The reading religion
There is always a danger that we find in the Bible exactly what we wish to find. It's a big book, and if you squint hard enough and trim away enough of the pesky context, you will find that it pleasingly confirms everything you've ever thought and emphasises precisely what you yourself would emphasise given the opportunity. How convenient!
It's with a certain amount of trepidation, therefore, that I want to talk today about Christianity being the reading religion. Because if it's true, it would suit me down to the ground.
I have always loved reading. One of my fondest early memories is going to Sweetens Bookshop in Blackpool (sadly no more) to spend my first ever book vouchers on a book of my very own choice. I chose Mariel of Redwall by Brian Jacques, and a glorious thing it was and still is. I immersed myself in the world of Redwall, and later in the worlds of Narnia, and Wonderland, and Middle Earth, and the Discworld; I revelled in the imaginations of Roald Dahl and Douglas Adams and Mervyn Peake; I delighted in the lightness of P G Wodehouse and the weight of Marilynne Robinson; in the imagined alternative history of Susanna Clarke and the imagined real history of Hilary Mantel. I am forever to be found with my nose in a book, as are my children.
And I'm well aware that there are many different reasons for loving reading, not all of them pure and godly. The desire for escape is a primary example - it is sorely tempting to run from hard relationships and taxing obligations into the comfort of a book. Especially if that book is far enough removed from the real world so as not remind to us of those obligations or stimulate any productive reflection on them. (That is not to say that fantasy novels, to choose one example, cannot be powerfully good for us. But that's a topic for another time.)
As well as that, I am well aware that literacy, and access to a wide variety of books, are gifts not afforded to every Christian in every age, or even to the majority. (The implications of that fact on the question of the "quiet time" - a set-aside time of personal daily Bible reading as a key component of authentic Christian spirituality - is also a topic for another time.) The point, though, is that calling Christianity the "reading religion" is not just a piece of pretentious, middle-class, intellectualising from the armchair of a bookish nerd. At least I hope not. The point is that the Christian faith is a reading religion because it is first a hearing religion.
A hearing religion
I probably don't need to convince you this is true. From the very beginning, the power which give light and life to the chaos and emptiness of creation was the speech of God (Genesis 1:3). God governed his first people by giving them words to live by, and even if those words were accompanied by visuals, God was very clear that they certainly had not seen him, nor should they try to make visuals of him or anything else in creation - instead they were to listen to his voice (Deuteronomy 4:15-18). Tony Reinke (whose books on this topic you should definitely read) has noted that the whole history of Israel is "God's struggle to lead a language-centred people through the allurements of an image-dominated world" (Reinke, Lit!, 43). Indeed, the Jewish scholar Robert Alter has noted the preference of the Biblical writers to prioritise speech in the way they construct their narrative, preferring dialogue to narration, and rendering even internal thought using verbs like "he said":
"Perhaps, with their strong sense of the primacy of language in the created order of things, they tended to feel that thought was not fully itself until it was articulated as speech... With words God called the world into being; the capacity for using language from the start set man apart from the other creatures... Spoken language is the substratum of everything human and divine that transpires in the Bible, and the Hebrew tendency to transpose what is preverbal or nonverbal into speech is finally a technique for getting at the essence of things."
Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 85-87.
The great movements in God's salvation plan are accompanied by new promises, new covenants, new words; and the greatest revelation of himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, is introduced to us as the Word of God (John 1:1). Faith in this Christ comes not through spiritual or ecstatic experiences (as Jesus makes clear in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:29-31), but through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ (Rom 10:17).
This sheds light on an issue which recurs in church history - how to bring the word of Christ to those who cannot read or have trouble hearing. Imagination and creativity are certainly required here. But we cannot agree with the proposal of Abbot Suger, who in the 12th Century poured his energies into beautiful art and architecture with the memorable justification: "the dull mind rises to truth through material things." The place of visual beauty is something well worth considering, but Suger - and others after him - appear to view it as a replacement for hearing. If they won't listen to words, or can't understand them, then show them something visually awesome instead, or lead them into a wonderful experience that will overwhelm their other senses and bring them to God.
But nothing in the Scriptures would encourage us to think this was an acceptable alternative to faith through hearing. Indeed it might well cause us to remember that the desire for more visual and tangible forms of worship, in the temporary absence of the word, was precisely what led to the creation of the Golden Calf in Exodus 32, and that didn't end well. (This is a major weakness in James K A Smith's work, on my view. His observation that we are shaped by cultural liturgies is a marvellous diagnosis, but makes for a terrible prescription. In Psalm 1 the man who walks and stands and sits with sinners is shaped by his actions; but what shapes him in a godly direction is not a new cultural liturgy, but meditation on God's word. See here for more helpful critique.)
It is no surprise that the Reformation exploded when it harnessed the power of the printing press; when Tyndale made the word of God intelligible to the ploughboy by putting it into his own language; when pamphlets and treatises and books were produced and burned and produced again. The sword of the Spirit is the word of God (Eph 6:17), and that word alone has the power to produce faith and inspire obedience.So Christianity is a reading religion rather than a watching one; a hearing religion rather than a seeing one. We must insist on this in an increasingly visual and image-dominated world, as Tony Reinke has helpfully written:
“The expanse of our soul’s cavernous appetite is opened and entered by new images and spectacles that grab our hearts. The human heart bends towards what the eye sees. Today’s image makers fling into the world digital spectacles of sex, wealth, power, and popularity. Those images get inside us, shape us, and form our lives in ways that compete for God’s design for our focus and worship.”
Tony Reinke, Competing Spectacles, 118.
Too many words
But our current danger is not only too many images, but too many words. Every moment we are bombarded with 24/7 rolling newsfeeds, Tweets, blogs (and no, the irony isn't lost on me) - much of it true and useful. In the current coronavirus lockdown, I could spend every waking moment consuming verbal content in easy bitesize chunks. Is there any primacy in reading books, over against consuming words? Two quotes for reflection. The first from J. Ellsworth Kalas, author of the wonderful Preaching in an Age of Distraction. As he says, the problem with distraction is not always that it's evil, but that it's mediocre - and "there is nothing mediocre about being Christlike":
"Then there's also reading and viewing and discussion material that isn't corruption but is addictive because it's the path of least resistance... The mediocre is comfortable; it doesn't challenge us intellectually, and it is familiar. It's like that old shoe; we can slip it on without struggle or discomfort. And we don't need to condemn ourselves because most of it is not measurably evil; it's just not very demanding. The mediocre will stunt our mental growth but the process is so gradual that there's no pain of conscience."
J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an age of Distraction, 73.
If that's putting it negatively - short-form bitesize triviality rots our brains - here's Oliver O'Donovan to put it positively:
"To the task of hearing carefully we bring a distinctive practice, a kind of 'hearing' which is not quickly taken captive to the clamour of voices. This is the reading of texts. In reading we set ourselves at a judicious distance from the immediate... There are texts so nearly and newly produced that the reader treads, as it were, on the writer's heels... ephemeral writing of every kind which reproduces and concentrates the riot of voices ringing in our ears... Literary communication thrives on distance, for writing postpones the encounter with the truth, allowing it the time to take place when the conditions are ready."
Oliver O'Donovan, Finding and Seeking, 132-133.
Reading books liberates us from the heart-stopping terror of the newsflash, from the need to be in the loop on every celebrity scandal, from the kneejerk inaccuracy of the "hot take". Reading books grants us the time to slow down, to reflect, and to read another's slow reflection. It enables discernment, stretches our capacity, and allows us to return afresh to the book, the living and active word of God, with new eyes. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a book to read...