Start Reading Books Like a Christian

No matter what you”re reading, as a Christ follower and believer, you have a unique opportunity and perspective every time you open a book. 

By Tony Reinke

Perhaps intimidated by the intrusion of digital communications technology (Facebook, texting, Twitter), or perhaps overwhelmed by the dominant cultural force of the entertainment industry (television, movies, gaming), the church talks less and less about what it means to be a Christian reader.

But Christian readers are best suited to engage books with benefit and discernment. This is true because there exists a distinctly Christian form of literacy.

Christian Literacy

Let me begin with a definition: Christian literacy starts with a Christ-centered worldview, seeks truth, goodness, and beauty, and finds life change, pleasure, and worship.

I”ve intentionally made no hard distinction between books by Christian authors and books by non-Christian authors. I say this because the Bible is an infallible and completely unique book, and it makes us better (and more discerning) readers of all literature””from favorite Christian classics, to new titles on Christian living, to solid Christian theology, to entertaining Christian novels, to secular business books, classic literature, and new secular novels. The Christian worldview encircles all of literature, and then helps us sort the gold from the trash. (And this filter is not as simple as determining non-Christian books from Christian books).

Gospel-Unleashed Literacy

If we live in the golden age of book publishing (never have so many great books been more readily available), we also live in the golden age of leisure (never since the industrial revolution have Americans had more leisure time available for reading).

So while Solomon is right in warning us too much reading will weary the bones (Ecclesiastes 12:12), most of us don”t face that problem. We need a push in the other direction, a push into the more serious business of reading.

To push us in the right direction, I call in a hulk of a mind””19th-century Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck. In Our Reasonable Faith, Bavinck smashes through fluffy literary foundations that cannot support disciplined reading. He writes,

It is not the sparkling firmament, nor mighty nature, nor any prince or genius of the earth, nor any philosopher or artist, but the Son of man that is the highest revelation of God. Christ is the Word become flesh, which in the beginning was with God and which was God, the Only-Begotten of the Father, the Image of God, the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person; who has seen Him has seen the Father (John 14:9).

This beautiful statement immediately raises an implicit question for all readers: If Christ is the superior revelation of God, then are all other books besides the Bible no longer relevant or important for the Christian?

Bavinck answers with a firm no.

What Do We Do with All These Books?

In fact, this vision of Christ doesn”t narrow us at all, but puts our literary feet on the pinnacle of a cosmic perspective. Bavinck continues,

From this high vantage point [Christ revealed] the Christian looks around him, forwards, backwards, and to all sides. And if, in doing so, in the light of the knowledge of God, which he owes to Christ, he lets his eyes linger on nature and on history, on heaven and on earth, then he discovers traces everywhere of that same God whom he has learned to know and to worship in Christ as his Father.

Bavinck has set us on a mountaintop vantage point, higher than the tree line of general revelation, higher than the billboards clamoring for our attention, and higher than the popular media dictating to us what is novel and worthy of our attention. In Christ we arrive at the pinnacle of relevance, and from that pinnacle, the gospel of Christ does not narrow us””it positions us to see. We are given a worldview vision that brings focus to every field of leadership, management, science, and technology.

This is Bavinck”s key point: “The Christian, who sees everything in the light of the Word of God, is anything but narrow in his view. He is generous in heart and mind. He looks over the whole earth and reckons it all his own, because he is Christ”s and Christ is God”s (1 Corinthians 3:21-23).”

Christ makes us readers””confident, joyful, and discerning readers.

Bavinck goes on to explain why the Christian can never stop believing that the revelation of Christ, to which he owes his life and salvation, has a special character. Such a conviction does not exclude him from the world, but rather puts him in position to trace out God in nature and history. As Bavinck said, “[It] puts the means at his disposal by which he can recognize the true and the good and the beautiful and separate them from the false and sinful alloys of men.”1

This is a beautiful portrait of what it means to read like a Christian.

Read Like a Christian

I know, we don”t live in Bavinck”s age. We live in the digital age, with necks bent and shoulders rounded over a 4-inch screen, like a gambler at a slot machine, thumb flicking through feeds of viral amusements.

The noise of marketing surrounds us. We cannot escape it. “The media have become masters at packaging stimuli in ways that our brains find irresistible,” Matthew B. Crawford recently suggested, “just as food engineers have become expert in creating “˜hyperpalatable” foods by manipulating levels of sugar, fat, and salt. Distractibility might be regarded as the mental equivalent of obesity.”2

In our digital age of hyperpalatable distractions, we need Bavinck”s high-altitude, 360-degree, world-embracing worldview. We need a Christ-centered perspective to lift our distracted eyes, widen our thrill-seeking hearts, and empower our dulled literacy. And this is exactly what the glory of Christ does for the church.

Christ is at the center of our worldview. Christ is the creator of everything in the universe that is true, good, and beautiful, and Christ is the standard for what constitutes what is true, good, and beautiful.

The Act of Reading

As you can imagine, the implications of this perspective are enormously holistic. In novels, it means we not only look to identify messianic figures, but we are also on the lookout for characters who image Christ”s morality, humility, and self-sacrifice.

The same holds true with leadership and management books. Pride-driven leadership principles are exposed for their vanity, and selfless leadership principles are treasured for their Christ-echoing relevance. From the pinnacle you will see a difference in how leadership is defined by the world. We prize Christlike principles and characters, even when those principles and characters are the product of non-Christian authors.

On and on it goes, in every section of a bookstore. In every book picked up by a Christian, Christ is the gold standard by which everything else is measured. Where we find his grace echoed on paper, we celebrate it””even sometimes from the pens of non-Christian writers.

Some will balk and say this talk about rudimentary literacy sounds too utilitarian. Why not encourage Christians simply to read literature for the artfulness of the prose, or the enjoyment of the story? Must we ruin literacy with all this talk of methods?

We need both.

Great novels””like Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, or Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, or Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton””offer leaders a window into the human heart. And novels like these should be treasured simply for how they cultivate our understanding of humanity. Additionally, we are free to enjoy the artistry of the prose and the brilliance of the story.

But Christian readers are never drawn in by mere form and aesthetics. We are not functional atheists when we read books. As we enjoy the prose and the plot, we also watch for echoes of Christ, because to see the beauty of Christ is the mark of a marvelously deep literary appetite.

This is our calling as Christian readers. When you pick up a book, from any genre, do you read it in light of the highest revelation of God? Do you read from the pinnacle by which you can make sense of history, nature, and literature? Or do you read it in the slums of mindless worldly fads? This is the essential question for Christian readers. If our literacy is calibrated to Christ, we will read differently, we must read books differently””with renewed vigor for the truth, goodness, and beauty that reflects him.

What”s Next?

All this offers potent opportunity for our churches.

First, the number of church members who struggle to extract life-changing meaning from books is a drought of staggering proportions. I”m convinced we have yet to fully appreciate this great deficiency. Many younger Christians lament their literacy, and regret not having parents who were better models of literacy in the home.

Second, you may be surprised by the number of folks in your church who fall within Bavinck”s worldview, or who can easily be led to embrace Christ at the center of their worldview. But such readers will also likely tend to be the shy, introverted types who fly under the ministry radar. Look for them.

Pastors, here is your opportunity to match Christians who want to read well with Christians who already do. One way to accomplish this is by encouraging small reading groups, and even one-on-one reading meetings at coffee shops. It could be young moms talking about novels or businessmen talking about leadership books. Often what young Christians are missing in their literary skills are the examples and personal encounters with other readers, particularly with mature readers who are skilled in translating written words into living concepts and experienced in discussing the merits of a text. I”ve seen the power of meetings like this firsthand in reading theology, Christian application, secular novels, and business books.

So these are my challenges for pastors: (1) Can you inspire literacy in your church by orienting their reading around the beauty of Christ? (2) Can you motivate your shy introverts for ministry? (3) Can you encourage your struggling readers to come forward in humility and ask for help?

We are a people of the Book. We are a people who gather around the Book. We are sharers of what we have found in the Book. Our eternal vision and corporate mission ensures that the church will always read in ways that are deeper than the world.

Unquestionably, we are in a golden age of publishing, but we may also live in the dark age of literacy. Pastors, now is the time to step up and lead the church, by your example, into a distinctly Christian way to read.

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1 Herman Bavinck, Henry Zylstra, translator, Our Reasonable Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956).

2 Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015).

Tony Reinke (@tonyreinke) is the host of the popular podcast Ask Pastor John. He is a writer and researcher for desiringGod.org and the author of two books, including Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books (Crossway). He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his wife and their three children.