Tag: non-fiction

Against Daily Bible Reading

OK. This sort of thing annoys me. It’s not Dan Phillips’ fault. His just happens to be the most recent salvo that I’ve heard, and I’m really feeling like I’m the odd man out. I don’t think people need a Bible reading plan. I don’t think your spiritual life can be evaluated by the sheer volume of scripture you consume.

Ok. Step back. Caveats: I’m sure nobody said that, did they? Nobody said that people who know stuff are de facto more spiritual.

But why, oh why don’t the people who tell us in these superlative ways about the importance of Scripture actually do what it says? We pass on the doctrine that scripture teaches everything that pertains to life and godliness,* and then fail to see what scripture actually says about itself. It never ceases to amaze me how often, or how thoroughly people are able to devalue the actual text in favor of a doctrine about the text.

I’m afraid I don’t have the time to write a balanced dissertation that carefully navigates all the rocks of misunderstanding that come from forcefully disagreeing with what everybody thinks. But here’s a challenge for you: Take up your Bible and find the reading plan actually outlined in scripture. No? Ok. Find me a model in scripture for regular Bible reading exampled by some of the giants of faith: David, Daniel, Jesus, Paul – Somebody like that. No? Maybe we’d better go back to the Bible and see how people actually used the Bible. What I see are instances of public teaching, public debate, and intense study when confronted with a question. Never once does a disciple come to Jesus and say, “Lord teach us to read our Bibles.” Instead, in the middle of a confrontation, Jesus says, “Have you never read?” Maybe knowing and following the scriptures is something else again from reading a little each morning like a daily vitamin.

Now, just for kicks, let’s take the same approach to see what the Bible says about prayer. Let’s see: “Seven times a day.” “I will awaken the dawn.” “About the time of the evening sacrifice.” “Early in the morning, he went up…” “Lord, teach us to…”

Yeah, that one’s there.

Now, that said, I do have a Bible reading plan, and I submit it for your consideration: For starters, I read a lot. A lotter than that. Sometimes I read with an agenda, and sometimes I don’t follow that agenda very well. I tend to prefer fiction (and I can read more of it without getting tired), so I have to make a bit of extra effort to include some non-fiction in my diet. Occasionally, the non-fiction book that I read is a book of the Bible. When that Bible book comes up, I read it with the same level of intensity that I read everything else. I take notes if something interesting or insightful stands out to me (which is a lot oftener than with, say “The Lexus and the Olive Tree“. Generally speaking, after reading the Bible all day for a week or so, I’m pretty much burnt out on the Bible for a while, the same as the day after a PT test, or the day after Thanksgiving. It may be a while before I can do something like that again.

* As it turns out, 2 Peter 1:3 doesn’t even mention the scriptures, or Bible reading, or anything like that, so why do people use it that way?

Book Rotation

I am trying a new campaign of reading (we’ll see how well it goes) where I cycle through the kinds of books I read. The problem is that there are so many books I think I ought to read, but they keep getting pushed out by books that are actually readable.

Non-fiction is the culprit. So many non-fiction writers seem to be operating under the misguided notion that, because what they have to say is true and important, people ought to read it out of a pure regard for the content of the book. They hold to this concept with a firm conviction that allows them to thereby insult the reader with a style that is so blindingly dull, the only way you can get through all that True and Important stuff is by a sheer act of will. And the more seriously the author takes his work, the more likely it is to be devoid of the kind of rhetorical sway that pulls you from one concept to the next. Nobody cares about the reader anymore.

The importance of non-fiction reading resembles nothing to me so much as the importance of bran in the diet. And I’m the kind of guy who likes to start his day with grape nuts.

The fact that there are voracious readers out there who never touch a page of fiction truly disturbs me. Tim Challies really disturbs me. Iain Murray, who may be one of the greatest Christian historians alive, wrote a book in 2009 called The Undercover Revolution, in which he argues that novels revolutionized the English speaking world in the 19th century (unfortunately, in his opinion, for the worse). In an interview with Mark Dever, when he was asked “how should we be thinking about novels today,” Murray responded, “I’m not sure we should be thinking about them all; we’ve got so much better things to do. And it amazes me that Christians who are called to redeem the time have got time to read novels.” Fiction changes the world, but we haven’t got time to read any. Astounding.

Maybe a better metaphor is those people whose diet consists of steak and protein shakes, as though they’ve never heard of fruit and bread and candy.

Anyway, I have to force myself to read non-fiction, especially the really important stuff that’s clogging up all the space on my shelves. So here’s the system: I read a fiction book, and then a non-fiction. Hopefully, the future joy of fiction will spur me on through the slough of brute facts. The jury’s still out.

So far, I finished up 9 Marks of a Healthy Church by M. Dever, and then tossed back (quickly quaffed?) a cheap paperback by R.A. Heinlein. Now I’m stuck in The Death of Socrates.”