I work hard to be picky about what books get to sit on my nightstand. I follow bloggers and publishers whose opinions, works, and theological viewpoints I’ve come to trust over the years. This means that in general, even though I’m reading a high volume of books, I can also look back and say that I’m reading a high quality of books too (because honestly, life is too short for poor prose and dodgy doctrine). 2017 was a great year for books. The ways in which my life has been enriched through the theologians, biographers, story-tellers, artists, and authors of all kinds in 2017 are many. Although I still have a long way to go, my eyes have been opened and my worldview expanded, and the point of convergence for this newly acquired knowledge is an increased self-awareness and me developing strategies to change myself for the better.
Dive, Don’t Ski
As I sat in the first week of the new year and considered all that I wanted to achieve, I recalled an analogy used by Tony Reinke in his 2017 book 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You. Reinke talks about how we live in a world of tweets and short, rapid content; he likens our reading styles today to water skiing over the surface of the ocean without ever taking the time to simply stay in one place and dive deep. The wonders that reside sometimes only a few feet beneath the waves are so often passed over in the temporary exhilaration of breadth, distance, and speed.
So, how has this changed my approach to reading in 2018?
As much as I loved the overwhelming majority of the books I read in 2017, it’s easy to read simply for breadth, amusement, and information. If we make the Bible the ocean in Reinke’s analogy, it is not a book that should be read cover to cover and added to the “completed” shelf. Nor is it a book to recreationally ski across the surface of by quickly reading a page here or there. Rather God’s word requires more lingering, exploratory reading; reading that intentionally dives down deep with the desire to encounter, and discover, and know. That’s what I need to do more in 2018.
Reading More by Reading Less
This year I might not read the same number of books I read in 2017. But I’m making the decision to protect and prioritise my reading of scripture over and above other books, and to choose a reading plan that doesn’t only let me tick the “completed’ checkbox, but takes me further into this book in which I encounter the living God, and am forever changed. And when my church starts a 2 month series on Colossians (Or 1 John, or Psalms) maybe I’ll swim to that same spot. Although it might be hard to resist the temptation to move on at first, I’ll have my oxygen tank and underwater camera at the ready, and I’m going to learn to dive deep.
