Why read? Why literature?

Some people use reading to gain a leaping understanding of life, travel through life, appreciate the beauty in life, understand human nature, and walk through history...

Literature, in order to help man govern the earth, has also become a channel for transmitting God's revelation.

In Christianity, the Bible occupies an important position. It is conceivable that reading should have some spiritual significance. Unlike other religious beliefs that emphasize contact with the divine through practices such as meditation, experience, visions, or chanting scriptures, Christianity places special emphasis on the importance of language. 1¹

In fact, language plays a ground-breaking role in our faith. The Genesis account states that God created the heavens and the earth and commanded with “words”: “Let there be light!” And there was light! "There must be heaven and earth!" There is heaven and earth. It is true that "it is said that it is, and it is established!" God's "word" is life, light, and power!

Language is like a magic spell, which can not only open up a world, but also hold up a life. This story of creation of heaven and earth and redemption of life has been spread across thousands of years of time and space through words and language, and spread into our hands today through a Bible, constantly changing our lives.

The spread and promotion of Christianity also relies on the establishment and transmission of language. As soon as every believer in the Lord enters the church, he begins to learn spiritual language to know God, experience God, and communicate spiritually with brothers and sisters. The two main forms of faith: Bible reading and prayer, are also inseparable from the deep mastery and flexible use of spiritual language. In prayer, we use words to confess, appeal to, or express gratitude to God, and God also uses words in the Bible to redeem, promise, or comfort us. "Pray-reading" that has become popular in the church world in recent years is a combination of the two, reading the Bible with a prayerful heart, and then learning rich prayer languages from the scriptures.

Therefore, our grasp of faith cannot be separated from reading, speaking and writing.How well we read will affect the depth of our faith, and how well we speak or write will affect the breadth of the spread of our faith to the outside world. We can roughly conclude that to be a Christian, one must learn to be a good reader.

We can also roughly deduce this logic: a growing Christian must also be a continuous reader.

Reading helps us master language

However, the importance of language not only creates a world, but also helps us interpret this world. We use language to name various things in the world, including insects, fish, flowers, and birds. We also use language to annotate personal experiences, and use language to store some personal memories worth preserving. We also use language to convey various kinds of knowledge.

For individuals, words and language directly affect our thinking and feelings. How sophisticated a person's thinking is is related to how many languages the person has. This is why observing a child's intellectual development can often be judged by the maturity of his or her language. Because people's thinking is expressed through stored vocabulary and is honed to become more detailed. People's ability to express themselves also depends on their personal control of language, and they can speak more accurately. In some respects, language is a kind of ability. It can be as small as adding points to your autobiography, or as big as the Chinese say: "One word can prosper a country, and one word can destroy a country."

Let me ask, how much language ability do we have? Do we know that language skills will affect our influence, control, service effectiveness, and even interpersonal relationships?

if weIf you know how to master language, you can use it to create a world of hospitality.. Parents to children, teachers to students, husbands and wives, bosses to employees, all can use words to cultivate and achieve success. But if the language is careless, it can cause misunderstandings, or it can tear down and hurt people. There are many people killed by bullets in this world, but even more people are destroyed by words. Words are definitely more powerful than weapons; whether we build with kind words or destroy with vicious words will make a big difference in the world.

However, the formation of language is accumulated through learning. In addition to being immersed in life, I rely on reading to absorb more refined language. The more widely we read and the more vocabulary we acquire, the richer we become as a person. As the saying goes: "The spirit of poetry and calligraphy comes from the belly", this is exactly what it means. How can it not attract us to become a good reader?

Reading can enrich our lives

There may be many reasons for liking reading. Some people use reading to gain a leap-forward understanding of life, while others use reading to solve life problems. Some people use reading to travel through life, while others use reading to celebrate the joy of life. Some people use reading to appreciate the beauty in life, while others use reading to understand human nature, walk through history, and relive memories.

Therefore, reading is a way to enrich our lives. We are very lucky. After leaving school, we have reached a stage in life where we don’t have to study hard for exams or study for fame. We can let reading simply return to just reading, reading only for enjoyment and self-growth, and truly gain Enjoy reading for the greatest pleasure!

Why read literature?

However, why read literature? yes! The number of publications on the modern market is often dazzling and overwhelming, so why should we still read literary works? Is it a bit too otherworldly, too romantic?

This discussion goes back to: How does literature come into being? What does it have to do with Christianity?

Sometimes the more I think about it, the more I realize that our God is really interesting, especially for certain creations that are beyond survival needs such as clothing and eating. Why did they come about? I wonder if we have ever thought about it? In addition to giving people the ability to work and survive, why does God also give people the ability to sing? For example, when my son was four or five years old, after he had eaten enough and had enough sleep every day, he would lie in bed, turn on the tape recorder by himself, and sing with his throat open, while his hands and feet would keep moving to the rhythm. It makes people wonder: When God created man, besides giving him the skills to hunt and make a living, why did God also give him the ability to sing? An expression of celebration of life? Or is it a natural expression of emotion?

What about painting? Why does God give people the ability to draw? When my daughter was very young, as soon as she learned to hold a pen, she began to draw continuously, using colors and lines to express her mental observations of the world. The figures in her paintings often have a big head with no body, two hands protruding from the two ears, and two feet extending straight down from the head. She is the biggest in the whole picture, with a completely self-centered world view, which is extremely naive and interesting.

Reading her paintings is like reading her inner world. It makes people wonder again why God gave people the ability to paint? For example, in a cave in France, the paintings made by people who lived 300,000 years ago were found on the walls. Are they meant to record what they saw and thought? Or is it a response to the world?

What about literature? I think literature, like singing and painting, is also an artistic expression. Its existence is also a record of life, a response to the world, an expression of celebration of life, or a natural expression of emotion.

Looking back at our God, He not only values functionality, but also values beauty and artistry. From the rare flowers and beasts created by God, it seems that our God is not easy in art, but is very "fastidious" in art. In the book of Exodus, God told Moses to build the tabernacle, and ordered that all the curtains of the tabernacle, the altar, the ark of the testimony, and all the utensils should be found to be "craftsmen" who were wise and capable of all kinds of work, that is, "skilled craftsmen" who were engaged in artistic design. ”, it is not only functional in construction, but also needs to be embroidered, inlaid with gold and carved, and must be made “glorious and beautiful” (refer to Exodus Chapters 26-31).

This glory and beauty are contagious to the soul. The aesthetic appeal and even shocking power of literature are often more profound than speaking out and reasoning directly. In the West, literary appreciation is often compared to going to a "picnic". Everyone brings a dish, and that dish is the richness of our own lives. We use our own richness to interpret the author's richness, and the author uses his own experience in the abyss to respond to the reader's abyss (see Psalm 42:7).

soLiterature is the crystallization of beauty, imagination and rationality given by God. In order to help man govern the whole earth, he also became a channel for transmitting His revelation.

Literature is a relief for the soul

I believe many people have experienced that reading becomes a kind of relief when faced with the mediocrity of life. Being derailed from life for an hour or a few hours, traveling or wandering in a world that you can never go to in real life, is a kind of spiritual release.

In reading, when we read that the author expresses our inexpressible feelings and gives concrete shape to our unclear situation or experience, miraculously, the inner emotions will be resolved or sublimated in an instant. It seems that I finally understand that the turbidity in life turns out to be the anxiety of survival; the meaning of life I have been searching for all my life turns out to be due to the incompleteness of my own soul. Reading the interpretation of one's own life from the author's words is a great expression of spiritual understanding.

Or there is no big meaning at all. Reading literature is just about enjoying a good story, appreciating the beauty of language in the text, and chewing on the wonderful effects produced by different arrangements and combinations of words, words, sounds, and meanings. This is also a great spiritual satisfaction.

Literature helps us understand the world, culture and times

In literature, different authors can provide us with different perspectives on the world, culture, and eras. For example, Nobel Prize winner VS Naipaul wrote "The Kingdom of Darkness". You can read about the Indian culture observed by an Indian who grew up in the West and returned to India. He seems to represent our Western perspective, which sees India as a "gloomy country".

The 2006 Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk wrote "My Name is Red", which describes the rise and fall of religion, politics and art in the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, all taking place on the bridge between Eastern and Western civilizations. Istanbul location. Coetzee, another white African Nobel Prize winner, focused on the various disputes that occurred between white Europeans and local indigenous people on the African continent. It was the imperialist white people who brought humiliation to the local indigenous people. But the main thread of the story is the humiliation suffered by white people from the locals, which reflects the profound problems of post-colonial culture.

"Weiyang Song" by Luqiao in early China, "Blue and Black" by Wang Lan, and "Rolling Liaohe River" by Ji Gang can all take us to a specific era of war. "Taipei People" by Bai Xianyong in modern times reveals a declining aristocratic culture in Taipei.

The recent "Cultural Journey" written by Yu Qiuyu from Mainland China interprets the deep cultural twists and turns of various cultural locations in Mainland China from the perspective of Chinese history. There are also many works about the Cultural Revolution and scars, such as "Alive", "King of Chess, King of Trees, King of Children", etc., which help Chinese people understand the sufferings experienced by the generation of the Cultural Revolution.

Of course, we also know that literary writers are not anthropologists, historians or social workers, but their maturity occurs in a specific time and space. Their writing also involves a lot of reading research or data collection, coupled with the writer's unique observation and nuance, they will repeatedly and carefully analyze and dialectically analyze social events, and give a delicate interpretation of the surrounding environment. All these can help us understand the situation we live in. There are new insights into the times and circumstances.

We need to know more about the world and culture before we can know how to convey God’s love to the world. From reading, we can see our position and role more clearly.

Literature defines and refines ourselves for us

When reading a story, the most important thing is not what do we read about the protagonist? But what does the protagonist “see” during the encounter? What did you learn? What changes? Because when we read, we often identify with a character in a good work, identify with the character's struggles and choices, and learn from his way of seeing and facing the world.

Therefore, in identifying with the role, we can often dig out some new insights about ourselves. It is also in reading that you can define yourself, ponder yourself, and make yourself more refined (define and refine).

How many characters in the book "Dream of Red Mansions" do you identify with? That sentimental Sister Lin? Or is it the gentle Xue Baochai? Is it Jia Baoyu who likes to eat rouge? Or is she a shrewd and capable sister who works hard for the government? Or the licorice character Grandma Liu?

What about Jin Yong's martial arts "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" and "The Legend of the Condor Heroes"? Some people think that they are like the little dragon girl who can't eat the fireworks of the world, and some people think that they are Yang Guo who has learned various tricks. Some people think he is like the smart Huang Rong, and some people think he is like the silly but strong martial arts Guo Jing.

"The Wizard of Oz" is another version of "The Pilgrim's Progress." In the story, there is a little girl Dorothy who is blown to a strange place by a strong wind. She tried her best to find her way home, and met some very representative characters on the way, and these characters depicted some of the most common human weaknesses in detail: the iron man who lacked a heart; the scarecrow who lacked wisdom; A lion that looks ferocious but is actually courageless.

When reading this story, you will constantly see that you and the people around you are like an iron man, a scarecrow, or a lion. They are either brave but not brave, or they are brave but ignorant. We are all on this pilgrimage to seek the divine, constantly exploring the way to our spiritual homeland. We are just like these three, using our own strengths to make up for the weaknesses of others, and constantly supporting each other, we can reach our destination.

As for the Bible, it uses various literary styles to present various shackles of human nature. Whether it is David, Job, Jonah in the Old Testament, or Peter, John, Paul, etc. in the New Testament, each has its own weak character and deviant behavior. When many people read the Bible, they will see that they have a thorn in their body, or I am really miserable. I want to do good but can't, but evil easily escapes. In it we read that no matter how weak people are, God’s love for people will never give up, and will always follow and continually restore them.

Therefore, we use reading to absorb the wisdom of others, learn from other people's experiences, and at the same time understand ourselves and update ourselves.

Literature presents values, ideals, and elevates the soul

Reading literature can help us get in touch with the world beyond ourselves, expand our vision of the world, and then deepen our inner being. Particularly good literary works will probably provide a way of looking at the world. This perspective is related to the author's values and worldview, including beliefs, morals, philosophy, politics, etc.

The influence of literature cannot be underestimated and it is deeply controversial. The Civil War started in the United States because of "The Record of Black Slaves"; Mao Zedong is said to have approved of rebellion because he liked "Water Margin". The 1995 Oklahoma bombings were caused by a novel that taught readers how to make explosives. Many young people in Taiwan once committed suicide because of a suicide book passed down from Japan.

Therefore, the more influential a work is, the more we must learn to ask when reading: Is this so? Is this correct? All learning comes from asking questions, Borges said:"Doubt is the greatest grace."

When faced with the ideas and values presented in the book, do not accept them 100%, but learn to think carefully and discern clearly, and then absorb good values or beliefs to become a part of yourself.

Promise a life of reading

A person who loves books will never let go of the book. But maybe because of busy life, or because of flawless quiet reading, sometimes you have to try your best. Many people can't help but sigh: "Reading? Oh, that was when I was young. I liked literature very much in college, but now..." This is the mental dilemma of many people in middle age.

If books are the food for our souls, and if Confucius said that "if you don't read for three days, your face will be hateful" is somewhat true, then, in middle age, what kind of soul hunger and thirst are we in now? I don’t know what kind of abominable appearance it is.

Perhaps, we can make a day of reading, and be able to read ten pages a day when we are awake. To be honest, this amount is not too heavy. Some words can be chewed a little, and some thoughts can be slowly settled. When you go to bed and close your eyes, there will be at least ten pages of text butterflies dancing in your dreams.

Maybe, we can promise a year of reading. If you read ten pages a day, deducting a few days a month to rest and busy with other things, you can still read more than two hundred pages, which is a book. If you can read one book a month, you will have twelve books in your stomach a year. A dozen books is an incredible amount of life.

Perhaps, we can promise a life of reading. If we follow the Bible, we can live to at least seventy years old. If we are middle-aged now, we can conservatively read two to three hundred books in the rest of our lives. If these two or three hundred books are all good books and worth reading, then you are a very impressive person. You have a broad vision and a broad mind. You can speak meaningfully and speak clearly, and your life is obviously very important.

The most important thing is that what you read cannot be taken away or stolen by others. When everyone else is sleeping and you wake up alone, even if you don't have the pure soul companionship that Keats said in the poem "Solitude", at least you still have a book. Books are your best life companions, they will not betray you, and every time you open a good book, it will be beneficial. I hope that every Christian among us can become a pleasant reader.

Notes

1. Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word, trans. Joyce Main Hanks (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985).

Author profile

Could it be that his original name was Chen Huiwan. Came to the United States from Taiwan at the age of eighteen. He worked as a computer engineer for Hughes Aircraft Company in California for six years, and then specialized in writing. Now lives in Los Angeles. He has written the prose "Accidentally, I Found Paradise" and the novels "Portraits of Six Women", "Remnant Faces", "Love in the Place of Suddenly Looking Back" and other books. He is a standard bookworm and lives in his head.