The Importance of Reading for Christians: Advice from Puritan Richard Baxter
By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS
I present the importance of reading for Christians, yet advocate for the Bible as the primary text. I reference Puritan Richard Baxter’s advice on selecting books that enhance scriptural understanding and do not present stumbling blocks to growth. Christians should be readers of all kinds of appropriate books.
Christians should read. We are ‘People of the Book’, after all. We read the Bible. Reading is a skill that we acquire, hone, and can potentially lose if we don’t keep up with it. Parents who read books model reading as a priority to their children.
Every year in my area, a non-profit charity opens their warehouse of donated books and offers them to the public for free. You can get up to 100 books on each day that they are open. Teachers love this, they can quickly stock their personal libraries. I’m able to attend this year. I went 2 years ago and I did not get 100 books, I don’t need 100 books, but I got a few and I was thrilled.
Puritan Richard Baxter had some advice for reading. I found it at the wonderful Chapel Library, a storehouse of printed and digital materials from ‘the old dead guys’ for free.
https://www.chapellibrary.org/book/dfph/directions-for-profitable-hearing-and-reading-baxterrichard
Baxter said, “Make careful choice of the books which you read: let the holy scriptures ever have the pre-eminence, and, next to them, those solid, lively, heavenly treatises which best expound and apply the scriptures, and next, credible histories, especially of the Church … but take heed of false teachers who would corrupt your understandings.” Baxter
“Let scripture be first and most in your hearts and hands and other books be used as subservient to it.” Baxter
Amen to that! Even if your own preacher isn’t as skilled as the top expositors of the day, we can always read good writing and clear exposition from a good Christian writer, as Baxter explains next-
“Books have the advantage in many other respects: you may read an able preacher when you have but a average one to hear. Every congregation cannot hear the most judicious or powerful preachers: but every single person may read the books of the most powerful and judicious; preachers may be silenced or banished, when books may be at hand.”
The Lord raised these authors up and preserved their writings for a reason-that we may be edified by them in this age!
“Books are precious heirlooms from one generation to another, training us, encouraging us, teaching us — by the words and thoughts of men whose bodies have crumbled into dust long ago, but whose words still live and bear fruit in our hearts, and in the hearts of our children after us, until the last day.”
Clayton Kraby wrote about this issue but substituted Baxter’s advice on books to be the same for choosing media on Netflix-
Despite their reputation as joyless and dour sticks-in-the-mud, the Puritans did not reject all forms of recreation. They simply sought to engage in recreation and entertainment in a God-honoring way. In the 16th and 17th centuries, entertainment primarily consisted of music, art, sports, and reading books. In order to be conscientious about what he read and to help others do the same, Puritan pastor Richard Baxter asked four questions to help guide his reading. With a few minor adjustments, these questions can help us be more discerning about the movies and shows that we choose to watch.
Questions adapted from Baxter’s advice on books:
–Could I spend this time no better?
–Are there better [shows and movies and books] that would edify me more?
–Does the show or the book’s expressions of art, creativity, and imagination point us towards God, not away from Him?
–Does this [book/movie] increase my love to the Word of God, kill my sin, and prepare me for the life to come?
I like Thomas Boston’s vivid images:
“As troubled water is unfit to receive the image of the sun, so the heart filled with impure and disorderly affections is not fit for divine communications.” ~Thomas Boston
A sinful book, movie, or TV show will roil our heart and stir up disorderly affections. Sometimes those unwanted affections take a while to subdue. Better to spend our energy in transforming the mind in the first place rather than subduing disorderly thoughts that entered in due to unwise leisure choices, before the mind can even be approached in holiness.
Happy reading/viewing!
A note from Chapel Library about Richard Baxter: “Note: Richard Baxter formulated a unique approach to the doctrines of salvation that appears to be an attempt to reconcile Calvinist and Arminian thought. We find Baxter’s thoughts on practical subjects very helpful but would encourage the reader to exercise much caution regarding his understanding of predestination, the atonement, and especially justification.“
Puritan scholar Joel Beeke agreed with this. He made the same caution in his segment in the series Puritan: All Life to the Glory of God.
