After last week’s letter, I have been having side conversations with a few of you about the complexities of reading widely. First, let me say how grateful I am when people ask questions. We are all too apt to fill in the space between what we know and what we think we know with assumption—and assumption can tell all sorts of tales.
But in the midst of these conversations, a question was raised: How do you read widely but still guard your heart?
It’s a good question. An honest question. But it’s also a very personal question.
Growing up, the word conviction was thrown around often in conversation, and hearing it still makes me cringe a little. Latent shame rises in my throat. It’s not that conviction isn’t part of the God-human relationship, but instead of an invitation to come home to the heart of God, the word was often brandished like a weapon. A divine finger pointing in my direction.
So when I hear questions about what someone should or should not read, do or not do, images of a fearful little girl and a scowling God pass through my mind. I think about how, because of the conviction of others, my Cabbage Patch dolls were taken away and I was not allowed to watch The Smurfs.
Granted, in the long run, I was fine. I got another doll. I watched Reading Rainbow and Winnie the Pooh. I recognized I was a kid and my parents were simply doing their best in what was the weirdness of the 90s. But even so, I remember the sting of having someone else’s personal convictions placed upon me and it is why now as an adult I am hesitant to give a one-size-fits-all response.
The more I think about the question of putting guardrails around what we read, the more I wonder if it’s a question better asked of God. And I wonder whether there are other questions lurking beneath the question that need attention, like:
Why do you read?
What authority do books have on your soul or in your life?
How do the books you read form you?
What are you guarding your heart against?
When you read, what causes your pulse to quicken, your eyebrows to rise, or your jaw to clench? What is your body trying to tell you?
What are you afraid might happen if you encounter content that goes against God’s character? If it is blatantly unbiblical or theologically mushy?
How do you think God would respond?
I realize it can be incredibly frustrating for a person to answer a question with more questions, but what I have come to recognize is that my version of “reading outside the lines” might look very different for me than it does for you.
During our Human Together gathering last Friday, I shared with the lovely people who were there that I avoid reading certain types of content, thematic elements or concepts that are not good for my heart or my relationships. But those categories are deeply personal, a result of conversations I have had with God and with taking time to let the Spirit root around in my soul. Whatever guardrails I employ are the result of knowing myself, becoming familiar with my built-in biases, and paying attention to God’s kind promptings (a.k.a. “convictions”).
My “answers” may not do your soul much good.
I’m certainly happy to share my approach person to person, but what I would rather offer is a gentle encouragement to dig deeper into the question you are asking. Peek beneath the floorboards. Clear the cobwebs. Place whatever you unearth before the Father, and then (because the Spirit of God is in you) pay attention to his (here comes that word) convictions.
God may very well reveal lines that need to remain intact or colored in a little darker, but he might also hand you an eraser. I cannot say. My guess is that, in the end, our book stacks may look very different (and that’s not only okay, but good).
But as you ask your questions what I hope you find, instead of a pointed finger, is an open hand.
Because here is the really good news: God wants us to know him more than we want to know him. He wants us to love each other more than we want to love. He’s not playing a sadistic game of hide-and-seek with our souls. He’s not waiting to pop out of the closet and say “Aha! Gotcha!” when we get tripped up on bad theology or find ourselves confused or read a really spicy scene in our latest novel. Above all, he is a God who finds us. Against all odds and across all lines, he finds us and he wants us to come home.
So may we turn to him, with our long list of questions layered on top of questions, trusting that one way or another he will not leave us lost.
For everything was created by him,
in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities—
all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things,
and by him all things hold together.
—Colossians 1:16-17 CSB
grace + peace,
Sarah
PS: Thank you to the ladies who joined me during our last Human Together gathering—for your honesty, your insights, and your stories. In many ways, you helped form these jumbly thoughts into words, and I’m grateful. (A reminder: Our next gathering is March 31, and we’ll be chatting with Sara Billups, author of Orphaned Believers. You can upgrade your subscription to get access, or if money is a barrier, just let me know via email. We’ll figure it out.)
Good Things to Pick Up
a short list to narrow the space between us
A Book
It’s been a few years since I read The Book of Waking Up by Seth Haines, but I have a distinct memory of sitting out in our front yard, book and highlighter in hand, on one of the first truly warm spring days of 2020. Our boys were playing basketball on the driveway, and smack-dab in the middle of a pandemic, this book felt like an invitation to allow (what Seth calls) the “Stuff of Earth” to become an invitation further into the love of God. As I wrote this week’s letter, I thought about this book often.
An Episode
Earlier this week, I listened to this conversation between Jill E. McCormick of the Grace in Real Life podcast and guest Lore Ferguson Wilbert about how curiosity and questions affect our spiritual formation. The episode was really life-giving and pertinent to the conversation about digging into our questions (about books and otherwise).
A Benediction
In the book Every Moment Holy by Douglas Kaine McKelvey, there’s a really beautiful reading called “A Lament Upon the Finishing of a Beloved Book.” I won’t quote the whole thing here, but I do want to leave you with a portion of it:
Thank you, O my God,
for loving me enough
that you would rouse
my deepest desires again through story,
appointing these longings as true signposts
planted in war-torn and cratered landscape,
reminding me that all of history is leading at last
to a king and a kingdom,
and pointing me ever onward toward
his righteous and eternal city.May I return now
from the world of this book
to the daily details of my own life
with truer vision and fiercer hope,
trailing with me remnants of that coming glory
I have glimpsed again
in story.
Amen.
Reading Outside the Lines (Pt. 2)
We may have had the same childhood. I remember studying the cover of my parents copy of “Turmoil in the Toybox” where demonized versions of every popular cartoon character were pictured crawling out of a trunk like the cover of an R.L Stine book.
Ha. Referencing Goosebumps...without question I would never have read a Goosebumps book as a kid--even though I studied their covers deeeeeply (and surreptitiously) as I passed the bookshelves at the local Pharmore.
I really appreciate your non-answer answer--it feels apt and insightful--and very much like you, too, in a good way.
PS: I giggled out loud at the description “spicy.”
PPS: I was sad to miss this past meetup! It sounds like there was a dearth of male involvement, and I so want more men to be involved in such thoughtful conversations!
Very well said! This concept is so vast, it can be applied to most things in life that we question or wonder about. There is no one size fits all and I love that you made a point of directing us to look within and to look to god for guidance.