The Dangers of Reading

I think I am addicted to buying books. Amazon.com and half.com have books for much lower prices than you find in Barnes and Noble, and I don’t think I can stay away. For the last few years I’ve really developed a hunger for good books. It’s weird because I used to despise reading in school. In English class, I did my work without reading the assigned books, and always tried to find a short-cut by hunting for Cliff’s Notes or existing book reports so I wouldn’t have to read the actual thing. In retrospect, I probably put more effort towards cutting corners and created more stress for myself by procrastinating like mad and getting bad grades than if I had just read the dang book. Particularly, I really hated history. I couldn’t understand the point of studying the past. When I asked my history teacher in high school about my frustration, I heard the oft-quoted sentence by philosopher George Santayana: “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” I understood that it was valuable for important people, such as presidents and kings, to learn history so as not to repeat past mistakes in world policy or whatever, but how did this apply to me, some skinny schmo in high school with a serious social deficiency? Well, I’ve grown out of this immature view, which frankly was mostly fueled by my disdain for reading my history book, and I’ve really become very interested in history. I think the truth is much stranger than fiction; and much more interesting in my opinion. As a result, I rarely buy fiction books.

The danger though I see with my reading, especially with books pertaining directly to Christian theology and practice, is that it can easily lead to the reinforcing of a false dichotomy between theory—that which pertains to my mind, and practice—that which pertains to my actions. This is an Aristotelian distinction, reinforced greatly by the ‘supreme’ mind of Descartes, and does not reflect the philosophy espoused in the Bible. It basically says, as I understand it, that intellectual life consists of that which you observe and ponder abstractly (theoria), and that which you tangibly act on (praxis). So according to this as it pertains to reading books, I can set up my own theory about how life should be—perhaps an idealized Christian-y world where things make sense and I’m content to feed my brain and muse, and the actual world—filled with pain and failure that falls far short of the ideal. This topic is too grand for me to try analyzing here, but I will offer the explanation offered by Lesslie Newbigin in his book Proper Confidence: that in fact the duty of a Christian who knows God as he has revealed himself, is not characterized by this separation dichotomy of theoria and praxis, where life is compartmentalized into that which is in my head, isolated from that which my hands grasp (dare I say vaguely Gnostic?). Rather, it is characterized simply by the single act of belief and obedience. That is, our lives are based on the fact that God speaks truth, and we respond simply by believing him through obedience to him.

Most times, the world does not want to behave this way; instead we want to speculate, brainstorm, navel-gaze, and work up our own utopian theory of how life should be (religion, politics, etc.), and then maybe, if we get around to it, enact the policy or whatever to accomplish the ideal that has originated from our brains. The Bible presents an alternate (and better) solution to the confusion that our world offers. He offers himself as the king, who is to be loved, trusted, and obeyed in all things. There is no speculation required, but simply trust in him who is the Father that knows all.

So how does this relate to reading? Well, I guess the point is that when I read it is sometimes easy to slip into a world of fantasy where I somehow take the true spiritual concepts I read in the book, and wrongly attach them to my own life as if my mind’s resonance with the truth were the same thing as me living the truth that I read. If that’s confusing, I will try and put it in other words: I selfishly ascribe the truth which I recognize when I read it, to my own life even when the two don’t line up. I don’t know if anyone else has this problem, but it is convicting to me that I have recognized this about myself. Perhaps to a certain degree, this ascribing business is due to the notion I put forth, which is I think for the most part subconscious, that because I make an effort to read challenging books, whereas so many people don’t in our culture, I am somehow more righteous than those who don’t. Therefore, since I revere so much the truth that I read, I link the righteousness conveyed in the truth with the very fact that I’m reading it. It’s pretty sick. It seems though that this might be something more common than most realize. I’ve seen some things in other people that suggest this. When they read some new popular book on “how the church should be” or something, and then blog about it because they are apparently such superior Christians because they read it and now want to haughtily promote the ideas in the book (perhaps on Facebook or something), even though they themselves are a far cry from what the book teaches. I believe to some degree, it’s the theoria-praxis dichotomy in action, but at bottom it’s just an intellectualized, churched-up version of pride and lazy theology combined.

I would do much better to simply believe in God’s truth and be humbly obedient to it.