Review of Tony Reinke, Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books

Tony Reinke, Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading
Books. Wheaton, IL: 2011. 202 pgs.

In full
disclosure, I was really excited when I first heard about Lit!. The idea is genius–writing a book about reading books. It made
me stop and think about reading, a
crucial part of life that I had done for years but hadn’t considered with much
intention or precision. (That specific point may say something more about me
than the genius of the book idea.) So I ventured into the book with eyes wide
open, optimistic about finding something of value in light of the amount of material
I read in a vain attempt toward keeping up with the evangelical and Reformed
worlds. I did find value, more than I even expected, and I found it through a
very rare combination of encouragement, creativity, depth, theological
penetration, and even accessibility.

The obvious
surface answer to “What does reading books have to do with your Christian
walk?” involves the fact that the Bible is a book (and we know as Christians
that we should always read it), coupled with a suggestion to read books and material
that encourage, challenge, and teach us about what we read in Scripture. That
answer is true as far as it goes, but Reinke wants to back up and get a bit
more basic, a bit more biblical-theological, and even a bit more philosophical
at points (without needing to import all the philosophical jargon).

What does it
mean that God himself physically wrote the words of the Ten Commandments – and
did so in human language that was meant to be read? Part One (of two) begins by
asking this question, among others, and seeks to get at some of what Scripture
says about speech, language, words, and books. Reinke does well in fleshing out
how our Word-centered religion is in direct contrast to Ancient Near Eastern
religions and their focus on image-based, iconic idols. Contrary to these
neighboring image-based religions, God’s people are a people of books, text,
and words, and that has implications for not only what we learn about God and his world but also how we learn it.

Reinke even
manages to connect these basic questions to one of the most biblically basic
categories–eschatology (classically defined as the study of the last things).
He points out:

Words
are a more precise way of communicating the meaning behind the images of our
world…What is real extends far deeper
than what we can see. Our holy God is real…Our Savior is real. Heaven is real.
Angels are real. But for now these realities are invisible. (p. 45)

If this sounds
familiar, it should; the author of Hebrews comments on this visible/invisible
reality as well (Cf. vv.11:1-2):

Now faith is the assurance of things
hoped for, the conviction of things not
seen. ² For by
it the people of old received their commendation. ³ By faith we understand that the universe was
created by the word of God, so that what
is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

So if, by
definition, we cannot rely on images to communicate the invisible realities,
what can we rely on? Words. The Word.

Reinke is
careful to make the above distinctions while also affirming appropriate value
in non-Christian books. The task of the Christian is not to reject every piece
of literature that is non-Christian in its worldview. But as discerning
Christian readers we recognize non-Christian worldviews for what they are and
try to glean the borrowed capital from those works. I love the quote from Camus
that Reinke provides: “A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into
images” (p. 59). Novels have the unique advantage of portraying an author’s
worldview not only through facts and information, but also through his or her
storytelling.

Part Two of Lit! takes this theological framework
and puts principle into practice. If you wondered whether this book will help
you structure your reading, prioritize your reading, and help you sort and
think through various forms of reading, here’s where you’ll get more than your
money’s worth. Reinke literally gives you numbered steps to help you not only
accomplish your reading goals but also enjoy the process of reading that makes
that happen.

Many of us
intuitively know that there are thousands of books out there related to
whatever we are currently reading. Reinke observes, “For every one book that you choose to read, you
must ignore ten thousand other books
simply because you don’t have the time (or money!).” (p. 94) So he provides
some suggestions on how to filter through the sea of books, and much of the
practical advice has to do with goals, with priority in topics and subjects,
and with other factors that we may not be as intentional about as we thought.

But words aren’t
limited to books, and neither is the choice of media Reinke addresses. You are
reading this current book review online, not in a book, from which you probably
saw a link in an email, on a blog, a Facebook post, or from an embarrassingly-termed
“tweet.” The world of reading is changing because of social media and gadgets
like Kindles and iPads, and that genie isn’t going back in the bottle. If those
different forms of media are here to stay, how will that affect what we read
and how we read? Not surprisingly,
Reinke provides some helpful ways to think about those questions.

In one of my
favorite sections, the section on marginalia, he tackles the age-old question:
Should I or shouldn’t I highlight, write in the margins, and mark up a book
that I own? (Spoiler alert: he believes marking a book is very helpful and
defends his pro-graffiti view very well.)

Reinke also
makes some astute observations related to the previously mentioned media changes
in our evolving reading culture.

Traditionally,
a reader selected one book and sat alone in a reading chair. When great ideas
were encountered, the reader internalized those ideas and reflected on
them…Now, when we come across an idea that we like, we are tempted to quickly
react, to share the idea with friends in an e-mail, on Facebook, or on a blog.”
(p. 142)

We’ve all but
eliminated the step of pondering what we’ve read and have gone straight to the
step of immediately sharing it. It may be a subtle difference in individual
cases, but it can accumulate into a structural and substantial difference over
a long reading timeline.

Reinke points
out that with the deluge of information that tools like Google provide, we have
targeted our memory skills not to remember specific content as much as we seek
to remember reminders that will then
give us access to that specific content. In Reinke’s characteristically
perceptive way, he notices that “If we are honest, we admit that we don’t write
things down to remember them; usually
we write things down to forget them.”
(p. 139) Once we’ve written them down, we only need to remember the reminder.
This can also seem inconsequential at first, but in the end may prove to
contribute to a stack of reminders in our heads rather than to a process of
remembering helpful, specific content that can then be strategically recalled.

There are so
many other great sections, sub-sections, and details from this book that I
could mention: the art of imagination and how it’s exemplified in Revelation,
the importance of non-fiction, practical advice on time management, distraction
management, the importance placed on both pastors and on parents to raise
Christian readers, reading in community, and other helpful topics that he
managed effectively to squeeze within 200 pages. I’d love to go on to remark
how Reinke demonstrates his competency in the broader subject as well as in
what he puts forth both in theory and in practice. You hear about his own
methods, his own struggles, and his personal background that serves to
illustrate his points when appropriate. If the idea of the book is genius, it is
clear that it started not in the abstract, but with Reinke’s capability and
unique position as an intentional reader who integrates his theological
competency, his love of the Word and of words, and his humility throughout Lit! to provide us a must read for an
intentional library.