Be Careful Who You Read | Clip from How to Read as a Christian

Well, let's kind of start off with the most fundamental principle of reading. And that is that we are, as believers, as followers of a king, we are not actually free to just read any religious material.

We have to follow the pattern that the king set for us. Let me give you two verses. Luke 8, 18. Christ turns and says, so take care how you listen. In Mark 4, 24, a similar passage translated this way, and he was saying to them, take care what you listen to.

So as a believer, that's where we start. Christ wants us to be listeners. Christ wants us to be discerning listeners. How we listen, what we listen to, obviously includes who we listen to. And if we look again at Christ's own pattern, think of John 10, verse 37, when the crowds are rejecting his teaching about the father and his claims about himself, his answer to them is quite simple.

John 10, verse 37. If I do not do the works of the father, do not believe me. And I always think that that would be quite life altering for the United States. If above every pulpit, there was this giant banner that said, if the man that is speaking is not, you know, not perfectly, but not genuinely doing the works that the father gave him to do, following Christ, then do not listen to this man.

You know, what a transforming principle that would be. But my question for you, Jeremy, is this, if a person walks into a Christian bookshop or if they, you know, go online and they just type in, you know, maybe they go to Amazon, which is probably not the best place to start.

If they don't belong to a church where they have people who could guide them to good authors, how can you apply the principle of being careful who you listen to if you just walk into a shop and maybe you don't know those names?

Yeah, I think, John, you've probably actually identified one of the first steps in saying the problem that they have is that they may not be part of a church where they're getting good advice and where they have people who can advise them, because that's actually and you mentioned it in terms of your own background.

That's a really helpful place to begin. If you have mature Christian friends or faithful pastors who are able to say to you, I would recommend this. This is particularly helpful for your case. I think if you're if you're lacking that, your first port of call must be the scriptures.

You've got to ask if the scriptures are the touchstone of truth, then is this book in a substantial way, properly reflective of the substance, the proportion, the priorities of the word of God? Alongside of that, I think you need to look at the author and his fruit.

And that ties in with just what you've said from John chapter 10, that if you look at what this man is like in his own life and what the effect of his teaching is in the church which he serves, and already if you're saying, well, he's not a part of a church or he's doing this or is doing that, you're thinking, well, what kind of man am I actually dealing with here?

But you look at the fruit of the life, because if the teaching produces a certain thing, if that's a good scriptural thing, then I think you're on to probably more of a winner. Something else that's really important.

I think hopefully this will come out in some of the recommendations that we're making, is that you can develop this kind of network of books and reading, that as you read a particular book, you might come across another name.

Maybe it's in a note, maybe it's a reference, maybe somebody talks about another author, maybe an older author, and you think, oh, now this is a good book and he's speaking warmly and persuasively of this other author.

Maybe I could read them as well. And then, as you've mentioned, the recommendations of faithful mentors and pastors and friends, the encouragement even of a podcast like this, hopefully, being able to say, look, we've done some of the filtering for you, but we want you to profit from that process that hopefully we've been going through.

Yeah, a couple of others that I've had to use in the past, especially as a young Christian. If I did not know the name of the author, I would try to look at the publisher. Is it a publisher that we trust?

In my mind, there's kind of three categories of publishers of Christian literature. One is a category where almost everything they publish, you can just so wholeheartedly recommend. I think of The Banner of Truth, and there are many others.

Then there are publishers that kind of are more of a mixed bag, and a lot that they publish are really just stellar books. And some are not as good, but not books that are terrible. And then there's a group that's so mixed that you're really, you know, one out of ten books would be good, and you just can't trust that publisher.

So when I was a young Christian, I would look for publishers. I also would look at websites as websites came into being, because they weren't in being when I was a young Christian. And there are a couple of websites.

My favorite over here is Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service dot com. And that's kind of a discount website that only puts good books on its site. And so I can always send people to that. And if you're in the States, I mean, it's just very inexpensive.

And so, you know, we've appreciated their ministry for over 20 years. So that's one principle. How do we know who to listen to? Well, like you said, we try to look at the author's life or the fruit of their ministry, especially if they've been dead for a long time.

And we want to be careful to, as best we can, to apply Christ's principles for his subjects. Be careful how and what and who you listen to. And that includes your reading. We really do appreciate being able to interact with you through the comments.

So if you have questions or just comments you'd like to leave, leave them below and we'll get back to them as we have a chance.