Worldview Wednesday; vol. #3

 

THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW OF READING

 

By Lynn Cross

      John 1 tells us that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  For the God of all creation to be called the Word is highly significant.  It is no accident that “the Word” means something, and that “words” mean something.  All the symbolism that is associated with the term word or words first belonged to the Lord Jesus Christ.  He was the Word that was spoken and brought all creation into being, He was the Word that dwelt among us, He was the Word of the Father, and He was the eternal Word that emanates from the Trinity from eternity past.  His Word, the Scripture, is His revelation to mankind about the Father and His plan of redemption.  When God revealed Himself to Israel it was on blocks of stone tablets, written by His very hand with words.   It is not just coincidence that all the great movements of God have always been through the written word.  The most powerful, God filled revivals have always had something to do with words.  The reformers were taught through a school movement called The Brethren of Common Life.  This type of education spurred them on to start schools in order to teach young people to read, write, and argue according to the Word.  All the reformers, without exception, were taught in one way or the other from one of these schools.  The early church also saw teaching the younger generation as a mandate.  Each of the Five Patriachates, the major church centers, built schools and seminaries so that the Word could be taught.  It is no wonder that when the communists were taking over Russia that Lenin and Trotsky saw it as a mandate to take away from Christians the written word.  Hitler knew this as well.  That’s why he burned literature.  Words, mean something, they change people, and the world. Our students need to see the relationship between the living Word of God and the Written Word of God.   

     “In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. . . . Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”  These words end the book written by C. S. Lewis entitled An Experiment in Criticism.  Lewis knew this truth and knew exactly what reading good books can do for us and our children.  Reading takes us places, broadens our perspectives, takes us outside ourselves, and brings us to knowledge and the truth.  We can understand people past and present in order to carry out the great commission.  The Word, Jesus Christ, did leave us with a mandate.  That mandate was to preach the gospel to the entire world.  As we train young minds to read, and to think they will be able to bring the Word of God to light all over the world.

……………But the word not read nullifies all of these objectives.