If you were to ask my wife what my favorite webpage is there is little doubt that she would roll her eyes and respond "Wikipedia." I am aware that there is a good bit of consternation about the rise in popularity of a non-peer reviewed encyclopedia written by non-experts. I know that Wikipedia is not a worthy tool for real research (though it can point you to such resources), but I also know that if I want a quick and usually reliable answer to a question that pops into my brain, Wikipedia is the place to go.
It usally goes something like this: my wife and I are watching a movie and I think that I recognize an actor from another movie. I go to Wikipedia, and find out if I'm right. Recently, it has come up during the Olympics. "How many people live in the Republic of the Seychelles?" Wikipedia. "Are there any rules in water polo?" Wikipedia. "Where were the Olympics in 1964?" Wikipedia. The internet is a powerful tool.
As wonderful as the internet is, though, I still love books. I even still love books made out of paper. In fact, one of my summer projects has been tagging and arranging my books with Library of Congress call numbers. I'm a book geek. I buy used books. I look for books at yard sales. Whenever a graduating student has books to give away, I'm there to take a look. My parents in my childhood and teachers at my school cultivated a love of books that has remained strong.
Yet, and this may sound obvious, books and the internet are not the same. They do not facilitate the same type of knowledge acquisition. As I thought about my love of Wikipedia and how it easy it is to find answers to one's questions I was struck by the difference in the approach to "knowledge" that I take with the internet and with a book.
When I use the internet, it is almost always to find an answer to a question that I thought of. I search and scour looking for an answer to that question. When I find that answer, I'm satisified. I tend to read the internet in a fleeting, skimming manner. Anything more than a few paragraphs long can tend towards tedium and function as an impediment to my quest. It is a distraction that must be thrust aside so that my inquisition ends in success.
A book is an entirely different experience. Instead of just looking for answers to my questions, I read a book to really learn. I read to be challenged. I hope to find ways of thinking and looking at this world that are different from my own. Instead of quickly finding a fact, I read a book as a different kind of quest. Instead of a quick-strike mission, reading a book is an epic journey which follows a path that I do not plan. My destination is not my own, but it lies in the will of the author and my conversation with the author. My duty as I read a book is to question and wrestle with the author. In the end, at least at the end of good book, my horizons have been expanded.
You see, the internet, as vast as it is, is stifled by my own imagination. I ask it what I want to know, and it promptly and usually accurately answers that question. However, at least as I tend to use it, it does not expand my horizons. The increase of my knowledge is limited by my own imagination. It only answers questions that I come up with. A book, on the other hand, is not so easily swayed to my agenda. If I am to read a book and read it well I must read it on the author's terms and wrestle with the ideas that she wants me to wrestle with.
In Adler and VanDoran's "How to Read a Book" they say it like this:
There is the book; and here is your mind. As you go through the pages, either you understand perfectly everything the author has to say or you do not. If you do, you may have gained information, but you could not have increased your understanding. If the book is completely intelligible to you from start to finish, then the author and you are as two minds in the same mold. The symbols on the page merely express the common understanding you had before you met.In some sense, this type of reading is perfectly acceptable. It is fine to "gain information," but, as they say, it does not mean that you have "gained understanding." This is, in fact, how most people read the internet. Yet there is another alternative. Truly reading well is reading in which "you gradually lift yourself from a state of understanding less to one of understanding more" (ibid.). Here is the place at which my reading of the internet differs from my reading of a book. Instead of just increasing the amount of information that I have, I seek to increase my understanding. Surely there are some who can do the later using the internet. However, by and large as a culture, this is no longer the way that we read anything (even books) due to the influence of the easy answers that the internet provides.
I consider myself fortunate that those who taught me how to read, my parents and teachers, did not grow up with computers. It will be much more difficult for me to teach my children to read well. It will be even more difficult for their children. Technology is a wonderful thing. Books, after all, were at one point a new technology. But whenever a new technology that obviously and pervasively improves our lives comes about, we must still ask ourselves what we could lose in its adaptation and strive to prevent that from happening. Technology is designed to make our lives easier, yet as our lives get easier our will to work decreases. Reading a book well is hard work. It is extremely enjoyable, but it is hard work.
Reading is a skill that all Christians must be willing to cultivate. We come to know God through His Word, through a book. Losing the ability to read is dangerous for Christians. God communicates to us in a story, and if we are to know His will and His plan, we must read that story, and read it well. So please, pull up your Bible on your iPhone, kindle, tablet, or, if quite convenient, a paper copy, and learn to read it. It is a book worth reading well, for it aims to change you.
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