More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
1. Non-Christian Literature Can Describe the World, How It Functions, and How to Subdue It
2. Non-Christian Books Highlight Common Life Experiences
3. Non-Christian Books Can Expose the Human Heart
Non-Christian literature that deals honestly with sin and evil can be useful in the church. It can help pastors better understand the heart and it can help all Christians sympathize with the despair of those who are enslaved to sin and remain under God’s wrath.
4. Non-Christian Books Can Teach Us Wisdom and Valuable Moral Lessons
clear—the holy nation of Israel in the Old Testament made use of the available pagan wisdom. “The openness to learning from the wisdom of other peoples reflects the theological conviction that the God of Israel is God of all nations and of all of life,” writes theologian John Goldingay.
Throughout history Christians have appreciated portions of non-Christian wisdom, not because Christians have a high view of human authors, but because they have an exalted appreciation for the Giver who is the source of all moral goodness, even the moral goodness perceived in the conscience of a pagan writer (Rom. 2:14–16).12 5. Non-Christian Books Can Capture Beauty
Our freedom to enjoy the aesthetic beauty of non-Christian literature does not require us to first endorse the author’s worldview or personal ethical choices.
6. Non-Christian Literature Begs Questions That Can Only Be Resolved in Christ
Here Paul quotes directly from two pagan poets (v. 28). The Greek poet Epimenides provides the first: “In him we live and move and have our being.” Stoic poet Aratus provides the second quote: “For we are indeed his offspring.” It appears both excerpts are taken from pagan poems written to exalt Zeus.16
Yet in both instances, Paul uses the poetic excerpts constructively, finding in them an echo of spiritual truth about God and about the nature of our relationship to him as our Creator.
7. Non-Christian Books Can Echo Spiritual Truth and Edify the Soul
The pagan prayer was instructive, and Calvin felt the freedom to use it to instruct Christians. Like Plato we often pray for things that would destroy us, if we got them. Plato teaches the Christian to depend upon the Holy Spirit even in our requests.
In non-Christian works we discover what is so close, and yet so far away, from what we read in the Bible. The challenge is to make use of the “so close” for our edification and for the glory of God while being aware of the “yet so far away.”
The Christian reader must simply treasure whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, or praiseworthy (Phil. 4:8)—wherever it is found. If a Christian reader is attuned to the whisper of the Giver, he will hear that whisper in some very unexpected places.
God has given us the ability to “see” in our minds things that we have never experienced.
The primary sense of imagination (seeing in our minds what we’ve seen before) is a skill that we probably share with other creatures. The secondary sense of imagination (seeing in our minds what we’ve never experienced) is a distinctly human skill. Some might say it’s a spiritual skill.1
This divine imagination, this ability to see the unseen, is a skill God has given us for our spiritual profit. Without an active imagination, a good bit of the Bible will be hard to read, difficult to understand, and impossible to appreciate.
For all its imaginative elements, the story unmasks why the church is persecuted in this world. Behind the angry hate from government officials toward the Messiah, and behind the vented hostility of sinners toward the church, runs a satanic undercurrent.
By using fantasy and engaging our imagination, God can reveal forces, communities, and struggles in a way that straightforward language cannot.
In an essay, C. S. Lewis wrote, “For me reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”6 Using fantasy in literature does not make a story fictitious; it’s often a more forceful way to communicate truth.
But God expects readers to heed the imagery. And here is where I get tripped up. Heed what? What exactly are the application points for a seven-eyed and seven-horned Jesus? What is the application point for a bloodthirsty red dragon? What are the application points for other images in Revelation—like a demonic leviathan rising from the sea with ten horns, seven heads, the mouth of a lion, the feet of a bear, and a raw, fatal wound (13:1–10)?
The imagination-stretching images are God’s way of sliding the spiritual defibrillator over the slowing hearts of sluggish Christians.
When idolatry begins to lure the Christian heart, God reaches into our imagination with images intended to stun us back to spiritual vibrancy.
The images give us eternal focus and cause us to reevaluate our priorities. The images fuel our zeal to kill personal sin, keep us alert to the purity of the local church, inform our counsel for fellow sinners, deepen our love for the lost, make us diligent in prayer, disgust us with personal idolatry, dissatisfy us with worldliness, and stir a longing in our hearts for Christ’s return.
To view imaginative literature as a genre fit only for the amusement of children is an act of spiritual negligence.
Imaginative literature—the kind of literature that invites us to see in our imaginations what we cannot see with our eyes—is an important part of the Christian’s literary diet. It challenges our idols. It challenges what is false and trivial in our lives.
For every one book that you choose to read, you must ignore ten thousand other books simply because you don’t have the time (or money!).
So how do we decide what one book to read? Or maybe more importantly, how do we determine which ten thousand books to reject?
The bottom line is that no single book should receive more attention in our lives than Scripture.
I structure my reading along these priorities: 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
I regularly plunge my soul in solid theology books about the person and work of Christ.3 I bathe my mind in the theological works of a few dead theologians—Calvin, Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Herman Bavinck, and Geerhardus Vos.
And I immerse my soul into the works of contemporary authors like J. I. Packer, D. A. Carson, John Stott, R. C. Sproul, John Piper, Jerry Bridges, and C. J. Mahaney.
I keep on hand a storehouse of able Christian novelists like C. S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, Marilynne Robinson, and Walter Wangerin.
Like no other genre, poetry can quickly stir our hearts to spiritual reflection, so it’s no surprise that God included so much poetry in the Bible. Along with King David, some of my favorite poets in church history include John Donne, George Herbert, Anne Bradstreet, T. S. Eliot, Isaac Watts, and Geoffrey Chaucer.
Christians are to work as though their boss is the Lord himself (Col. 3:23), meaning we are called to pursue vocational excellence.
The book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath has helped me sharpen my writing and communicate ideas with improved stickiness.
Business books are used inappropriately by a pastor who neglects Scripture to embrace the latest business principles. The Bible is the “business book” of the pastor’s “business” (shepherding).
C. S. Lewis wrote, “Now there is a clear sense in which all reading whatever is an escape. It involves a temporary transference of the mind from our actual surroundings to things merely imagined or conceived. This happens when we read our Bible or history books, and no less when we read fiction. All such escape is from the same thing; immediate, concrete actuality. The important question is what we escape to.”9
James Sire writes in his book How to Read Slowly, “Reading for information only is, quite frankly, a prostitution of the art of reading.”11
Reading for pleasure does not mean we cannot be educated at the same time. Robert Frost once said that a good poem begins by delighting the reader and ends by bringing wisdom and clarity to the reader’s life.12
Reading is a difficult pleasure because it requires discipline, diligence, and focus. But like in any pleasure, it is a pleasure that can be done for God’s glory.
I should not read merely because I have a book to write, a paper to research, a friend to impress, a blog entry to post, or a problem to solve. There is value to Christians merely reading for pleasure.
When I want to enjoy God’s gift of laughter, I turn to British humorist P. G. Wodehouse. No book makes me shake my reading chair with laughter more than the collection simply titled The Best of Wodehouse.
Now make your own list of reading priorities. 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.
Invest the time you need to define a purpose to why you want to read books. Once you have an answer to this question, you will find it much easier to choose your next book from the twenty-eight million attractive options.
In this chapter I discuss twenty tips and tricks that have helped me read nonfiction books.
Speed Read
Slow Read
Often our frustration with slow reading stems from a wrong attitude—of viewing books as a task to be accomplished, not as a difficult pleasure to be enjoyed.
