A Recommended Addiction

As you might have guessed, I have strong opinions on just about everything, and there are fewer topics which get me going than those of media and worldview. If you haven't yet gotten the drift that mainstream media in general and electronic in particular, greatly influence behavior, than you haven't been reading much- doh! That means many if not most of us.

Times have changed haven't they? I have four or five books on my nightstand and a wonderfully peaceful and enriching evening for me, might be to crack open a book or two for some quality time, or to spend several hours browsing at the bookstore. Granted, in this day and age of IPods, Wi-Fi's, cable and sattelite TV and radio, I must be regarded as a bit of a dinosaur.

In fact, according to a National Endowment for the Arts report ("Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America"), based on recent Census Bureau data, fewer than half of all adults now read literature (defined as any fictional story, play, or poetry). Furthermore, adults reporting to have read any book in the last 12 months dropped from 61 percent to 57 percent. And the rate of decline is increasing. Over the last decade, literary reading dropped by more than 10 percent.

Some see disaster. In a New York Times op-ed piece, Andrew Solomon tied a decline in reading to a rise in depression and Alzheimer's disease. Persuaded that television watching bred mindless passivity, he concluded that "the crisis in reading is a crisis in national health."

What's scary is that these numbers are mirrored in the church community, and we're to be known as the people of 'the book' (the literal meaning of the latin word, Bible). If we don't read, who will? It's who we are and what we're about. This fast-paced, high-octane culture doesn't help I know. One observer noted, "Sustained reading, sitting quietly and enjoying the aesthetic pleasure that words elegantly deployed on the page can give, contemplating careful formulations of complex thought- these do not seem likely to be acts strongly characteristic of an already jumpy new century."

Movies such as The Passion of the Christ and Chariots of Fire can be edifying. Televised Olympic heroics can inspire, rare programs like 24, can entertain and intellectually stimulate us, but for the people of the Book, there is no substitute for the written word, and woe is the culture that counts reading, including Bible reading, an antiquated method of learning. Who will relish the allegory of Bunyans' Pilgrim's Progress? Who will take the time to appreciate the example set forth in Corrie ten Boom's biography, The Hiding Place? Who will bother to read Isaiah or Acts or Revelation in a sitting?

In his Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Don Whitney argues that "growing Christians are reading Christians. " How do we grow in the image of Christ, disciple one another and share the best news in the history of the world, and biblical ethics to confront the culture in the name of Christ without books- especially the book? Simply, we cannot. Want to be addicted? Book reading- the book in particular, is one addiction we're better off picking up.