GRACE ABOUNDING – 27
March 13, 2006
THE IMPORTANCE OF READING
by Pastor Billy Park
I have three young children who love to read and to be read to. It is a credit to my wife, Gloria, who has instilled this love of reading. I must brag a little about my children. They are far ahead in their abilities in reading. My 7 year old son was tested in school to read at a 6th grade level. My 5 year old daughter is also a proficient reader. When I read a children’s book to her she is not looking at the pictures but following the words. I know this because when I misread a word, she is quick as lightning to correct me. My wife and I do not have a rigorous academic plan for our kids. It’s quite simple – read lots of books, limit television and computer games, and pray for and love our kids.
Reading is not only important for academic achievement but it is vital in our spiritual lives. One experienced pastor said, “I have yet to meet a leader who is growing in personal passion for God and godliness, and effectiveness in pastoral ministry and preaching, who doesn’t have a voracious appetite for reading.” We should not neglect the other spiritual disciplines that you could probably say the same things about – prayer, worship, fasting, witnessing, etc. However, I think this pastor is correct in highlight the importance of reading.
If reading is so important in our spiritual lives, why is it so hard for people to find the time to read? Technology has been both a friend and foe to reading. Technology has been a friend to reading in that it has made available a vast amount of good reading quickly and easily available to us through the internet (reading online as well as reviewing and order countless number of books). However, technology has also been the greatest foe of reading.
On the one hand, advances in filming, graphics, and gaming has made the visual the dominant force over the literary. Why take the trouble to read through a book when you can just watch the movie? Watching something takes no brain power. In fact it might even sap your brain power. In contrast, reading engages the mind by its very nature. You cannot be reading without mental effort. Well, let me qualify that, reading the sports pages or the comics or People magazine is not the same as reading a good book.
That brings me to other way that technology is a great foe to reading. Technology has allowed for so much information to be published, printed in hardback, paper back, magazines of all kinds, every kind of websites with every kind of opinions, worldviews and perspectives on truth and reality. There is so much information that truth itself seemed drown in a world of spin.
Yes, the information revolution is daunting with the overwhelming piles of information, especially false information. If you were hungry and went to a food court that you knew that half of the food had some poison in it, it would be hard for you take anything to eat. Much of the secular and some broadly Christian book distributors are actually like that. However, there are many good places where much more discernment is exercised in what is made available. Two places where I buy my Christian books are: www.monergismbooks.com and www.wtsbooks.com.
I’ll close with a quote from Charles Spurgeon on the importance of reading:
“The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. YOU need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritan writers, and expositions of the Bible. We are quite persuaded that the best way for you to be spending your leisure, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master’s service.”
