On Reading Difficult Books
By Eric Irwin | May 6, 2020
I’m hesitant to deviate from the accessible, low-bar of the Virtual Book Table here in it’s digital infancy, but with Shiv’s indulgence I’m going to urge you to consider a different direction: take up difficult works and plow through them, even if you have to go very slowly, reading a few paragraphs each morning with devotions. Here’s why. The works that have changed my life have taxed both my mind and my pride. They have been intellectually demanding and morally above me. They have said to me, “you can have this, but only if you’re willing to fight.” Let me give you some examples.
A few years ago I came across an E.M. Bounds quote that slapped me in the face: “dead preachers give out dead sermons.” Another writer (a modern writer trying to appeal to thin-skinned Americans) might have said, “spiritual maturity will enhance the spiritual vitality of our messages.” But because Bounds was willing to insult me, he made it all but impossible for me to hide behind feeble excuses after bad sermons. So this is my first bit of advice: read writers that make you uncomfortable. This could also be stated as, read writers that make you do real business with God. For me these are people like John Owen, John Stott (who once said, “all preaching now is pathetic”), Augustine, Gregory the Great, the Venerable Bede, and C.S. Lewis. These would all fall in the morally-uncompromising category.
As for intellectually-demanding, Owen fits here just as easily. Last night I couldn’t sleep. I went into the next room so I wouldn’t wake Lisa and opened my Kindle to Owen’s Treatise on Temptation. Owen is the only writer whose sentences I’m willing to read twice or three times. Why? Three reasons: 1) he doesn’t waste words, 2) his thought is remarkably original, 3) I am changed by his insights. Last night I read Owen’s harmonizing of how the Bible seems to be double-minded in speaking of God and temptation: that God tempts no one, and at other times he tempts in order to test. Owen wrote, “Temptation is a knife. It can cut your meat, or it can cut your throat.” It can feed you or destroy you, but God is not on the hook when we complain that we were ruined because he tempted us. Owen was forcing himself to think through the apparent contradiction and he was taking his readers with him. So, this is my second bit of advice: read writers that make you think harder than you are naturally inclined to think. For me these would be, well, many of the same writers above, but also Alvin Plantinga, Herman Bavinck, Jonathan Edwards, Richard Baxter, Jacques Barzun, Christopher Lasch, etc.
So maybe do this: pick one book (or just a chapter in a worthy book), pick a pace you can keep, and make a verbal commitment to someone close to you. Maybe get them to join you. Form a Zoom book club. Or email me and ask me to start a reading club with you. I’ve been thinking about that for a while…