My philosophy of reading has been largely informed and shaped by C. S. Lewis, Mortimer Adler, and J. R. R. Tolkien. I read books, primarily, in order to find the books I want to re-read regularly for the rest of my life. The most significant books are re-read every year. These include Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Lewis’s Ransom and Narnia series as well as The Great Divorce, Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, and several others. Other books are re-read every few years, including Homer, Dickens, Melville, and Defoe. Everything else I read is part of the search for great books or to complete a reading assignment or simply because something caught my interest or was recommended. The most wonderful books, those that are truly “great,” are the ones that continue to teach, challenge, and delight no matter how many times they are read. In fact, they are the ones that give more the more often they are re-read. Several readings are required to be able to recognize the real lessons they are designed to teach. These are the books I want to dominate my reading life and my mind at unoccupied moments. But of all the books I have read and read again each year, none can compare to the wonder and profit of the Holy Bible.
I have read the Bible more times, by far, than any other book. Once a year is not nearly enough. The Scriptures both deserve and demand far more extensive and intensive reading if one desires to read them well. A professor once told me, “You cannot know what a [Bible] text means until you know what it says.” I have found this to be true. And reading it once, or even a few times, is no guarantee one knows what it says. The Lord’s thoughts and ways are high above us (Isa. 55:8-9), beyond the limited grasp of our creaturely comprehension, so the Bible must be read, re-read, and meditated upon, constantly, over many years, if one hopes to gain its true and greatest benefit. Even then, those who make the most progress in learning and understanding the Bible will admit they are but beginners when they come to the end of their life in this present world.
Perhaps this post is inadequate and cliche. What else is a preacher going to say? Of course I love the Bible. But I really do. It fires my soul, comforts my heart, stretches my mind, and orders my life beyond any other book, teacher, or experience ever has or can. I look forward to journeying with Frodo every year, to visiting Narnia with the friends of that land, to trekking with Christian, to being awed by the noumenal with Dr. Ransom, and to walking gingerly on hard grass with sore feet, longing to belong to that land and to share and enjoy the firm reality of its glory. But it is the Bible that best prepares me to love and appreciate all of these stories, and many more. More than that, it is God’s written Word, the Bible, that teaches me the true myth, the one to which all other true stories point, and that assures me that my own story is connected to theirs. –JME
