Have you not read? Part Three: General Literature - GBC Bulletin Column #13

Of all the things you could read, there is only one that you must read, and that is the Bible. It is good, however, to also read the insights of Bible-believing Christians throughout history to the present day, provided Scripture-grounded discernment is used. The New Testament book of Acts tells of a group of people in a place called Berea who examined the Scriptures daily to make sure what they were being taught was true (Acts 17:11). This principle applies to how we should approach potentially edifying spiritual material outside the Bible. But there is one other (rather broad) category about which I would ask, “Have you not read?”: general literature.

I would like to define general literature here as pieces of writing not deliberately or directly connected to reading and understanding God’s word or the development of your daily walk with the Lord. Histories, philosophies, newspapers, magazines, journals, social studies, novels, comic books… That pretty much takes us from the sublime to the ridiculous. But why would I encourage you to get better acquainted with reading more generally?

There are three parts to my answer: being informed, being alert, and being effective. Being informed is about knowledge (a wealth of which is available in all kinds of literature) and often takes on a historical/current structure: knowing what people have thought, said, and done in the past and knowing what people are thinking, saying, and doing today. Such knowledge is useful to us, not least because it makes us alert to what is going on in the world around us. Especially if we wish to be effective servants of Christ in 21^st Century London, we can’t afford to go around as if we are on our own planet and are out of touch or just disinterested, have nothing to speak to or say about the world around us. The Bible is filled with God-breathed references to and even quotations from non-Scriptural books. Not least of these is in the New Testament where Paul quotes a range of unbelieving Greek authors: the poet Aratus in Acts 17:28, the playwright Menander in 1 Corinthians 15:8, and the philosopher Epimenides in Titus 1:12.   His purpose in doing so was not a pragmatic attempt to show how much like the world he really was, but simply to communicate effectively in a way people could easily relate to and readily understand.

Sir Richard Steel, a 17^th-18^th Century Irish writer and politician once said “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” Start exercising your mind, and be better prepared to meaningfully engage the world around you with Christian truth. 

This was printed in the worship bulletin of Grace Baptist Church (Wood Green) on 21/07/2013.