Lit!

A Christian Guide to Reading Books

Tony Reinke

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781433522291
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Literatur & Kunst im Christentum

I love to read.
I hate to read.

I don't have time to read.
I only read Christian books.

I'm not good at reading.
There's too much to read.

Chances are, you've thought or said one of these exact phrases before because reading is important and in many ways unavoidable.

Learn how to better read, what to read, when to read, and why you should read with this helpful guide from accomplished reader Tony Reinke. Offered here is a theology for reading and practical suggestions for reading widely, reading well, and for making it all worthwhile.

1

Paper Pulp and Etched Granite

Laying the Cornerstone of Our Theology of Books

Commit yourself to the serious reading of books, and your life will be enlightened.

That’s a pretty straightforward promise, but let’s be honest, there is a warning as well: books will also complicate your life.

Consider the complexities we face by walking through a bookstore. Here’s how it typically works for me.

First, I start out excited. I’ve been looking forward to this trip to the bookstore because I need a great book. Before I even swing open the doors, I’m greeted by clearance books—hundreds of them—daring me to look at their discounted tags. What should I do? Should I give attention to these unsheltered books that got kicked to the curb? I’m suspicious. I do my best to ignore them, and suddenly feel the urge to whistle, look to the sky, and comment on the weather.

Once I’m inside the bookstore, a greater challenge awaits: the new releases. These books draw the most attention from shoppers and apparently draw the most money from their wallets (full retail price). But the browsing is good, and there are a lot of attractive book choices.

After picking up a few books (then setting them down again), I free myself from the new releases and convince myself that an older (and more proven) book would be a better investment. So I snake my way through the maze of head-down statues and find open spaces in the Christian book section. Very few of these titles are new to me. I pick up one or two and flip through the pages.

Before long, my curiosity draws me to the rural reaches of classic literature on shelves that reach to the heavens (do shoppers buy many books that are shelved nine feet off the floor?). Here in classic literature, the crowds have thinned, but the browsing is more daunting and incriminating. Many of these books are classics that I should have already read. I am shamed for my inattention in school.

My hanging head notices an eight-hundred–page Russian novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The book cover is beautifully designed, the book was translated into English with great care (according to a friend of mine), and the novel is reasonably priced. My eye has caught the spine of this book many times before, and I’ve nearly purchased it on several of my frequent trips to the bookstore. But it’s also a very thick book that asks me for a serious commitment. And I’m already married.

Now the questions are swirling in my mind: Which book should I buy? Should I buy a bargain book? A new release? A Christian book? A business book? A classic novel? Should I browse the entire bookstore? Should I buy one book or three for the price of two? Should I read only Christian books? Wait, did I just consider three books? What am I thinking? I hardly have the time to read one book!

Inhale. Exhale. Look to the ceiling. Reshelve Dostoyevsky.

Maybe I’ll buy a DVD and a pack of gum.

I have been overwhelmed in a bookstore. Eventually, we will address the practical matters of how to select and read great books. But before we talk about how to pick the right books and how to read them (chaps. 7–15), we need to develop some biblical and theological convictions about books, reading, and bookstores (chaps. 1–6).

Our journey begins in the dust, at the base camp of a desert mountain.

Base Camp

Somewhere around 1450 BC, on a remote Egyptian mountaintop called Mount Sinai, an author wrote something so earth-shaking that the publishing industry has never recovered. It never will.

But to appreciate this moment in literary history let me set the backstory. Several weeks before Mount Sinai appeared on the skyline, God had redeemed his people from slavery. We call this event “the exodus.” This exodus was so historic that it became the central salvation event in Old Testament history. Using an army of gnats, flies, locusts, and frogs—and with the help of widespread skin disease, hailstones, a bloodied river, the death of firstborn sons, and the divine power to split the sea—God pried his people out from the tight grip of the Egyptians. Israel was now a liberated people, on a mission to gather around a mountain and serve God together (Exodus 7–12).

The voyage to this mountain was not far, and the wait was not long. In three months Israel had packed up, bolted from Egypt, and arrived at the foot of the mountain—that mountain, Mount Sinai (Ex. 19:1).

This chosen mountain may have appeared like all the other mountains of the Sinai Peninsula—red, rocky, dry, and treeless—but it was not like all the rest. This mountain was chosen by God. It was holy. And under the threat of instant death, no man, woman, child, or red heifer dared touch it.

For two days, God’s people were to clean house and to purify themselves from all defilements. They were to bathe and wash their clothes and consecrate themselves and prepare to meet with God. On the third day, God would descend, and there they would meet together.

All was calm for two days.

On the morning of the third day, God descended.

God’s people rubbed the sleep from their eyes to behold a frightening sight. Tree-bare Mount Sinai was ablaze like a forest fire. The fire raged vertically into the heavens, and the heavens bombarded the mountaintop with thunder and lightning. The foundations of the mountain trembled and quaked. Loose rocks crackled and thudded down the mountainside. A thick, black cloud blanketed the scene.

God’s people locked their eyes on the explosive storm. It was hard to look away. Their mouths were wide and speechless, and their desert-cracked skin burned from the heat of the golden flames. Lightning flashes blinked off their clean robes. Fear quickened their hearts.

As the day progressed, the mountain roared with even greater ferocity. The fire grew white-hot, the quaking grew deafening, and lightning continued pounding the peak.

It was the sound and fury of a collision between heaven and earth, “a decisive moment in human history when the celestial and terrestrial realms are brought into panoramic engagement,” where “every sort of natural fireworks let loose, so that trembling seizes not only the people but the mountain itself.”¹

Especially now, no one dared approach the mountain. God’s people stood at the mountain base, iced with fear. But as the people stepped back in fear, Moses stepped forward in faith (Ex. 20:18). In the face of a blazing mountain covered in dark gloom, a mediator sounded like a very good idea. Someone could climb the mountain to represent the people. So Moses climbed into the “thick darkness where God was” (Ex. 20:21).

Moses climbed to meet with God, to worship, and to receive God’s words. Moses later recounted the experience in his autobiography:

When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. And the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the LORD had spoken with you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. (Deut. 9:9–10)

Moses climbed back down to the people with two tablets of the Ten Commandments under his arms. These words were permanent, eternal, and etched in stone by the very finger of God.

The One who created the cosmos by the word of his mouth in the beginning, the One who invented human language in Eden, the One who spread languages across the land at Babel, now put pen to paper—or finger to stone—and wrote. To this day, those words can be found in any major bookstore.

Many thousands of books would later be devoted to talking about God—proving God, doubting God, explaining God. But these stone tablets held God’s words. The day God ran his fingertip over the stone tablets was the day that he forever shaped the world of book publishing.

Written in Stone

In the world of books, the Bible is without equal. We see this in six of its qualities.

The Bible is inspired. God is the ultimate and final author of those two tablets, and every other word of Scripture has been breathed out from the mouth of God. The Bible is the product of God’s will (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:20–21).

The Bible is inerrant. It is true in everything it teaches. God’s Word is like silver that has been smelted sevenfold and is free of all impurities (Ps. 12:6). God’s words are always true, because God’s words are self-validating. God speaks, and his words shape and resolve what is true and good (see Gen. 1:1–31 and John 17:17).

The Bible is sufficient. It provides everything we need for faith, salvation, and godly living (2 Tim. 3:15–16).

The Bible is living and active. The Bible is composed of living and active words that revive dead hearts, rejoice broken hearts, and feed hungry souls (Matt. 4:4; 1 Cor. 1:21–24; Heb. 4:12; James 1:21).

The Bible is supreme. It contains the highest expressions of truth. Combine every book from every culture in human history and pile all those volumes into one vast library, and it cannot trump the supremacy of the life-giving truth in Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3–5).

The Bible offers us a coherent worldview. The Bible explains where we came from, where we are going, our biggest problems, and our greatest need. The Bible interprets the realities that affect us—both physical realities that we can see and spiritual realities that we cannot see (see Rom. 4:23–25 and Eph. 6:12).

Scripture is unique. It is eternal. It never contradicts itself. It needs no editing or revision. It is perfect (Ps. 19:7). When all else has disappeared, God’s word remains (Isa. 40:7–8). It lacks nothing. And it was all written by the same God who rocked Sinai.

Compost and Granite

The purpose of this book is to study reading from a Christian perspective. So how does Sinai change the way I scan rows of literature at the bookstore? What does a combustible mountaintop have to do with a classic novel by Dostoyevsky, a contemporary novel by Cormac McCarthy, the latest social insights by Malcolm Gladwell, the late...