Douglas has linked to and began interesting discussion into what modern Believers read. While I almost always disagree with what my friend says, or at least with the spirit in which he says it, this is something that bothers me a great deal, as well.
I can’t stand to walk into a Christian bookstore. In fact, I despise them like a plague, and wish they didn’t exist. Part of my allergic spiritual reaction is in the fact that I don’t believe in a distinction between sacred and secular (there shouldn’t be bookstores and Christian bookstores, there should just be bookstores…this concept of creating our own Believer’s pop culture is a Falwellian nightmare). Mostly, however, the only thing sold at these “Christian bookstores” that is worth reading are the Scriptures. 98% of everything else on their shelves is crap.
That’s the nicest word I can find for it, actually. Many Evangelicals don’t seem to want to think, so they find themselves content with Lucado-like fluff that is composed of a lot of terrifically constructed church-speak and absolutely no substance. Other Evangelicals find that they love to gain more knowledge (what does Scripture say about it “puffing up?”), and so they gorge intellectually on theology and apologetics and philosophy, begin believing that they are the focus of what our faith is about, and then let it divide and form a cancerous hatred and denominational divisions.
Somewhere in between are the rest of modern Believers, who are content to read “devotionals” instead of Scripture. Hmmm…that seems inverted, don’t you think?
I believe that there are writers who are Christians who generate beautiful (typically the beauty is in the subtlety, but most modern Believers can’t think deeply enough to find it) explorations of our faith in both nonfiction and fiction. I post links to worthwhile reads in my sidebar…please, if you find others, leave comments. I also find beautiful truth is (gasp) writers who don’t profess our faith, or openly deny it. After all, all truth is God’s truth.
Unfortunately, however, most of it is by people who want to earn a living writing garbage that they know they can sell by focusing on a Christian market.
When did Christ become a market, exactly?
And when did our intellectual and artistic diet become one of junk food?
I’ve found that meditating on Scripture or poetry in the morning centers me on God, while reading cheap correlations like Lucado’s or Nehemiah’s or Chamber’s “devotionals” fill me with empty calories, leaving me hungry within the hour. What if our standards for evaluation became higher? What if we raised the bar? What if it became about reading something on Monday that took us until Thursday to unpack and apply to our lives? What if it were quality instead of quantity? What if we read the Scriptures instead of reading about the Scriptures?
That, I suppose, would require publishers to be about the integrity of the work instead of money. And, since that won’t happen, it was a nice thought.
I suppose we’ll just have to keep fighting the machine.