http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14821305/what-is-the-futility-of-the-human-mind
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The Successful and Worthless Husband: Five Marks of Foolish Men
If you lived in his neighborhood, it would be hard not to be at least a little jealous. He has everything any ordinary man on the street would want — a large property with a beautiful home, a successful business and lots of employees, every earthly comfort and luxury a man could want.
He was born into a wealthy family, and so has never really known need. He was rich before he could talk. And if the inheritance weren’t enough, the family business is still thriving. He’s achieved a level of prosperity many men sweat and grind their whole lives to have, but never taste. If you could see inside his garage, he’d probably have cars worth the price of a small house.
On top of all that, he married an amazing woman — wise, beautiful, delightful, rare. The more you’re around her, the more you want to be around her. She knows what to say (and what not to say). She leaves people wondering how any man snared a diamond like her. Their life is the kind of life millions would want to stream on Netflix. Many would see him from afar and assume he’s the picture of a blessed husband.
But when God looks at that same man, he calls him worthless.
Man Against God’s Heart
When we meet Nabal (the name literally means “fool,” which raises some real questions about his upbringing), David has landed in his fields while fleeing from King Saul. David and his men are hungry, and so the anointed leader bows to ask for food. Notice how humbly and respectfully he makes his request:
Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have. I hear that you have shearers. Now your shepherds have been with us, and we did them no harm, and they missed nothing all the time they were in Carmel. Ask your young men, and they will tell you. Therefore let my young men find favor in your eyes, for we come on a feast day. Please give whatever you have at hand to your servants and to your son David. (1 Samuel 25:6–8)
Nabal’s men later confirm David’s story: “The men were very good to us, and we suffered no harm, and we did not miss anything when we were in the fields, as long as we went with them. They were a wall to us both by night and by day” (1 Samuel 25:15–16). Not only did David’s men not harm Nabal’s shepherds, but they actually shielded and blessed them. His own men think he should feed these guys.
In response, Nabal lives up to his name:
Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants these days who are breaking away from their masters. Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where? (1 Samuel 25:10–11)
He knows exactly who David is. Why else would he call him “the son of Jesse” (a name Saul spitefully uses again and again, 1 Samuel 20:27, 30–31; 22:13)? While David kneels with empty hands, Nabal spits in his face and sends him away. And if it wasn’t for his remarkable wife, Abigail, it would have cost him his life right then and there (1 Samuel 25:13).
Five Marks of a Foolish Husband
What might Christian husbands learn from Nabal? We learn at least five ways to be a bad man and a foolish husband.
Strength Without Love
Nabal had the kind of strength that might impress and intimidate weaker men. He was a man of the field and worked with his hands, sheering sheep. He used his strength, however, in despicable ways. When Scripture introduces the couple, its writer says, “The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved” (1 Samuel 25:3). That one word — harsh — sums up his failures as a man. He used his God-given strength to wound, rather than heal; to threaten, rather than protect. He relied on force to do what love should do. He was cruel.
His strength was not the problem. No, godly husbands are strong men — they must be to do what God calls them to do, bear what God calls them to bear, and confront what God calls them to confront. In Christ, men put off laziness, timidity, and fragility. We put on the armor of God to fight the battles of God in the strength of God. And as we exercise that strength, those in our homes and churches (unlike those closest to Nabal) are cared for and safe. Any discerning wife loves being led by a strong man who loves well.
Courage Without Wisdom
You can’t read a story like this and question Nabal’s nerve. When the Lord’s anointed, armed and dangerous, stood in his front yard and asked for food for his small army of soldiers, the man sends them away. “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse?” He basically drew a flaming arrow and aimed it at a hungry warrior’s chest, spurning caution and inviting violence. He had the backbone to stand his ground, but he’d chosen the wrong place to stand. He planted his flag on foolishness, and risked everything for pride.
Again, courage was not his problem. Godly men are more willing than most to sacrifice themselves for the good of others. They wear promises like Isaiah 41:10, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And because God, not self, is the source and aim of their bravery, they don’t pick dumb fights (especially with their wives). They don’t endanger those they’re called to protect for the sake of their ego. They risk themselves wisely and in love. They know when to step in and stand their ground — for their families, for the church, for their God — and when to turn the other cheek.
Wealth Without Generosity
For all the evil Nabal could and did do, God still allowed him to prosper for a time. He had the kind of barns that could comfortably feed a small army. He wasn’t just rich. “The man was very rich,” God tells us. “He had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats” (1 Samuel 25:2). We’re meant to feel the weight of this man’s wealth — and just how badly he handles it. He could feed David and his men, with no significant loss, but he wouldn’t. He could have met a hundred needs, but he chose to spend what he had on what he wanted instead. He was selfish and stingy toward every appetite but his own.
Nabal had built the bigger barns. He embodied the fool’s anthem: “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry” (Luke 12:19). And what does God say to that man? “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (v. 20). To which Jesus adds, “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God” (v. 21). And being rich toward God typically means being generous toward someone else. It means laying up treasure for others, meeting their needs at our (sometimes significant) expense. Godly husbands are givers, like our Father, not keepers or takers.
Success Without Gratitude
Nabal was running a booming company. His stock was rising. His board was well-pleased with the profits. By all accounts, this man’s career was a wild success. That is, by all accounts but one. God looked at all Nabal had achieved and earned, and he saw failure. He saw bankruptcy. He called the whole enterprise worthless. How many men, even in our churches, are killing it in the office and yet losing everywhere else? How many are esteemed by their colleagues and competitors and yet barely tolerated at home? How many of us have endless ambition outside our family and church, but little leftover to give where it matters most?
Godly men work hard, whatever work they do, as for their Lord and not for men (Colossians 3:23). Christian men do their work with unusual excellence — and unusual gratitude. Notice how Nabal talks: “Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where?” God gave him everything, and got credit for nothing. And then, when God guarded his servants and sheep, he returned that kindness with evil (1 Samuel 25:21). Good husbands are relentlessly humble and grateful, even in the little gains and successes. And because they’re faithful in the little, God often gives them more (Luke 19:17, 24–26).
Hunger Without Self-Control
Lastly, Nabal was a man mastered by his cravings. The passions of his flesh waged war on his soul, and his soul all too quickly waved the white flag. When Abigail came to find him, “he was holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. And Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk” (1 Samuel 25:36). Even with men of war waiting outside, he reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink. When the people under his roof needed him to rise and play the man, he instead chose to enjoy some mindless, silly, numbing pleasures. He gratified himself and abandoned everyone else.
Before we despise him too quickly, don’t we sometimes do the same, even if in subtler ways? Do we too easily check out and desert our posts as husbands and fathers? What indulgence in our lives tends to numb our sense of spiritual and relational urgency and responsibility?
When the apostle Paul comes to older men in the church, he charges them, “Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness” (Titus 2:2). When he comes to the younger men a few verses later, he says, simply, “Urge the younger men to be self-controlled” (Titus 2:6). Not joyless. Godly husbands are happy men, but not in cheap, easy, superficial ways.
Men mastered by grace are men who master themselves. We’re not, like many men, relying on football games, smoked meat, video games, or craft cocktails for relief and exhilaration. We’re thrilled to be the chosen sons of God, the blood-bought brothers of Christ, the future kings of the universe. And we enjoy every other earthly gift — food and drink, marriage and sex, football and Netflix — in moderation, to preserve the highest, fullest, strongest pleasure, namely God.
Worth of Worthy Men
Nabal, like a number of other husbands in Scripture, teaches husbands what not to be and do. His failures, however, lay out something of a constructive map for us. They teach us that men will be measured, in large part, by how we treat what (and whom) God has entrusted to us.
We’ll be measured by how we treat our stuff — our sheep and goats and monthly paychecks. Are we selfless and self-controlled, or selfish and indulgent? Do the time, money, and gifts we’ve been given consistently meet real needs around us? For men in the world, what they have is their god, and so they receive and spend it horribly. Those whose God is in heaven, though, don’t demand divinity of their prosperity, and so they hold their possessions loosely and give them away freely. They know that, in God, they have “a better possession and an abiding one” (Hebrews 10:34).
We’ll also be measured by how we treat the people in our lives — the wife beside us, the children behind us, the neighbors next to us, the church family around us, the people who look up to (and maybe even report to) us. Men don’t often die wishing they had put in a lot more hours at the office or made a harder run at that promotion. They very often die wishing they had prioritized the people who were waiting at home or sitting in the next pew. Strive, by the grace of God, to be your most fruitful where it matters most. Don’t be known first and foremost by how you work and what you have, but by how you love and what you give.
Ultimately, though, we’ll be measured by how we treat God’s anointed. Nabal sent the chosen king away hungry, and then added insult to that injury. Since then, God has sent a new and greater David. He’s sent his own Son into our world, into our city, even to our front door. So how will we receive him? And not just on Sunday mornings, but on Monday afternoons and Friday evenings too. Will we give him more attention than Nabal gave David that day? Will we run to him, prioritize him, praise him, and share him?
In the end, then, what separates good husbands from bad ones, the faithful from the unfaithful, is how we treat Jesus.
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23 Tips from 23 Years of Book Reading
I’m honored to be here at Colorado Christian University this morning. The purpose of my talk is to share 23 lessons about reading I have learned from 23 years of reading nonfiction books. Some of these lessons will be new to you. Most of them won’t be. And they’re all in the book I mentioned, Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books.
Well, the distinguished biographer David McCullough once recounted the following story from the early life of Theodore Roosevelt:
Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester [rifle], at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson [North Dakota], and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire forty miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt’s eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina [Leo Tolstoy’s 900-page novel]. I often think of that when I hear people say they haven’t time to read.1
We haven’t time to read 900-page novels, much less 200-page nonfiction. Partly we can trace this back to a moment when Roosevelt was fourteen years old, when Samuel Morse, of Morse Code fame, sent the first telegraph message from D.C. to Baltimore in the spring of 1844. His message was a biblical exclamation: “What hath God wrought!” (Numbers 23:23).
Well, we know what the telegraph wrought: a new opportunity to shrink data down into fragments, sentences, and phrases. The telegraph became the private text message, which became the public tweet.
Attention-Candy Addicts
Born into the world in the spring of 1844 was the microspectacle — a tiny fragment of information, sentences, and phrases — eventually leading to images and videos — all spread at lightning speed across the globe. And the faster our media delivery systems became, the more efficiently those spectacles were delivered to the handheld devices in our pockets.
Viral phenomena shrinks into smaller and smaller micro-spectacles until we find ourselves hopelessly addicted to our smartphones. Now we scan videos, scrub ahead, jump ten seconds forward in search of the snap ending. Sports become four-second clips. Movies become five-second GIFs. The tornado chaser’s footage becomes a dramatic twenty-second video.
And we love it. Focusing our attention for too long is hard. Our brains love little snack breaks, and the digital media companies know it. We are targets of attention-candy that fits nicely into our appetite for something new, weird, glorious, hilarious, curious, or cute.
“The iPhone is a chemical-driven casino that preys on our base desire for vanity and our obsession with train wrecks.”
We also love anything that pertains to us or our likes — it feels like people are giving us attention. The iPhone is a chemical-driven casino that preys on our base desires for vanity, ego, and our obsession with watching train wrecks. We love the ego buzz of social media. And we never stop hungering for Turkish delight-sized bites of digital scandal.
“Mobile is a great market. It is the greatest market the tech industry, or any industry for that matter, has ever seen,” said technology analyst Ben Thompson. Why? “It is only when we’re doing something specific that we aren’t using our phones, and the empty spaces of our lives are far greater than anyone imagined. Into this void — this massive market, both in terms of numbers and available time — came the perfect product.”
Smartphones make it possible for the attention economy to target our little attention gaps as we transition between tasks and duties. Our attention may be slightly elastic enough to fill up every empty gap of silence in our days, but in the end it’s still a zero-sum game. We have limited amounts of time to focus in a given day, and now every second of our attention is getting targeted and commoditized.
Attack on Concentration
The potency of the digital spectacles today is a new phenomenon, but distracted attention is nothing new. Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper felt something similar with an emerging new media, back in 1911. Long before AI algorithms learned to rearrange our social media feeds to addict us, magazines hooked readers with entertaining feature articles. The problem, Kuyper said, was that you barely had time to read one issue before another issue of randomly collected feature articles arrived in the mail.
Magazines were not troublesome because they were bad. They were troublesome because they were so addictive. And in luring readers to endless stream of feature articles, it raised a spiritual problem. Kuyper wrote, “Each of us must, on the one hand, exert ourselves to participate in the life of our time, while on the other hand we must continue to protect the freedom of our mind and force it to concentrate on what matters.”
If readers cannot concentrate on what matters, they become “constantly occupied with all kinds of things, not because this is what they seek or want, but because all of this [content] attacks them, overpowers them, and occupies every corner of their heart and thoughts unasked.” The coming of the magazine marked a tsunami of fascinating content that simply overwhelmed the human powers of input.
By contrast, Kuyper said, the life of faith demands focused recollection: “It should not be forgotten that all religion is a penetration with the innermost part of the soul into the unity of all things, in order to comprehend the unity of the One from whom everything comes. For that reason, to take delight in godliness you must ascend from the many, the varied, the endlessly distinct, to the coherence” of all things.2 Without focus, without the power to see coherence, faith dies.
God Wrote, We Read
That’s very interesting, but is Kuyper right? Does so much ride on coherence? Is it biblical? That’s the bigger question. To answer that, let’s take a moment and think about this with Bibles open to Ephesians.
For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles — assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this [Paul’s epistle], you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles [along with Jews] are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. (Ephesians 3:1–13)
“The mystery of the gospel was written down. Can a higher tribute be paid to the discipline of reading?”
So how are we to understand ancient prophecies, Israel’s role in redemption, the mystery of Christ, his global gospel, the church’s start, the purpose of the church’s existence, the fact that the world exists in order to house a church, our new boldness before God, the nature of spiritual warfare, and the ultimate purpose of the Creator for his creation? How do we understand all this? By reading Paul, as he puts the story of the Bible together for us. The mystery of the gospel was “written” down (Ephesians 3:3). Can a higher tribute be paid to the discipline of reading?
The life of faith is the life of comprehending unity. And what’s written in Scripture is given to us so that, when we read, the people of God can comprehend “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God” (Ephesians 3:9) — namely, the ancient prophecies, Israel’s role in redemption, the arrival of Christ, his cross-cultural gospel, the beginning of the church, our new boldness before God, the dynamics of spiritual warfare, and the existence and purpose of creation itself. The Christian’s brain needs to comprehend this macro unity.
Not only the church, but also our culture — and the entire educational system — is facing a crisis of the mind. The immediate is crowding out the ultimate. So Christians are ones who are always learning how to learn, and yet the pressures against serious reading are all around us. Secularism is one of them, so too the individualism of social media.
23 Tips for Better Reading
But for the remainder of our time together I want to get very practical. I’ve been a serious book reader for 23 years, and I want to give you 23 practical tips to consider, particularly when it comes to reading nonfiction.
These are lessons I have learned myself. They help me. Maybe they will help you. Maybe they will help you parent. Again, this is in my book Lit!, so I’ll run through them rather fast. Be inspired for the lifelong cultivation of reading skills. That’s what I hope to impart.
1. Read Daily, in the Gaps
Social media does one thing well: it fills up every gap of life with things interesting and eye-catching and scandalous and awe-inspiring and interesting. We can reclaim those gaps for reading.
And those gaps really add up. Most people can find sixty minutes each day to read. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t: fifteen minutes in the morning, fifteen minutes at lunchtime, and another thirty minutes in the evening. At this pace, you can devote seven hours to reading each week (or 420 minutes).
The average reader moves through a book at a pace of about 250 words per minute, so 420 minutes of reading per week translates into 105,000 words per week. Most books today are about 60,000 words long. Assuming you can read for one hour each day, and that you read at around 250 words per minute, you can complete more than one book per week, or about 60 or 70 books per year. It’s very doable, and that’s just in redeeming the gaps of life.
2. Redeem Each Environment
When I started thinking about the situations where I seek to capture reading fragments, I began to see that certain settings favored certain types of books. Here are a few of those places:
Desk reading: I haul myself out of bed, pour some coffee, and head to my desk. Here is where I meet with God through Scripture and often where I dive into commentaries on the Bible and theology. Most of my serious devotional reading is done at that desk in the early morning hours.
Coffee shop reading: The longest and most difficult books, the books that require the most caffeinated attention, I bring to the coffee shop on my days off. There I invest two or three hours of reading with singular focus. Once the earbuds are in place, the music begins, and the cover is opened, the world around me fades away.
Barbershop reading: My barber has twenty magazine subscriptions, because people waiting for him have free time to read. I never go to the barbershop without a book. I find that I can read just about any type of book in this setting.
Lunch-break reading: At work, I can often read a brief devotional in small fragments of time. I keep an array of books within arm’s reach at work, including a copy of The Valley of Vision at my desk. I often take fifteen minutes during my lunch break for a brief devotional. It’s a great time to recalibrate my heart in the middle of the day.
Evening reading, when my brain is fried: At night when the sun is down, and my brain is shot from the day, I can read historical novels and biographies. For me, this is the best time to read about the lives of others.
Bedside reading: In defiance of feng shui experts, I keep a stack of books next to my bed. These are books that I read in the thirty minutes before I fall asleep, and each of the books can be read in short chunks. These are not books I intend to read from cover to cover, but only to read a few parts of. I replace the stack of books every couple of months.
Travel reading: I travel a bit, but it took me a while to figure out how to make the most of my travel reading. For a while I traveled with light fiction, thinking that a novel would be perfect. But my reading never got any lift. While trying to read novels in the vibrating hum of a jet fuselage, I found myself nodding off and losing interest. Later I discovered that at thirty thousand feet, my life seemed to come into focus. Once I made this discovery, I began to limit my carry-on to business books, Christian living books, and books that gave me just enough instruction to stimulate reflection and planning about my family, my job, and my life priorities. I step off the jet with pages of thoughtful personal reflection, a renewed energy for life, and a clear focus on my primary goals.3. Ruthlessly Curate Your Reading List
Several years ago, my wife and I both came to understand that if we were going to preserve our ability to read long books, we needed to not only read in the gaps of life, but also needed to get away to read books. We had small kids. I worked online, submerged in social media. All of life was conspiring against this habit of reading books well. So we decided to set aside time each year and go on a “reading retreat” with a stack of books. Now, I certainly recommend the practice.
But what was especially fun, leading up to that trip, was that my wife and I could bring only printed books. No e-books. You had to physically travel with your book selections. And especially when we began doing these trips with carry-on bags on commercial jets, we narrowed those titles down to two or three books. One trip, I brought only one title.
Now, these restraints have led us to become ruthless book curators. A few weeks out, my wife and I would buy — or get from the library — a stack of ten new titles, pick through them, sort them, rank them. We would whittle them down, down, down, until we had our chosen few. For all seasons of life, that’s a great discipline. Curate your reading list carefully.
4. Learn to Speed Read
Many mature readers will grow comfortable with a broad range of reading speeds: from a quick skim of the text, to a close study of the text, to a deep meditation over the text. On one side this means training our brains to read more quickly. Learning how is not complex, and you certainly don’t need a speed-reading course to do it.
One simple way to read faster is by running your finger under the text as you read, increasing the speed of your finger across the page until you are pushing your eyes to read faster than normal. In other words, use your finger like a stuffed rabbit zipping along in front of a sprinting greyhound. Keep running your finger faster until you begin reading more comfortably at that speed. At first this may feel awkward, but over time, this reading speed may become easier.
Due to differing comprehension speeds, not every reader will be able to read faster. And that’s okay, because a lot of books should not be read quickly anyways. But if you can learn to read faster, go for it.
5. Slow Read
On the other side of the spectrum, mature readers must also be comfortable reading slowly. Book reading is not all about burning through prose. Sometimes the best way to read a book is to gear down and read slowly and meditatively.
“Reading can be painful. Learning to read isn’t like learning to walk; it’s like learning to play a piano.”
In this situation, beware that impatience can rear its ugly head, make you feel guilty for not reading faster, and eliminate the joy from your book reading. Often our frustration with slow reading stems from a wrong attitude — of viewing books as a task to be accomplished, not as a difficult pleasure to be enjoyed. Reading, especially when we are just getting started, can be painful. Learning to read isn’t like learning to walk; it’s like learning to play a piano. It’s not natural.
So don’t give up too easily on a book that requires slow reading. Sometimes the best books require patience. Get comfortable with the slow pace, even if it’s a pace that is a lot slower than others.
6. Install a Transmission
Mature readers know when to read quickly and when to read slowly. Reading is like driving a moving truck through mountain highways. There are times to chug uphill in a low gear, and there are times to coast downhill in a high gear. Each book has its own terrain.
Our reading speeds will change as we read, because different sections in books will be like muscling uphill or cruising downhill. Over time, you will begin to sense the terrain of a book, and you will learn how to use different gears. Just be aware that the terrain can change. Some parts of a book can be read more quickly than others.
7. Anticipate
Before you begin reading a book, determine its purpose in your life. Why are you reading this book? What makes it better than the tens of thousands of books you had to ignore to read this one? Is it (1) part of your spiritual diet, (2) for personal change, or (3) just for fun? Determining clear reading priorities is critical.
Once the reading priorities are clear, then it’s time to ask specific questions. I encourage readers to write five to ten specific questions they would like the author to answer. By posing questions to a book before you begin, you establish an objective basis for why you are reading this book in the first place. As you read, those questions will make it easier to determine if the book is achieving this purpose.
8. Determine the Author’s Orbit
Which direction do you want the author to pull you? Do you want the author to pull you into the book (centripetal), or do you want the author to push you out of the book (centrifugal)? For example, if you read a book to simply delight in literary beauty, you want the author to pull you in, to hook your mind and heart with rich imagery.
On the other hand, if the book is for immediate personal change, you want the author to push you out, so you can unhitch from the book for personal reflection and application. The force of a book is shown by how well the author moves the reader along the intended route.
Determining which direction we are seeking to move is important. The business books I read are always centrifugal, pushing me away from the book into personal reflection. The leisure books I read are often centripetal, pulling me into the book for literary delight. Knowing this difference will shape the way you read (and respond to) books.
9. Run a Background Check
Before I read a book, I run a quick search online to browse book reviews, find concise summaries, read endorsements, and check for any high-profile blurbs that have been published about the book.
This step acquaints me with the authors I read. Who are they? Where do they work? What worldview do they represent? This critical step helps to prepare me for what I am about to read and can alert me to the author’s motivations. This background check requires only a few minutes of my time, and it is time well invested.
10. Grab a Pen
I buy copies of my print books, because I’m a strong believer that you should write in books, and write in them with a pen. Gasp! A book-mutilator! I keep a pen close. It’s good preparation, and it puts me in a posture of expectancy.
Without a pen in hand, I forget the thoughts that pass through my mind. Out of habit, I grab a pen before I grab a book. I have a whole chapter in my book, Lit!, devoted to marginalia and explaining how I do it. Write in books. Do it.
11. Slowly X-Ray the Book
Before I begin reading the first page of a book, I invest thirty minutes to ask broad structural questions. Adler, in his famous book on reading, writes, “Every book has a skeleton hidden between its covers.” I am trying to x-ray for that skeletal structure.
First, I study the table of contents, noticing how chapters build on one another. Second, I scan the book and its section headings. Third, I read the chapter summaries and even the concluding chapter. Anything that looks like a concise summary gets read first. (Confession: I typically read the final page before the first page.) Only then am I ready to begin reading the introduction.
Readers are tempted to dive right into the first pages, but it takes patience to x-ray a book. The time spent slowly inspecting a book is a rewarding investment. This step has protected me from wasting time reading mediocre books. Take time to x-ray for the skeleton, and take as much time as you need to do it well.
12. Determine a Reading Strategy
After I x-ray the book for its structure, I have a good sense of the book’s main points. Now I must determine how I want to read it. Different books must be read in different ways. Francis Bacon famously wrote, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” That is very true. So what should I do with a particular book?
After a slow inspection of a book, I have four options:
Chew and digest it like a steak. This approach says, “Yes, this appears to be an excellent book that will answer the questions I have asked. I want to read the book carefully and intentionally, cover to cover.”
Swallow it like a milkshake: “Yes, this appears to be a helpful book that will answer my questions. I want to read the entire book, but quickly. I don’t want to invest too much time on this single book.”
Sample it like a cheese platter: “Yes and no. Portions of the book seem to be unrelated to my questions. Other sections are pertinent.” There is nothing wrong with reading only portions of a book or specific chapters. By doing this you keep your book reading focused, and this focus can protect you from losing interest. Most importantly, this choice will protect you from the common myth that books must always be read from cover to cover. Not so. Some great books in my library are there because of one or two chapters.
Spit it out like expired milk: “No, this does not appear to be a book that will answer my questions, or at least not as well as another book might. I will move along and look for a replacement.”Mature readers learn to engage different books in different ways.
13. Jog Past the Questions
Let’s say you choose option two, to swallow the book at a quick pace. This is how I usually read nonfiction books. Now that I have a general idea about the structure of the book, it’s time to read. I begin reading chapter 1 and keep moving along at a quick reading pace. If something is confusing or does not make sense to me, I make a small mark and continue reading.
In the margin of a book I mark anything that I initially disagree with or question. At the end of the chapter, I return to the marked sections. Often, by the time I have read through to the end of the chapter, many of those initial questions have been answered by the author. I can save time by not stopping every time I have a question.
14. Note the Progression of a Chapter
As you read, pay close attention to the section headings and structural indicators like “first,” “second,” and “finally.” This internal structure is important and worth noting. If these are not marked with clear headings, you may want to make them obvious by underlining or circling them as you read along. Especially in old books and books that lack section headings, I note the structural indicators in the margin. These indicators are like street signs that guide me through the author’s development of a point in a chapter. I make those markers clear.
15. Discover the Thesis
Every nonfiction book has a skeleton because it has been developed from a core thesis, a sentence to summarize the author’s main point. Every chapter should also have a thesis statement. Sometimes the thesis is easy to see.
For example, in a new biography I was reading, the author asks in the introduction, “Why another biography on this person?” His thesis is embedded in that single paragraph. Sometimes it’s not this easy to find. If you can find the thesis for the book, underline it or put an asterisk in the margin. If you discover the thesis of a chapter, circle it and make a note of where you found it. Keep the thesis statement in the forefront of your mind, and watch how the author supports and defends it.
16. Know When to Quit
Even if you decide to read a book from cover to cover, this decision is not a vow. The evaluation of a book cannot wait until the book has been completed, and there comes a point when the reader must stop. Often a book’s value (or lack of value) is clear in the first few chapters. So how far into a book should a reader go before quitting?
This is where the one hundred-pages-minus-your-age rule comes in handy. This rule states that readers should start with one hundred pages and subtract their age. If you are twenty years old, you should give a book eighty pages before quitting. If you’re fifty years old, give it fifty pages. The more years, the more reading experience, the less time you need before you can close and shelve a book. And it means that, when you are one hundred, you are free to judge a book by its cover.
Often readers don’t stop reading because they don’t have “permission” to stop. You have permission. The only book you should read entirely is the Bible. All other books must prove their value along the way. Don’t allow unfinished books to pile up in a mountain of guilt. Show patience with a book, but cut the ties when necessary and move on.
17. Mark the Gold
I read nonfiction books in order to make discoveries, either about myself or about a particular topic. The time I invest in reading is paid back in bits of information — sometimes only paragraphs, sentences, or phrases — that change the way I live and perceive the world. It’s a sweet wage for the labor. John Piper once explained it this way:
What I have learned from about twenty years of serious reading is this: it is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember ninety-nine percent of what I read, but if the one percent of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the ninety-nine percent.
When one percent of what you read is life-transforming gold, the labor of sifting through the other ninety-nine percent is not troublesome. Whenever I read these nuggets of gold, I mark them and add them into a database I keep on my computer.
18. Collect and Store the Gold
Some people collect coins and baseball cards. I collect other people’s thoughts. When I read an important sentence or paragraph (the one percent), I mark it and then later return and copy it into a topical database on my computer. If you have a poor memory (like me), you will need a place to collect the sentences and paragraphs that you hope to retain for the future.
How exactly you go about collecting these insights may look different. Some readers use a photocopier and folders. Others use a handwritten journal. I use Evernote and a simple Microsoft Excel database. I collect quotes, which I type out verbatim, and organize them by topical categories and refined subcategories. I can tell you from personal experience, a captured thought that later finds expression in a real-life situation will boost a desire within you to continue reading. Whatever process works for you, find a way to store the gold.
19. Paraphrase
Before we can embrace the author’s arguments or reject the author’s conclusions, we must first understand what the author said. This is the role of paraphrasing. At the end of a chapter, paraphrase the chapter’s content. In one sentence, what was the main point of the chapter? At the end of the book, restate the main point in two to three sentences. The goal here is not a critique but a simple restatement, as objectively as possible, of what the author attempted to communicate.
20. Answer “Why?”
An author has taken time to address the topic, a publisher agreed to print it, and you bought (or borrowed) the book. So why did the author write it? Why did the publisher print it? Why did a bookstore stock it? Each of these questions must have an answer. As you read, those answers may emerge in the author’s language. Your job as a reader is to find the answers. Often an evaluation of a book is informed by answering these important “why” questions. Why does this book exist?
21. Find the Holes
It takes discernment to evaluate what the author has written, but it requires highly advanced discernment to determine what the author has left unwritten. Often a book’s fatal flaw is not that the author said something poorly, but that the author failed to say something essential. So what was left unsaid? What pieces were missing from the book? The questions that you write out before you begin reading become very useful at this point. By returning to your initial questions, you can determine if the author missed anything on the topic.
22. Let the Dust Settle
After you have completed a book, stop and give yourself time before making a final evaluation. Like driving a pickup down a gravel road, reading a book kicks up a lot of dust (details) in the brain, and it’s helpful to let the dust settle before we evaluate the book. Often the book’s value will become clearer after a few days, after your mind has processed the details. The thoughts that linger in your mind about a book are the thoughts that you want to capture. Go back and write those thoughts in the inside cover of the book or in a notebook.
23. Compare and Contrast Books
If we select books with specific priorities in mind, we will inevitably read books with overlapping content. Mature readers compare their books. After reading, answer a few more questions in the front cover, such as: Is this book better or worse than the other books I have read on the topic? Is it more helpful or less helpful? Where did this book contradict another book? What content was covered that other books neglected? The best books, the books that cover a topic most thoroughly, are the books we respect, cherish, reread, and recommend to our friends.
So those are my 23 tips for reading nonfiction, pulled from 23 years of reading nonfiction. All these skills, I believe, will make us more discerning readers, better thinkers, better Bible readers, and better able to do what Paul calls us to do: to hold together God’s immense plan for his creation and his bride, the church.
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Take Time to Be Unproductive: How Busyness Can Waste a Life
Søren Kierkegaard, a nineteenth-century Danish theologian and social critic, once wrote in his journal, “The result of busyness is that an individual is very seldom permitted to form a heart.” We sense in our souls he is right. Unrelenting busyness — running here and there, late and in haste, always with more to do than we have time for — stifles the life of the heart.
Yet I fear that many in the church, especially those of us in various forms of leadership, often pursue that very busyness. We occasionally warn others about burnout and stress, but we are constantly in motion, endlessly feeling harassed by all that clamors to be done and feeling guilty for projects we haven’t completed. And we frequently pass that stress on to others, in subtle but destructive ways — we are busy, so we can act like everyone else should be busy. If they are not, we can treat them as lazy or negligent.
But is our problem primarily that we are not more productive, or is it that we have allowed unrealistic expectations to distort our vision of faithfulness? While it’s very likely that we could become better organized and more efficient, pursuing those efforts may feed and hide the true problem rather than helping it. What if the heart of our trouble is not time management, but something else? What if the goal of Christian life isn’t merely to get more done? And if that’s true, why do many of us feel a need to fill every moment either with items we can check off a to-do list or with mindless distraction? Binge-watching television and hours spent on social media may be more symptoms than causes of our problems, signs of a deeper malady.
What if God doesn’t expect us to be productive every moment? What if growing comfortable with slowness, with quiet, with not filling every moment can help reconnect us to God, others, and even with our own humanity? That’s at least worth thinking about.
Unexamined Expectations
While it was Ben Franklin, and not the apostle Paul, who observed that “time is money,” we Americans have baptized that sentiment — not to derive financial benefit from every moment, but because somehow we have the idea that every minute should yield positive measurable results. Don’t just sit around; do something!
Of course, diligence, a good work ethic, and innovation typically do make life better for ourselves and others. Sometimes, however, a genuine good can become a horrible master, and when productivity and efficiency become our highest goals, our world and our lives suffer. That’s because God’s highest value is not productivity and efficiency, but love (Matthew 22:37–39; 1 Corinthians 16:14).
This sounds too abstract, so let’s turn to more direct questions about our own lives. What do you think God expects of you in any given day? If you are like me, this question can reveal some painful disconnects in our perception of God and the faithful life. I recently spoke with a pastor in the Midwest who told me that, when he was in college, he got so excited about the idea that he should “make every minute count” and “redeem the time” that he and his friends mapped out how they could live on four hours of sleep a night; this way, they could “do so much more for Christ.”
Twenty years later, this once strong and zealous servant of Christ was physically, emotionally, psychologically, and relationally broken. His faith, his family, and his ministry were all on the brink of collapse. He certainly wouldn’t trace all of his problems to his early zeal and oversized projects, but he does see how that pattern distorted his life, increasing his expectations not just for how much he should do in a day, but for how much he should accomplish in his life. We may easily dismiss his crazy idea of four hours of sleep per night, but my guess is many of us are living with similar assumptions, and it is hurting us.
One sign that unhealthy expectations are running our lives is a constant background frustration in our souls, hiding behind our smiling faces. We are exhausted by the kids, by the church, by the spouse, by the endless demands. We have no margin in life, so when someone says the wrong thing, or a child doesn’t move fast enough, or a neighbor needs help, this anger tries to burst through our kindness. People are keeping us from doing what we need to do! Efficiency and productivity have replaced love as our highest value.
Gift of Slow
Maybe in order not to waste our lives, you and I need to learn the benefit of “wasting” some time. Let me explain.
What we think of as boredom or unproductive time can be a great gift. In the spaces opened by moments of slowness, if we don’t immediately fill them with more tasks or distractions, surprising things often happen: our bodies breathe and relax a bit, our imaginations open up, and our hearts can consider all manner of ideas. We have space to evaluate how we spoke to a colleague that morning or notice a young parent struggling with a child. Only by slowing down, and not immediately filling the space, do we start to sense God’s presence and the complexities of the world — including both its beauties and problems, our wonder and fears. We miss the world when we are constantly busy. Thus Kierkegaard’s insight: the result of busyness is that we are seldom able to form a heart. Compassion, thoughtfulness, repentance, hope, and love all grow in the soil of reflection. And healthy reflection rarely occurs when we don’t slow down.
“Compassion, thoughtfulness, repentance, hope, and love all grow in the soil of reflection.”
Busyness also stunts our growth. Creativity and wisdom require our internal freedom to reflect, wrestle, and sit with challenges. There is a reason that walks and showers are often places of great insight: the distractions are minimal, so the mind and heart can wonder.
Such periods of slowness also enrich our communion with God if we take time for mental, emotional, and even physical engagement that the overly busy life excludes. Life improves if we carve out extended times for solitude and silence. These practices have historically been used and recommended by Christians who saw that busyness made it harder to be present with God and with others. These times of silence and solitude can be difficult, especially at first. But until we grow in our ability to be alone with God — and alone with ourselves — we will have difficulty recognizing the Spirit’s presence in our day.
Forming Our Hearts
Another reason we like to be busy is that we often don’t like ourselves. Slowing down and creating space for quiet often faces us with matters we prefer to ignore, whether painful memories from our past, undesirable traits in our personality, or actions we wish we hadn’t taken. Busyness can be a way to avoid confronting our sin. It can also be our way of avoiding the wish that we were someone else, or had a different set of abilities or background or temperament. Busyness that enables avoidance can stunt our growth. Busyness makes self-knowledge very difficult.
“We miss the world when we are constantly busy.”
Rather than being honest with God and ourselves about our hurts, sins, motivations, and disappointments, we dull our sensitivity with busyness. It takes courage to let moments remain unoccupied, but when we are willing to enter open spaces with an open heart, God can bring serious healing and growth.
We also gain more courage to enter such spaces when we live in a community of faith that is safe and loving, where others don’t panic or shut down in the face of our pain and shortcomings. When others are comfortable with quiet, mystery, and unfinished work, secure enough in Christ to endure messy situations, that also frees us to face this season in which God is still bringing to completion that which he began (Philippians 1:6): God is comfortable with process, too. We learn to avoid endless busyness when embracing slowness becomes not merely a personal value, but that of our community. Learning to go slower and maybe even “waste” more time together opens up fresh spaces to grow in our awareness of God’s presence and work. We start to become people who can, in the slowness, pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17), often without realizing that is what’s happening.
Slowing down — not filling every moment with distractions, dropping the compulsion to squeeze productivity out of every moment — allows us to hear God and others. It gives our imagination and creativity oxygen to breathe, and we start to develop a heart. It opens up the path of love. So go ahead, “waste” some time, because this may keep you from wasting your life.