way to make our neighbor work while we loaf–witness the politicians we vote for with the hope that they will redistribute stuff to us away from our neighbor–but we really work (pun belatedly intended) against our own best interests when we fall to that temptation. Infinitely better for us is a life in which we work for a tiny income (even less than the minimum wage, if necessary), but we work. The Sickness Benefit is indeed addictive, but like most addictions, destructive to our well-being.