In the fall of 2004, I was asked to speak to some students here about why I read. I saved my notes and intended to put them up on my blog -- oh, a year and a half ago, I guess. The notes have been sitting on my desk, as well as taking up an entry on my To-Do list, so, in a mad fit of productivity, I worked the notes into an entry:

Why I Read

When I was a child, I used to cry because I just knew I would never learn to read. Everybody else in my family could read – my mother, father, older sister, aunts and uncles, etc. I was the only one who couldn’t. I would look at the words on the page and get upset, because it was all so complicated and I really wanted to know what was said, but I couldn’t. I’d even stare at (pictureless) books, pretending to read, I wanted to read so badly. My father eventually taught me to read, before I ever got to preschool, but the desire was in me from the first.

When I was five, some men in our church took us young boys camping. Around the campfire, one man read the first chapter of C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. As I gazed into the fire, I could see the images of the story forming in the wisps of smoke. He ended after the first chapter, and I knew, as soon as I learned to read, I’d have to finish it. The Chronicles of Narnia had a profound impact on my life – so much so, that they were the only fiction books I took with me to college. From the Chronicles I learned longing – for Aslan, for Aslan’s country. Lewis brought home the reality of heaven and the tangibility of true desire in a way my mind could understand, in a way that was intuitively grasped by my spirit.

I also remember getting up early on Saturday mornings and going into my older sister’s room. I crawled in bed with her and she would read Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time to me. I was introduced to Great Ideas – the possibilities of other dimensions (which made the idea of Heaven that much easier to grasp), the power of Love, and the importance of great philosphers and sages as “lights for us to see by.”

Later on, I followed this book up with the two sequels, and learned from A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet about the significance of small things, especially small decisions. My worldview was shaped and molded, and in retrospect, I realize the perspective was a biblical one.

Certainly I read other books as a child, but these are the ones that stuck with me, that touched something inside me and let me know I had been touched by something Important. These books raised questions – questions that did not seem to occur to the kids around me, questions that bothered me, in a good way, for years. I learned to think about things worth thinking about – things unrelated to math class, lunch boxes, and yellow school buses; I was learning to live free from the walls of the classroom. Against the shallow superficiality of 80s cartoon TV, I had been Awakened to a life lived deep.

For that is what good literature is about – being sensitive to the important things. Not just about being profound (although that may enter in), but about paying attention. Many Christians have sold their birthright – they’ve been given a glimpse of fundamental reality, and they use it solely as a means of feeling secure! Now that you have the Key, how can you NOT want to run around and unlock every door? How can you NOT want to penetrate the mysteries of love and honor and duty and death, everything that makes life worth living and death worth dying? How can you shut your eyes and refuse to contemplate the effects of sin – betrayal and heartache, hatred and loss? We’ve paid the price by eating the apple; now we’re accountable for the knowledge of good and evil.

Christ is the Answer to every question, but He is a different Answer for every question you ask. Only by asking the Questions can you reveal His full sufficiency.