BOOKS: "Such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems to me as so much straw. And now I await the end of my life."
Can you guess who said this?
Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of Medieval theologians.
God gave him a vision of some sort during worship and that was his response. "Straw" is a good analogy for books in general.
Here's another quote you're not likely to read in a publication, though it comes from the Bible: "The writing of books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body" (Ecc 12:12).
Our point: The notion that we need Christian bookstores, periodicals, publishing houses, libraries, and so forth is a Christian Myth.
One of my Christian mentors is Brother Lawrence (the barefoot monk). I'm including a statement he makes on this subject, one of the many reasons I love this man. Beaufort, writing on the character of Brother Lawrence, said:
Often he has told me that "all that he had heard others say, all that he had found in books, all that he had himself written, seemed savorless, dull and heavy, when compared with what faith had unfolded to him of the unspeakable riches of God and of Jesus Christ. He alone,” he continued, “can reveal Himself to us; we toil and exercise our mind in reason and in science, forgetting that therein we can see only a copy, whilst we neglect to gaze on the Incomparable Original. In the depths of our soul, God reveals Himself, could we but realize it, yet we will not look there for Him. We leave Him to spend our time in fooleries, and affect disdain at commune with Him, Who is ever-present, Who is our King. It is not enough to know God as a theory, from what we read in books."
Books have not been commonly available except in the last 200-300 years. Also, books are like money: they promise us something they do not deliver. We are not saying literacy should be banned, or that all books should be burned. We are simply saying books are highly over-rated and compete for time we should be spending with God directly. We suggest you spend far less time reading, and use that time loving the One who made you.
Are we hypocrites for spending time writing for this website? Maybe. We do recognize that humans have a desire and tendency to want to share what they learn and to "teach" others. It seems to be part of our programming. However, it is fairly apparent that books, when indulged in to excess, rob God of our personal attention, and substitute human wisdom for that found in meditating on the Word of God or communing with the King of Kings. The lessons we learn personally and directly from God tend to stick with us. Those we read in a book rarely make a lasting impression on our hearts.
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