{"id":1277,"date":"2013-01-14T04:58:51","date_gmt":"2013-01-14T04:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/january-qreading-this-yearq\/"},"modified":"2014-01-29T02:22:59","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T02:22:59","slug":"january-qreading-this-yearq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/january-qreading-this-yearq\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

F<\/span>rancis Bacon once said, \u201cReading makes a broad man but writing makes an exact man.\u201d<\/span>1<\/sup>\u00a0 I am not as broad as I ought to be and am surely not as exact as I need to be.\u00a0 I find myself more in agreement with the preacher when he wrote, \u201cand further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh\u201d (Ecc. 12:12).\u00a0 Yet I know that reading is the life blood of learning.\u00a0 The great apostle, with no hope of escape from prison, still requested of young Timothy that he bring him his books! (See 2 Tim. 4:13); and Daniel, busy in his work as a head of state, wrote, \u201cI Daniel understood by books the number of the years\u201d (Dan. 9:2).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My father was a university professor and my mother was an English teacher.\u00a0 One would think some of it would rub of on their third child.\u00a0 For my mother\u2019s sake, I wear a white carnation on Mother\u2019s Day and I try to continue to read and write.\u00a0 Reading was comprehension to her, speed reading was not a real concern.\u00a0 William McGuffey wrote, “Read much but not many books.\u00a0 The motto in reading should be multum non multa”<\/span>2<\/sup> (not many things but much).\u00a0 I (and my siblings) went to his grade school in Oxford, Ohio, maybe some of that will rub off!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m certainly not a fast reader.\u00a0 I have a four-speed transmission when it comes to how I can read various books.\u00a0 Sometimes I can get up to third or fourth gear, but most times I plug along in first or second.\u00a0 Technical books (such as commentaries and theologies, which I love) just need to be given time.\u00a0 There is a saying, \u201cit\u2019s not the bee touching the flower, but abiding on it that produces the honey!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have become a more organized reader as I\u2019ve grown older; maybe you have as well.\u00a0 I regret that I did not have (or no one taught me) a way to catalog information throughout my college and seminary days.\u00a0 Those old text books and other reading material are filled with pencil scratchings behind the front covers, but if I can\u2019t remember under which cover to look, I\u2019ve lost it.\u00a0 When my daughter Rebekah was my secretary, she wrote a small computer program to keep and catalog quotations from my reading.\u00a0 Later, my software engineer son Michael made an even more elaborate program which I now use.\u00a0 I guess if you can\u2019t figure it all out yourself, raise some children who can.\u00a0 They\u2019ll only think you\u2019re stodgy, which isn\u2019t bad.\u00a0 When Lee Strobel was writing his first book, he went to meet Bruce Metzger.\u00a0 He said, “I found eighty-four-year-old Bruce Metzger on a Saturday afternoon at his usual hangout, the library at Princeton Theological Seminary, where, he says with a smile, \u2018I like to dust off the books.\u2019”<\/span>3<\/sup>\u00a0 That\u2019s what my generation will be doing in retirement, and that\u2019s not bad either.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some rules for reading<\/span><\/h2>\n

If I could start all over again I would follow a few rules.\u00a0 If I didn\u2019t like to read to begin with, I would begin reading with what I liked.\u00a0 In my opinion a comic book is better than a cartoon because it takes more effort, imagination, and vocabulary.\u00a0 But if one will continue in that vein, he will soon graduate to better reading.\u00a0 Even to this day, when I get tired of reading the heavy things, I will go back to a good biography or even a fun story.\u00a0 Those have a way of pulling me back to my corner chair and asking me to linger there a while.\u00a0 Dr. Clearwaters used to quote William James saying, \u201cWe all have equal retentive powers, we only differ in degrees of interest and methods of learning.\u201d\u00a0 I have found that the degree of interest will greatly enhance the method of learning.<\/span><\/p>\n

I would also slow down and read as if I were talking to the author and he with me.\u00a0 But just as in real conversation, the pace will naturally pick up as you run deeper into the topic.\u00a0 Spurgeon said, “A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books he has merely skimmed.\u00a0 Little learning and much pride come of hasty reading.”<\/span>4<\/sup>\u00a0 Daniel said he \u201cunderstood by books,\u201d not that he saw something in a book.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I would also try to expand my knowledge of various kinds of literature and authors.\u00a0 A \u201cuniversity\u201d (unity in diversity) training is what we need.\u00a0\u00a0 An \u201cencyclopedic\u201d (pediatrics in the whole cycle) knowledge is what we are after.\u00a0 Thomas <\/span>\u00e0<\/span> Kempis wrote,\u00a0 “Let not the authority of the writer offend thee, whether he be of great or small learning; but let the love of pure truth draw thee to read.”<\/span>5<\/sup>\u00a0 I see my younger son, Matthew, gaining this kind of reading ability much better than I ever did.\u00a0 When our children were young, we would stock the shelves with children-sized novels and classics, and he read them all!\u00a0 Now his (and all of our children\u2019s) range of reading is much broader than it would have been.\u00a0 Our younger daughter, Rachel, now has an MA in reading!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Those technologies<\/span><\/h2>\n

And also, as I have noted, I would develop a retrieval method much earlier in my career.\u00a0 This is where the electronics boom has been such a blessing, though it can also be a curse.\u00a0 My father, a PhD from the University of Missouri, was an electronics wizard.\u00a0 He fixed anything and everything, built our houses, built and rebuilt our cars, and could tell you how every little gizmo worked and why.\u00a0 He retired, however, in 1984 just as the computer world was coming into its own and he did not come in with it.\u00a0 He had the brains, no doubt, and the aptitude, but the interest died out too quickly.\u00a0 I am certainly no computer guru and only operate on an average level, but I am well beyond my father.\u00a0 My children are the same distance ahead of me (maybe more) than I was of my father.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure their children will pass them as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now this doesn\u2019t mean that we are more literate than our ancestors.\u00a0 Most people agree that our generation has more material at its fingertips than past generations combined but seems to have less wisdom and literacy than past generations.\u00a0 I know that I am far less literate than my mother (who died 1-1-01).\u00a0 She was an English and Literature teacher and taught for 25 years in the public school system and was an avid reader.\u00a0 She also taught a very popular Bible as Literature class in the high school where I attended\u2014in the 1960s!\u00a0 She never used a computer, as far as I know, but I still wish that my reading could be as broad as hers.\u00a0 My sister, Debra, is just like her mother but more computer literate as well; so it can work both ways.\u00a0 She reads <\/span>quickly and comprehensively to the shame of the rest of us.\u00a0 I would still call her \u201cold school\u201d when it comes to the kind of books she likes and her broad understanding of subjects, yet she is well beyond our mother in up-to-date technologies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Only recently have I begun reading from a Kindle.\u00a0 On a trip this year to Ukraine my son, Matthew (who has an iPad with Kindle on it), gave me his old Kindle with a few books already on it.\u00a0 I bought a few more and took only that with me on the trip.\u00a0 I loved the ease of it and read four books on the two-week trip.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t bring me into the new age, however.\u00a0 I still love to read with a pencil and my personal bookmark (I am terrible at marking up a book so no one else will ever be able to use it).\u00a0 I have Amazon tagged with my favorite web sites and have done my share of making them rich.\u00a0 But I still identify with\u00a0 J. Sidlow Baxter when he said,\u00a0 “All of us are fond of reconnoitering among the shelves of evangelical bookstores.”<\/span>6<\/sup>\u00a0 I\u2019ll add to that, among dusty shelves of used book stores!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The next generation<\/span><\/h2>\n

What will our children and grandchildren face in their life-times? There is already the problem of plagiarism in schools and informal writing.\u00a0 With Google searches, it is almost too easy to find information.\u00a0 It takes little or no effort in personal research.\u00a0 In fact, \u201cresearch\u201d today means searching the internet.\u00a0 But footnoting and giving credit where credit is due takes time and know-how.\u00a0 So why not just drop (cut and paste) the whole text right into my own document?\u00a0 In a world-wide information system, who\u2019s to know?\u00a0 One can also word-search a subject in difficult-to-read books and lift a quotation out of it as if one has really read it.\u00a0 Remember in the old footnoting system (which I still use) how you had to be careful not to use an author\u2019s own footnote when he footnoted another author?\u00a0 Either read the book yourself, or give the current author credit.\u00a0 That kind of thing is even easier now.<\/span><\/p>\n

On a personal note, I tire of the over-footnoting which is today\u2019s style (and required of good students).\u00a0 When you read a paper, or technical book, you are reading two things:\u00a0 the text itself which is the top half of the page, and the footnotes which take up the bottom half of the page.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost like reading two books at once, like carrying on two conversations at the same time.\u00a0 I\u2019m old-school enough to just want it in one conversation or be polite and wait until later.\u00a0 Footnoting itself (which I agree is necessary) is not found in older research books at all.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure that I would go as far as professor Goodrick when he wrote, “Many a polluting interpretation that deserves a death with dignity is kept alive by the heroic efforts of that life-support apparatus called a footnote.”<\/span>7<\/sup><\/p>\n

I am afraid that history will be so re-written that my grand children will not even know the truth of history.\u00a0 The internet makes no distinction between false and true.\u00a0 This is like the Hollywood film version of history\u2014since it is all many people will ever see, it is accepted as fact without any critical thinking.\u00a0 This is already bleeding over into Biblical history and the reliability of the Bible.\u00a0 Dan Brown\u2019s <\/span>DiVinci Code <\/span>is proof enough!<\/span><\/p>\n

How many of us will see our grandchildren ten times as proficient as we with the technologies, but woefully deficient in the social skills of life?\u00a0 I still find it ironic to talk about \u201csocial networking\u201d among people who never see or talk to one another.\u00a0 It is a common remark to hear someone say that they have been in a public place where everyone was busy on their electronic device but never said a word to one another.\u00a0 Multi-tasking seldom includes conversation, evidently.\u00a0 Add to this the coming deficiency in spelling, grammar, personality, facial expression, eye contact, not to mention manners.\u00a0 And we cannot even talk about morality.\u00a0 C.S. Lewis wrote some time ago, “He has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one.\u00a0 It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it.”<\/span>8<\/sup>\u00a0 I think it is the same with an over-use of the internet and social media.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We all fear the next generation\u2019s attitude toward Christian fellowship and worship.\u00a0 We try not to quibble over electronic words rather than printed words, or virtual speakers on a screen rather than the actual speaker in front of you.\u00a0 We can\u2019t even approach the subject anymore of which is better:\u00a0 real sound or electronically reproduced sound.\u00a0 We lost that battle over sound tracks, then over organs, and now we may only seldom hear the sound of a real acoustic piano.\u00a0 But where are we headed when it comes to real books?\u00a0 An appropriate illustration might be of the song book.\u00a0 If older song writers did not copyright their songs (which, of course, they did not), they are changed at will to suit the current publisher\u2019s purpose.\u00a0 If Isaac Watts wrote \u201cfor such a worm as I,\u201d then either sing it or leave it alone!\u00a0 But don\u2019t soft-peddle it into something he didn\u2019t write.\u00a0 But this is a mute point also since we are now beyond using actual song books anyway (except in my church).\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to have anything in your hand, Bible or song book, except perhaps your own \u201csmart\u201d phone to do something else when you get bored.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve used this old quote from J.S. Whale often, \u201cInstead of putting off our shoes from our feet because the place we stand is holy ground, we are taking nice photographs of the burning bush from suitable angles.\u201d<\/span>9<\/sup>\u00a0 Many worship services do feel more like a photo session than a worship service.\u00a0 We worship the worship more than the object of our worship.\u00a0 Our icons have become electronic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The challenge<\/span><\/h2>\n

So what are the challenges that we face as we go forward (and go forward we must)?\u00a0 First and foremost is to keep walking by faith and not by sight.\u00a0 <\/span>The immortal, invisible God lives in a world we cannot experience with our physical senses.\u00a0 Therefore we must follow the path He has revealed to us, and that is precisely a written text.\u00a0 A verbal, plenary view of the inspiration of that revelation causes us to want to read it!\u00a0 <\/span>Yes, we can do that electronically.\u00a0 I have a few different electronic versions of the Bible plus an extensive Bible software program.\u00a0 I must admit I still love the real Book in my hands and real commentaries, lexicons, etc.\u00a0 <\/span>I also do find these deficiencies with my electronic versions: I don\u2019t mark them (though I can, clumsily, with built-in tools), I read them too fast, I read them in busy places, and I don\u2019t reverence them much.\u00a0 Again, the danger in all of this is losing a proper view of the invisible God.\u00a0 Maybe He can be downsized, or stored in a file, or cut and pasted, or be given a handy size to fit my busy life-style.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m the one in control here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, will this cycle of one generation dropping pace from the next, continue from now on?\u00a0 Will children always have the attitude that adults don\u2019t know things and are incapable of handling the simplest tasks?\u00a0 What will a generation of kids look like in fifty years?\u00a0 Will there still be a walk by faith and not by sight?\u00a0 When the last generation does come, will there still be faith on the earth?<\/span><\/p>\n

Third, what about myself and my generation?\u00a0 I want to finish the race strongly.\u00a0 Can I do that if I am not very technologically astute?\u00a0 Can the older saints, whom we are to honor, be given any real respect in our churches, or are they mere spectators while the children run the show?\u00a0 I watched my father retreat from a newer world and I\u2019ve always told myself I won\u2019t do that.\u00a0 Frankly, retreat from communications that corrupt good manners seems prudent.\u00a0 But I will continue to do the best I can within the framework of God\u2019s Word.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And so . . .<\/span><\/h2>\n

The subject of this article is reading.\u00a0 I believe we must read.\u00a0 A generation that doesn\u2019t read also doesn\u2019t learn, spell, communicate, or write.\u00a0 Christians can\u2019t allow that to happen to them or their children.\u00a0 We are in a strange world but so have been those before us.\u00a0 <\/span>Pilgrims and strangers must travel through the land and do the best they can in the time they have.\u00a0 Our stewardship is with the tools God has given us, not what He has given someone else.\u00a0 Stewards must be faithful.<\/span><\/p>\n

Christian (in Bunyan\u2019s classic) was uncomfortable in the city called Vanity which had a Fair that lasted twelve months out of the year so that the partying never stopped.\u00a0 He was out of place, they told him, in his speech, his looks, and his stodgy ways.\u00a0 <\/span>He couldn\u2019t change Vanity\u2019s Fair in the time he had there because he was a pilgrim and had a goal in sight and had to move on.\u00a0 But he was a light in a dark place for a while.\u00a0 We are children of the light so let us also walk in the light in the time that we have.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Notes:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. This quote is repeated by many.\u00a0 See, for example,\u00a0 Rick Warren, <\/span>The Purpose Driven Church <\/span>(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995) 100.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Harvey Minnich, <\/span>William Holmes McGuffey and his Readers<\/span> (Cincinnati: American Book Co., 1936) 183.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Lee Strobel, <\/span>The Case For Christ<\/span> (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998) 57.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Quoted by J. Oswald Sanders in <\/span>Spiritual Leadership<\/span> (Chicago: Moody Press, 1971) but attributed to H. Thielecke in a book titled <\/span>Encounter With Spurgeon.<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Thomas\u00a0 \u00e0 Kempis, <\/span>The Imitation of Christ<\/span> (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984) 33.<\/span><\/p>\n

6. J. Sidlow Baxter, <\/span>His Deeper Work In Us<\/span> (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977) 81.<\/span><\/p>\n

7. Edward Goodrick, <\/span>Is My Bible The Inspired Word of God?<\/span> (Portland:\u00a0 Multnomah Press, 1988) 107.<\/span><\/p>\n

8. C.S. Lewis, <\/span>Surprised By Joy<\/span> (New York: HBJ, 1955) 199.<\/span><\/p>\n

9. J.S. Whale, <\/span>Christian Doctrine<\/span> (Cambridge: University Press, 1963) 152.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Francis Bacon once said, \u201cReading makes a broad man but writing makes an exact man.\u201d1\u00a0 I am not as broad as I ought to be and am surely not as exact as I need to be.\u00a0 I find myself more in agreement with the preacher when he wrote, \u201cand further, by these, my son, be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[15,158],"class_list":["post-1277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-bible","tag-thinking-reading"],"yoast_head":"\nReading This Year - Aletheia Baptist Ministries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/january-qreading-this-yearq\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reading This Year - Aletheia Baptist Ministries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Francis Bacon once said, \u201cReading makes a broad man but writing makes an exact man.\u201d1\u00a0 I am not as broad as I ought to be and am surely not as exact as I need to be.\u00a0 I find myself more in agreement with the preacher when he wrote, \u201cand further, by these, my son, be […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/january-qreading-this-yearq\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Aletheia Baptist Ministries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AletheiaBaptist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-14T04:58:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-01-29T02:22:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Book-Reviews-1024x1024.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rick Shrader\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rick Shrader\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"15 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/january-qreading-this-yearq\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/january-qreading-this-yearq\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Rick Shrader\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/588b75c574dc86d40cf5fb13774181b2\"},\"headline\":\"Reading This Year\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-01-14T04:58:51+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-01-29T02:22:59+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/january-qreading-this-yearq\/\"},\"wordCount\":2921,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Bible\",\"Thinking \/ Reading\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Articles\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/january-qreading-this-yearq\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/january-qreading-this-yearq\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/january-qreading-this-yearq\/\",\"name\":\"Reading This Year - 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