Guard Against the Enemy of the Best Books | Clip from How to Read as a Christian

The Best Books and the Discipline of Discernment

Another principle is guarding against good books which can become the enemy of the best books. Particularly today, I think, you know, even in the last 20 years we've seen certainly a growth in the Christian literature industry.

With the internet and everything, you know, so we're not just talking about books in print, but you could be reading, you know, blogs or, you know, listening to podcasts. There are just so many ways to take in information.

You must be very diligent to discern between things that are pretty good, you know, helpful, and things that are just the best. And it's not, obviously these are not easy things to always discern, but I think if this is our goal that we're aiming at, the Lord will help us.

Choosing the Fundamentals and the Best Writers

So, choosing to read books not only that are primarily, as you mentioned, without neglecting the fruit issues, but starting more with the fundamentals, the great realities that if you get those right, 95 of the rest of life falls into place.

But then, not only that category, but choosing the very best writers in that category. And as you mentioned, sometimes we can read men that we admire, and they mention men that greatly helped them with that doctrine, with that area.

And that's a great way of kind of discerning, so which of the books that are on the shelf in front of me or on the website, which of them are really the best of the best?

Yes, it's that desert island principle almost, isn't it? If I could only take five with me, which of these five would I take that would really feed my soul, establish my communion with God, and lead me in the way everlasting?

One of my privileges slash burdens is sometimes I'm involved in looking at manuscripts for publishers. So you see the range of the things that are coming across, and then I'm a book review editor for the Banner of Truth magazine, and I get sent these books, and I have to start filtering them before I even start reviewing them.

And then this almost endorsement factory, even amongst good Christian writers and good Christian publishers, where every book has five people who we respect saying, this is the greatest book you're ever going to read on this topic.

And the chances are that that's simply not true. And so it really is difficult sometimes, especially if you've got, as we do in our own time, maybe an emphasis on what is new, what is current, to lose sight of the deposit of proven truth that we've got from the best of writing, Christian writing over the centuries, and to fall into the trap of dipping in here and there on things that are short or shallow or light or easy or accessible, and not to put in the hard yards.

Reading is hard work. And as you said already, the accessibility of other media that provides a much lighter or apparently more accessible route, without necessarily demanding the kind of engagement that real reading does, and therefore doesn't actually always produce the deep benefits of real reading, that challenge of discerning what is best and then sticking to that.

Reading the Gold Instead of the Copper

None of us have time to read everything that we think we probably would or could or should. So we have to make a selection. And why read the copper when you can read the gold?

Yeah, and that is kind of behind sometimes the fact that we recommend older writers so often. It's not that one century is more godly than another century in the history of the church. It's not that old is better than new.

But if a man wrote 300 years ago, so let's say John Owen or John Flavel or Richard Sibbes, not everything they wrote is being published right now. Maybe with Owen it is. But it's really the best of their works that have been republished through the centuries.

So time has a way of filtering the pretty good books out and leaving only their best works.

Why the Best of the Older Writers Endures

Yeah, and even with those guys where they're saying, hey, someone's done the collected works of Owen or Sibbes or Brooks or whoever it may be. If you sit down with someone who's actually read those, they're going to say, oh, you've got to get volume six and you've got to get volume two.

And you really need to read this part of volume 217. Because even there, as you say, there can be an unevenness. Some things date more quickly. Not all that they write shows these men at their very best.

And then there are those elements, those volumes, those particular investments. And the wise judges are saying, now that, that's worth reading. That's standing the test of time.

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