While reading is down in society in general due to an enormous appetite for T.V. watching, there are, I hope, still many among us who prefer to spend their leisure time reading good books or magazines.

But what is a good book or magazine? What criteria should we use to evaluate our reading? Are we, on the basis of our Christian freedom, allowed to read anything without regard to contents, or should we apply the antithesis also to the whole realm of literature, clearly distinguishing between Christian and non-Christian material?

In the seventeenth century our Reformed ancestors tended to take a very dim view of all literature that could not be called devotional. For instance, in 1697 a certain Thomas Brown, a Puritan, wrote the following: "I have a hundred times wished that these unnatural rogues, the writers of ro­mances, had been hanged."

Few of us today would endorse such a radical measure. Yet it should be remem­bered that until fairly recent times many Re­formed preachers used to warn against the reading of novels on the ground that that type of literature does not edify one's soul.

Today such warnings are seldom heard any more and even where they are they generally fall on deaf ears. The restrictions of a few generations ago no longer seem to apply and the result is that a flood of books, magazines and newspapers enter our Christian homes just as they do those of our non-Christian neighbours. Time Magazine, The Messenger, Sports Illustrated and Readers Digest are stuffed into the same mailbox where they wait together in harmo­ny to be picked up by their readers.

And what about books? Just look at the motley collection on many of our book­shelves: Classics such as McCheyne's Memoir and Remains, and Bunyan's Pil­grim's Progress are there in many cases, together with some Banner of Truth Publications perhaps, but so is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer and maybe Mitchner's Centennial or The Covenant or some other selections from The Book of the Month Club. And these are among the more respectable examples of secular literature. I could mention worse titles I have seen in some Free Reformed homes, but I won't.

Suffice it to say that our literary outlook has changed considerably over the years. Whether this is a change for the better or worse is a question worth pondering.

Some would say that the present outlook is an improvement over the rather negative views of our Reformed forefathers. They had very little if any appreciation for literature and other forms of art and were on the whole Kulturfeindlich (enemies of culture). In their defense I would say that in many re­spects their anti-cultural basis was warranted. To limit myself to the situation in the Reformed Churches during the 18^th and early 19^th centuries in the Netherlands, I believe it is true to say that spiritual life in those churches was at a very low level.

Preaching was rationalistic (glorifying human reason) and moralistic rather than Biblical and evangelical.

In reaction to this rationalism in the pul­pit, there developed among orthodox Re­formed Christians a strong experiential and pietistic emphasis in religion. At the same time these sincere, humble, and for the most part uneducated, believers became increasingly disturbed by the worldly lifestyle of the better educated, sophisticated and affluent church members. As a result they became anti-cultural in their outlook because in their view culture meant worldliness. The world and human nature were considered to be the domain of satan and his followers.

What was the status of literature in those days? If one considers what sort of books were written in the Age of Reason, it is no wonder that the faithful remnant in the Re­formed Church regarded all secular literature as poisoned darts of the wicked one. The literary output clearly reflected the spirit of the Enlightenment and had as its purpose the undermining of the very founda­tions of the orthodox faith. It was the age of Voltaire, Rouseau, Diderot and Montesquieu, all advocates of the new religion which taught "that man was not natively depraved; that the end of life is life itself; that man is capable, guided solely by the light of reason and experience, of perfecting the good life on earth and that the first and essential condition of the good life on earth is the freeing of men's minds from the bonds of ignorance and superstition" (Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, p. 102).

This philosophy was disseminated not only among intellectuals by means of learned treatises but also among the com­mon people through popular works of fiction.

Was it any wonder, therefore, that Christians in general, but especially Reformed Christians, were very suspicious of a culture so permeated by atheistic ideas?

This does not mean that the Reformed in those days did not read. On the contrary, the common people, if they could read, turned to such classics as Pilgrim's Prog­ress, Brakel's Redelijke Godsdienst and other devotional works.

It was with this type of people that Abraham Kuyper came into contact about a century later. While he respected them for their piety and love for the Reformed Faith, he also recognized that they were too in­ward looking. They had no eye for the broader implications of the Christian Faith for all of life. In other words, they lacked a Christian world and life view. They had adopted — consciously or unconsciously — the basically anabaptistic view that the whole world and its culture must be left to the devil.

Kuyper was determined to do something about this. He constructed a new Calvinistic cultural philosophy on the basis of the doctrine of common grace. While we have serious problems with much of Kuyper's theology we do acknowledge that he was a man of great vision and that he was right in many ways. He was right, I believe, in saying that there is such a thing as Christian art and that literature, for instance, can be used to glorify God, not only in the reli­gious, devotional form, but also as fiction. Kuyper saw that fiction need not be a waste of time, but that it can give the Christian reader an authentic aesthetic experience. In his little but influential book Testament of Vision, H. Zijlstra writes:

To see God's reality in the real world and beyond it, to see the ideal in and behind the actual, and so to reproduce it that all may look and enjoy, that is what happens in art ... Art — the art of fiction also — is man's acknowledgement and reflection of the divine beauty revealed in and beyond nature and life. That is what fiction is for. Its function is in its own aesthetic way, not in a deliberately practical, or moral, or esoterically religious way, to disclose God's glory for God's and man's delight (p. 37).

Reformed people in the Netherlands responded to the cultural call of Kuyper and others in his school. The result can be seen today. Since 1900 more than three hundred Christian novelists and short-story writers, and more than a hundred Christian poets have produced a flood of wholesome Christian literature. Many of their works can be found in our Church libraries and on bookshelves in our (Canadian) homes.

But, of course, these books are all written in Dutch. What about the literary situation in North America? Are there good Christian books available here that we can recommend to our people?

I would answer this question with a qualified "yes". There are quite a few Christian authors whose work we appreciate but not without reservations. Morally they are all right, but theologically they are often deficient in that they reflect an Arminian approach to soteriology (the doctrine of salvation). Much of this religious fiction is sweet and unrealistic and cannot be called great literature. The characters are often unreal, even phony. The hero usually ends up making a decision for Christ and his problems are all solved as by a magic hand. The message conveyed by such books is that Christ is basically a problem solver who meets all your psychological needs. Discerning non-Christians see right through this unrealistic approach to life and are turned off by it.

Personally I prefer reading a secular author who, though writing from a wrong perspective, and failing to come up with the right answers, nevertheless tries to wrestle with life's tough questions in an honest way. Due to God's common grace some of these non-Christian authors have a good insight into human nature and they are able to describe reality in a thought-provoking manner.

Even those who deny or question the existence of God often write about man's plight with more depth and sensitivity than one finds in many so-called Christian au­thors. In the tradition of Nietszche they may write of the death of God but they do it in such a way that it becomes clear they feel the pain and emptiness of life without God. Such books stimulate the mind and help one appreciate the Gospel and the riches believers have in Christ.

So what is good literature? In addition to devotional books such as Spurgeon's Morning and Evening, Ryle's Expository Thoughts on the Gospels and many other titles with which we are all familiar, there is a legitimate place for fiction, both Christian and secular, provided it is well written, deals with important themes and meets the standard set in Phil. 4:8: "whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure and lovely".

Excluded therefore are the cheap novels, filled with profanity, sex and violence which serve only to cater to the flesh and pollute the mind.

I'm afraid that most modern books, including those on the "best-seller" lists, fall into that category. They are books that en­courage the reader to vicariously experience sin. In other words, they pander to his secret and forbidden desires. Many such readers would never actually carry out the activities engaged in by the characters in the book, but by identifying themselves with them they experience the same perverted pleasures in the privacy of their own imaginations.

What takes place in our imagination, however, has moral and spiritual significance as Jesus makes clear in the Sermon on the Mount when he equates the lusting after a woman with the act of adultery and hateful thoughts with murder. It is not enough, therefore, to refrain from sinful ac­tions; we must also avoid sinful imaginings. If our eyes lead us into sin, it is better, Jesus says, to gouge them out than to allow them to lead us to perdition.

In our reading as well as any other activity the maxim is: "Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation".

Let us read, by all means. But let us in so doing remember the wise words of Francis Bacon who, in his treatise Of Studies, cautioned his readers that "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested". And may I add, all books are to be read in the light of the Book, the Word of God.