Readability: 1
Length: 188 pp
Author: Tony Reinke
Erasmus whiffed on the Reformation, but he hit this one out of the park, “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.” Seem more like a foul ball? Baseball, America’s pastime is said to be past its time, declining in popularity for faster paced balls of baskets and foots. Today books are perhaps looked upon as even more ancient and boring than baseball.
A nostalgia for baseball before performance enhancing drugs can be easily kindled by a good documentary or watching the Sandlot, but a comeback seems unlikely. For the people of God, a nostalgic stance toward books won’t cut it. The ratings must go up.
Tony Reinke’s Lit! will not only help you to read books, and warm you to them, it will set forth a theology of books to impel you to read. Consider this, at Sinai God wrote. As Christians we must be readers. No exceptions.
God has acted in history. He has put His glory on display. It is on display incessantly in creation. But how has God chosen to make His most glorious deeds known to most of mankind? Not in their actually seeing them. Not by drama or film. He chose words, and He placed those words in a book. This sets the trajectory for our attitude toward books, and it sets the bar by which they are judged.
If you’re not a reader I’m glad you’ve read this much. I hope you will buy this book and read why you should read more, and how you can read better.
Since Moses descended from the mountain with two loose-leaf stones under his arms, all literature can be divided into two genres:
Genre A: The Bible. The Bible was written by God through human authors, but it is fully inspired in all its parts. It is the only book that is inspired, inerrant, authoritative, sufficient, and wholly consistent in its worldview.
Genre B: All other books. However “inspired” all other literature may be, no matter how “lit” it is with truth, goodness, and beauty, no other book is infallible. All man-made books are hindered to some degree by errors, inconsistencies, and insufficiencies.
These two categories were shaped when God broke into history and ran his finger across a stone tablet. All literature is now divided into two genres—and one soars above the other in importance.
No Other Boast 