The Reason for Reading
For someone my age, I have a pretty impressive library of Christian books. And nobody is more impressed than myself. I periodically browse my own shelves for an hour or more with a kind of false curiosity, as if I am browsing in a bookshop as part of a mental test, and will have to recall the title and main thrust of each book from memory in six months’ time.
Books are beautiful. They are solid. Secure. The feel of a book in your hands is wonderful: turning each page is a multi-sensory experience. Reading books is a poor mark of knowledge (anyone can read, but how many truly understand?) but is a perfect measure of curiosity. I pride myself in having a sparky interest and desire to learn, so I read Christian books.
My theological convictions and intellectual snobbery entice me towards serious books on serious matters (Think Leon Morris, Don Carson and Augustine), and I too readily sideline less weighty books as less serious reads. But here is the tension: here is my dilemma. I have a cheeky passion for books which are written for normal people.
Culturally contraband, some of the Christian books which have most affected me have been those which are a touch rough around the edges (so to speak). I am fairly anarchistic in outlook, and because I quietly rebel against any authority I find over me I have long believed that I appreciate these books for normal people simply because they are not 100% culturally acceptable. But recently, I have come to see that I appreciate them because they are, simply put, better books.
Every university holiday, I find myself at some point or other thumbing through my neat row of books by Philip Yancey. I like Yancey not because I agree with every word he writes, or even because I think his writing style is watertight, but because he writes about every day Christian life from the point of view of an every day Christian. So many Christian books I read seem to be written by people who go about their daily lives, then sit down, don the attitude of “this is the truth, so I shall write about it dispassionately and analytically and tell you to go away and live like that”, and churn out books which are divorced from any Christian’s experience of life. Let me be clear: I have the greatest of respect for Christian writers, and I appreciate their work. But sometimes a fifteen-chapter book with three sections per chapter and several alliterative sub-headings per section with a study guide at the end feels like a world away from the subject it is meant to be addressing. The book is one long, logical argument which I can intellectually assent to – but my life is chaotic, my feelings nuanced, and my assessment of the material interrupted.
It may be the particular curse of the undergraduate theology student, but I suspect many Christians today struggle to reconcile their theoretical knowledge of God with their strong (right!) belief that they should not know of God, but know him. The gulf between the two is indescribably vast, yet most of the solutions I have sought tend to drive them yet further apart. I want to meet God in prayer more Biblically, so I’ll read a dense book about prayer, armed with a dictionary for the entangling language and a pillow for the resulting stupor. God knows my heart, and I trust he appreciates my intentions, but for all I may have learned, I have definitely not been a more joyful pray-er. Reading books which say “here is how I pray; here is how the Bible says we should pray; go and pray like that” certainly have their place, but they do approximately zero for my daily attitude towards prayer.
My guess is that Christians are reading a lot of good books, and recommending a lot of good books to one another, and lending appropriately-titled books when sought for advice, but are not actually knowing God better or loving him more. Maybe it is just me.
I have a lot of time for Yancey’s book Soul Survivor. Subtitled How my Faith Survived the Church, many would consider it a little shy of orthodoxy. In it, Yancey profiles several figures who have shaped his Christian convictions. Some choices, like Gandhi, are surprising inclusions in an evangelical’s book about his Christian faith – I’m not going to get distracted into an argument about that. My purpose here is to allow Yancey to explain what I mean about Christian books. This passage comes at the end of his chapter on Frederick Beuchner (p258-259).
Christian literature often gives off the scent of rationalisation. The author starts with an unshakeable conclusion and then sets out to travel whatever logical course might support that conclusion. Much of what I read on depression, on doubt, on suicide, on suffering, on homosexuality, seems written by people who begin with a Christian conclusion and who have never been through the anguished steps familiar to a person struggling with depression, doubt, suicide, suffering or homosexuality. No resolution could be so matter-of-fact to a person who has actually survived such a journey.
When I began writing openly about my faith, I concluded that I had only one thing to offer: honesty. I had heard enough church propaganda growing up. I would cling to the stance of a pilgrim, not a propagandist, describing life with God as it actually plays out, not as it is supposed to play out. Not everyone agrees. A publisher once asked me to consider changing a book title from Disappointment with God to something cheerier, perhaps Overcoming Disappointment with God. I thought about it, and decided to keep the title, because disappointed people were the once I most wanted to address.
I nearly despaired of the usefulness of any writing about faith until I discovered Beuchner. It seemed to me at the time that Christians were reading primarily for the experience of nodding agreement, “Yes, that’s true,” whereas great literature makes us stop and ponder: “I’ve never imagined it that way before.” For Beuchner, faith was an act of discovery, not a packet of orthodoxy dispensed from on high. He made me slow down and pay attention, first to the words and then to the thoughts behind them. He did not use life as an illustration of his point; his point, rather, illustrated what he had already portrayed about life. As William James wrote in The Varieties of Religious Experience, “The truth is that in the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favour of the same conclusion.”
To speak to a reader’s inarticulate feelings of reality is a writer’s greatest challenge. We live odd lives, we writers. We sit in small rooms with little sensory input, contemplating the words before us at that moment. In effect, we fabricate in those words the semblance of time and materiality while disconnected from them both. Writing is the most vicarious of acts. I write about skiing while not skiing, about eating while not eating, about love while not loving, and worship while not worshipping.
I find writers like Yancey refreshing because they have the confidence to say that they do not have all of the answers. I get the feeling that many people write books because they believe they know the material, know how to order it, and think it is of use to the reader. It usually is, in part, but it betrays a peculiar emotional distance from the subject matter. I recently read a book on the resurrection of Jesus – a good book! – which jarred slightly in my mind. It sought to persuade non-Christian readers of the historicity of the resurrection, and therefore the truth of Jesus’ lordship and of the Christian faith. It featured lots of testimonies from people who have come to know Christ, placed at the end of an appropriate chapter – but the author did not give any indication of how he became convinced of the resurrection. Lee Strobel’s famous journey from hostile journalist to author of The Case for Christ is well-known. His book is the product of his life. What unsettled me about the book I read was that it could have been written by anyone. It was impersonal, and seemed utterly divorced from everyday life. As an apologetic for the resurrection, it was great. But it did not give the impression that Jesus had worked in the author’s life beyond an intellectual agreement with the reality of the resurrection.
I have a secret love of CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity. Again, I do not agree with every word he wrote, but that does not matter too much. Sometimes people say things I am slightly embarrassed about, or betray their personality with idiosyncrasies. I have a theory that only one composer in world history could have written the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Ralph Vaughan Williams has his unique fingerprints all over it. Likewise, I think a good book should have the distinctive character of its author spilling across its pages. That does not mean that each book has to be a rebranded autobiography, but it is undeniable that the charm and appeal of books like Mere Christianity is the personality and life experience of their authors. John Stott’s Basic Christianity also passes this test, as does his Living Church, both of which I highly recommend!
Fundamentally, I am trying to break free of an implicit mentality which says that I should live according to the fifteen chapters, three sections per chapter and several alliterative subheadings per section. Real life is not like that, and I want to regain the confidence to speak, think and act like it. Truth is good, and organising truth is helpful – but my experience of truth is chaotic. Good Christian literature should not address you as a “sorted” person in the vain hope you will be “sorted” by the end of reading it, like that book on the resurrection. Instead, it should grab you by the hand and share something of Christian living with you. The best Christian book I have ever read is JI Packer’s classic Knowing God – evidence that a book can marry theological orthodoxy with personal passion and discovery. The result is sublime, and aside from the Bible there is no single book I would rather read and re-read until I die.
My conviction is that Christians are too often tempted to seek conformity to their particular Christian culture and knowledge of propositional truths about Christian life ahead of seeking to know God. Maybe, after all, it is just me.
I end with another – this time shorter! – quote from Yancey, from What’s so Amazing about Grace? (p203) I trust the parallel I am implying is obvious.
By its very nature legalism encourages hypocrisy because it defines a set of behavior that may cloak what is going on inside. At Bible college or Christian camp, and even in church, everyone learns how to look “spiritual.” The emphasis on externals makes it easy for a person to face it, to conform even while suppressing, or hiding, inner problems. Years after I left Bible college I learned that some of my fellow students suffered from deep inner turmoil – depression, homosexuality, addictions – that had gone unaddressed during their time there. They concentrated instead on conforming to the behavior around them.
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