The life of the mind is critical to the growth of a Christian, and my fear for our generation is that we have not been taught this from childhood and today we still have not committed ourselves to that pursuit.
We are a people who value the Word of God. God chose to speak to us in this day and time through the written Word. Even when He spoke audibly to Israel it was words with which He communicated. His visible signs and wonders were preserved in the written and oral traditions of their day and still speak to us actively through the power of the Holy Spirit. Words matter to God, and they matter for our faith.
In light of this, reading and writing are crucial to developing our knowledge of God. Doug Wilson sums up why this is true when he writes, “for Christians … this means that we are people of the Word, and therefore we are to be people of words. Because we are people of words, we may, later on, be people of essays, poems, blog posts, screenplays, and novels.” In my estimation, he is absolutely right.
The Puritans knew this truth as well. The Puritan sermon was, and still is, considered an art form. It was the finest oratory of the day. In fact, I read ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in high school and I bet I am not alone. The Puritans also religiously kept personal journals, detailing and recording their lives, spiritual growth and social connections. This is all made even more impressive when we remember that the Puritans never let their scholastic expectations fall, even in the light of harsh conditions, new settlements and conquering the wild.
For this reason I restate my thesis, every Christian should be a writer… and a reader. We all need to be reading everything we can get our hands on. The Bible, books on doctrine, good novels, unusual poetry, all of it. I would add that we should not just restrict ourselves to the Christian bookstore either. We need to read widely, understand the world, concepts and beliefs. We need to cling to the Bible while surveying the rest.
We need to write. We need to have more blogs and conversation. We need more private journals. We need more writing in and about our churches. We need to teach our children how to write. And we need to pray that we glorify God in all of it.
So, pick up your iPad, the laptop you are reading this on, or even old school pen and paper. And write. It will be good, I promise.
