Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone.
Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I'm Zach Weihrauch.

In today's episode, we're talking about the death of literature, and we're asking the question, does it really matter what we read?
This is prompted by an opinion piece by David Brooks recently in the New York Times talking about how literary fiction is on the decline.

Now literary fiction is a subset of fiction.
Remember, nonfiction means it's factual. Fiction means it's made up. It's imaginary.
Literary fiction is a kind of classic approach dealing with stories taking on larger issues.

It's opposed to, like, a mystery book or a romance book. I mean, those books are kind of like pop music to literary, which is more like classical music—music that is trying to transcend.
That's what literature does, and it's a dying niche industry.
Like, for example, today, genre fiction dominates—mystery, romance, murder, police procedurals, those kinds of things.

In fact, no literary novel has made the Publisher Weekly Top 10 since 2001.
That's twenty-four years we've been consuming pop literature as opposed to classic literature.
And Brooks points out, and I think rightly so, that there are some consequences to that.

On one hand, if you're by the pool, it's vacation, you're reading a mystery book—no problem with that.
But if we're not reading literature at all, the problem with that is that we're not really being pushed to think about some deeper things.

And that's not surprising because more and more, American society is less about big ideas.
It's less about corporate pursuits and a little more about ideological conformity.
The truth is that we read books for entertainment now because we're not really looking to be challenged intellectually.
We're retreating to our corners, whether that's conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, and cultivating a kind of vacuum in which the only ideas we ever hear are the ones we already agreed with.
We've lost our appetite for challenge.

We lost our appetite for deep thinking.
We're experiencing what Brooks calls political clustering and intellectual fear—a retreat from things that challenge us, a retreat from intellectual engagement—and that's showing up in the art we create.
The truth is, artists aren't writing literature really anymore because there's no market for it.
They know if you wanna get paid, you need a poolside book.

Well, you might not think this is a spiritual issue, but I think you'd be wrong if you think that way.
Let me trace out for you kind of a biblical argument of why I actually think reading literature matters.

Not exclusively, but making sure we're reading it.
The first is this, it's kind of a basic idea: God uses story to convey truth.
The Bible, on one hand, is not literature because it deals with history. It deals with fact.

But on the other hand, the Bible is full of narratives.
Almost the entire Old Testament comes to us in the unfolding story of redemptive history—God working among the nations to produce his purposes.
The gospels, of course, the book of Acts, the stories of Jesus and the church.
Jesus himself, by the way, told stories—parables to convey his truth.

Matthew 13:34 says, he did not say anything to them without using a parable.
God knows that stories resonate with us.
And, of course, when God is telling stories, he's not telling murder mysteries or romance novels.
He's telling deeper stories that push us to think about ourselves, to think about him, and to wrestle with what is needed to restore our relationship.

The second thing is that reading is a slow burn, and that's what makes it important because it leads to a kind of slow thinking instead of an overly reactive way.
James says this in James 1:19: Everyone should be quick to listen and slow to speak.
When you consume your content in a quick and thoughtless way, when you doomscroll, when you pick up an airplane or poolside book, you're teaching yourself to respond quickly, to think quickly, to give knee-jerk reactions to things.
Literature doesn't work that way.

Stories are long.
They take twists and turns.
You're not really sure how you feel about a classic literary book until you finish it.
And that is good because it means you've gotta sit with things.
You've gotta work through things.
You've gotta wrestle with characters, wrestle with ideas.
We've lost the ability to be thoughtful and reflective.
I think literature is one way we can get it back.

I'll tell you what else.
The decline of literature reflects a deeper spiritual blindness.
You know, the writer of Proverbs says, where there is no vision, the people perish.
Literature really is about larger vision—moral vision, social vision—the vision of how we congregate together, how we form governments, how it challenges us.

And we need that because we're designed as world builders, universe shapers.
We were designed to have dominion over the earth.
Literature forces us to wrestle with our calling, to think through whether or not the earth we're building is the one we actually want.
You were designed to think about those deeper things.
And if you're not doing that, if I'm not doing that, we're falling short in a lot of ways of what it means to be human.

And, of course, the final point is this: whatever we read shapes us.
Philippians 4 tells us, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is pure—think about these things.
It's not bad to read pop fiction, but let's use the metaphor here of food.
Most of the books we read, most of the content we consume, is like candy.
It's not bad when you're at the movies.
It's not bad every now and then, but it cannot form a healthy diet.
Literature is meat and potatoes.
It's wrestling through what it means to be human, what it means to love your neighbor, who God is—and that is the diet you need.
So pick up a book and make sure it's the right book.
I promise you will not regret the time you spend reading literature.

Hey.
Thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up.
If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it.
And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!