December 10, 2020
I’m fortunate in that for my entire life, I’ve always naturally been a big reader.
Back when I was growing up, I remember hearing my parents’ friends gripe about how they couldn’t get their kids to pick up a book. All their kids wanted to do was play video games. My parents would try not to gloat about how they had no issues getting their son to read.
Don’t get me wrong—I also loved video games. But there was just something about reading a book that really gelled with me. I was always asking my parents to bring me to the library. I asked for new books for Christmas. I even spent what little money I had to buy my own books.
I mostly read fiction, but even at a young age I also dove into nonfiction books on a wide variety of different topics—space, Egyptian mummies, and how-to-draw instructional guides were my favorites.
One big thing that encourages me about the “exvangelical” community is that it’s mostly made up of serious readers. These people have a desire to learn, know how to seek out books on subjects that are interesting and relevant to their lives, then go on to read them.
Usually, these book are about science, history, and Biblical scholarship that feed them all the information that was withheld from them while in the Church, which they then use to deconstruct their faith.
The very first book I read that helped me deconstruct my faith was the Bible itself. I describe the story in more detail in the first chapter of my book. Despite being a huge reader for all my life, for some reason I had not fully read the book that I had based my life and faith on. But I know I was far from the only Christian to be guilty of that.
To this day, it still astounds me when I hear grown-ass adults say to me they don’t read. It absolutely blows my mind. When I ask them why, they always give me some lame excuse:
- It’s too boring.
- I can’t sit still for long enough.
- I can’t concentrate.
- I fall asleep.
Whenever I hear this, I attempt to reframe what a book actually is (it’s one of the only types of evangelism I still do). I say:
“A book isn’t just a stack of printed pages with a pretty picture on the cover. A book is the collected expertise of the author, often gained over an entire lifetime, and condensed into something that you can consume and digest in about four to six hours. You can buy it for about ten bucks. It’s even free if you check it out of the library.”
Reread that and really think about it. It’s mind boggling to consider the exponential growth potential there is from reading and learning from books.
There’s a reason the printing press is said to be the most important invention in human history (although at that time, they were mainly excited to be able to print and distribute more Bibles).
Today, I’m excited to see the audiobook catching on. They’ve reduced the excuses that non-readers give for not reading. Everybody spends time in the car. Everybody waits in long lines. Hell, everybody spends at least some time during the day sitting on the toilet.
By the way, that’s how I got through my entire read-through of the Bible. I committed to one chapter per visit to the toilet. I shit you not (pun very intended).
Fortunately, I’m hearing more and more from people who say they never used to be big readers, but they now listen to a lot of audiobooks. The content of audiobooks is much more edifying than listening to the latest radio hit for the fifteenth time.
If you’re one of those who doesn’t read, I’d strongly encourage you to develop a reading habit. Be patient with yourself at the beginning, but ultimately do whatever you need to do to start reading for at least 20-30 minutes a day.
New, accurate knowledge that you then apply correctly will lead you to a higher quality of life. Books are some of the best repositories of that new knowledge.