Johnson C. Philip - Top Ten Books That Transformed My Life

When I claim that the Bible is the number one book that transformed my life, you might respond and say, oh that is what every Christian automatically claims.

It might be true that many Christians have been trained and conditioned to claim that the Bible is the number one book in their lives; my claim is not because of this kind of conditioning. True, I was born in a highly devout Christian family where they made the Bible an essential component of every aspect of life. However, that is not how it became the number one book in my life. Nor did it transform me because of that conditioning. On the contrary, in spite of the best possible spiritual upbringing my appreciation for the Bible was only mechanical. There is nothing strange about that because unless a person experiences a book, the appreciation for it would only be mechanical or merely mental.

For example, I always had a collected works of William Shakespeare and it was displayed prominently in my library. Visitor to my library were greatly impressed with my taste in such books, but only I knew that the volume makes no sense to me. Then finally I met a man who was in love with the works of Shakespeare. He started explaining Shakespeare and his works to me, starting with the well-known expression To be or not to be is the question. Phrases that were once strange and meaningless to once started taking a different color. Eventually the works of William Shakespeare became totally live and vibrant to me, and my love for Shakespeare was no longer mechanical. A similar transformation took place in my life in relation the Bible, and that is how the Bible became book number one, and the most transforming book in my life.

I accepted Christ as my Savior when I was 5. Since the age of two I was made to memorize Bible verses and that was the only contact I had with the Bible. Bibles were every costly in nineteen fifties, and most families had only one Bible. Children were not given access to this family treasure. When I was 15, my dad brought me my first Bible using a book-coupon that someone had given him. He was not a great lover of books and that how I got my Bible accidentally. But I was on the verge of becoming a backslider, and the addition of a Bible in my own language to my book collection did not make any difference. By the time I was 18, I was a total agonistic and the Bible was of no real consequence to me, though I was a highly spiritual boy according to everyone. Then something most unexpected happened in my life.

As the pangs of agnosticism kept haunting me, a most unexpected book came into my possession in a most unexpected manner. As to what book it was, and why this particular book transformed, please wait till you come to the chapter on that book. As I started reading this book, it started to solve the problems I had in my mind one by one.

Gradually I started to realize that the Bible is definitely Gods word and that it can definitely bless me. THAT is the time when the Bible became the first book in my life. That was a full thirteen years after I had accepted Christ and a full eighteen years after I was born in a God-fearing family. Thus the Bible became the first and foremost book in my life not because I was trained to consider it as the first book, but rather because at this stage this book started to transform me in unusual ways. It helped me to order my priorities, see the word from a totally new perspective. The Bible also helped me to understand the past, present, and future of human history.

What started more than four decades ago as an intelligent and conscious commitment to the Bible continue to remain firm even up to this day. In turn, this book continues to transform my life, outlook and hope even today. That is why for me the Bible is the first a book in my life and also the most important book in my life. That did not happen overnight. It was a long many months of transformation, induced when the book I mention next came most unexpectedly into my life