Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books

by Tony Reinke

This is vital, because thinking deeply about the gospel is the only way to consistently feel deeply about the gospel. You cannot cultivate affection for the Savior without reading and studying the Word of God.

My prayer is that under his illuminating grace, God will be glorified as we read books full of his truth to be discovered, his goodness to be heeded, and his beauty to be cherished.

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.

Scripture is the ultimate grid by which we read every book. Scripture is perfect, sufficient, and eternal.

Discernment is the ability to do three things: the ability to “test everything,” to “hold fast what is good,” and to “abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thess. 5:21–22).

This trend is troubling because the immediate appeal of visual entertainment is at odds with the gradual unveiling of literary treasure.

It didn’t take long for Israel to abandon God’s Word in favor of a culturally-shaped image.

Words and images are both valuable because words and images both communicate meaning. But they do not communicate in the same way, or to the same degree. In fact, language is the more precise of the two.

Os Guinness: “The world of sight, the world of the eye, cannot take us beyond what is shown. Because sight can only go so far, it takes words and thought to give the real truth and meaning behind what is seen.”8

Christian poet T. S. Eliot wrote, “So long as we are conscious of the gulf fixed between ourselves and the greater part of contemporary literature, we are more or less protected from being harmed by it, and are in a position to extract from it what good it has to offer us.”13

But when a truth of Scripture is pulled out and warped in the hands of someone within the church, heresy is born. The resulting error is more dangerous than any error that originates outside the church.

So, too, our children—and those who are children in the faith—need time to grow the deep roots of a biblical worldview before being called to exercise that worldview against the force of culture displayed in non-Christian books.

Scientific discovery is a gift from God that should be put to good use, no matter the author.

If we neglect Scripture in order to read only other books, we not only cut ourselves from the divine umbilical cord that feeds our souls, we also cut ourselves from the truth that makes it possible for us to benefit from the truth, goodness, and beauty in the books that we read.

1. Reading Scripture 2. Reading to know and delight in Christ 3. Reading to kindle spiritual reflection 4. Reading to initiate personal change 5. Reading to pursue vocational excellence 6. Reading to enjoy a good story

A Sacrifice of Praise (edited by James Trott), on my nightstand.

First, look at the books you have read over the last twenty-four months that have benefitted your life. Create categories for those books. Second, include any category that you don’t currently read but would like to add, perhaps something mentioned in this chapter. By now you should have a list of two to five categories. Start small and be realistic. Third, begin making book selections informed by your reading priorities.

I encourage readers to write five to ten specific questions they would like the author to answer. By posing questions to a book before you begin, you establish an objective basis for why you are reading this book in the first place. As you read, those questions will make it easier to determine if the book is achieving this purpose.

Adler writes, “Every book has a skeleton hidden between its covers.”1 I am trying to x-ray for that skeletal structure.

Readers are tempted to dive right into the first pages, but it takes patience to x-ray a book. The time spent slowly inspecting a book is a rewarding investment. And this step has protected me from wasting time reading mediocre books!

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”2

Every nonfiction book has a skeleton, because it has been developed from a core thesis, a sentence to summarize the author’s main point.

If you can find the thesis for the book, underline it or put an asterisk in the margin. If you discover the thesis of a chapter, circle it and make a note of where you found it. Keep the thesis statement in the forefront of your mind, and watch how the author supports and defends it.

This is where the one hundred-pages-minus-your-age rule comes in handy. This rule states that readers should start with one hundred pages and subtract their age.

I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if the 1% of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the 99%.3

It takes discernment to evaluate what the author has written, but it requires advanced discernment to determine what the author has left unwritten.

The thoughts that linger in your mind about a book are the thoughts that you want to capture. Go back and write those thoughts in the inside cover of the book or in a notebook.

Fiction is art, and it must be handled differently from a business book.

Ryken’s book Realms of Gold: The Classics in Christian Perspective.14

“The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”2 The same is true of reading. Favorable conditions for reading books never come.

Book readers must work to sharpen their attention. Like marathon runners who train daily to stretch their endurance, book readers must discipline themselves to read one book for thirty to sixty or ninety minutes at a time, struggling to increase their mental concentration. This will be impossible unless there are times when we are unplugged from the fragmented distractions of life.

we must periodically gauge the effects of the Internet and social media upon our lives.