Non-Fiction Convert

I once heard the opinion that everyone should read at least one non-fiction book every month or whatever time period the opinionate person felt necessary (I don’t honestly remember how often it was.) As a result, I made a New Year’s Resolution to read a chapter of non-fiction every day. I did very well with that for as long as it lasted … about January 3. I love to read and I love to learn, but for the most part, I find non-fiction to be boring. As I get ready to go back to school, I envision hours of reading non-fiction textbooks.

Elementary teachers and experienced parents alike will tell you that to get a child to read, introduce them to books that interest them. For some, that means only reading books about horses, or knights fighting dragons, or princesses, or sports. My youngest son checked out every non-fiction book the local library had on medieval history, later moving to books on WWII. My oldest reads every Sci-Fi book he could get his hands on. The same concept applies to reading non-fiction.

When I was pregnant and when my boys were young, I read a lot of books on pregnancy and parenting. Thankfully, I did not need to use all of the information that I read, like warning signs that a child is developing meningitis, but the information was important to me at that stage of my life. When my mom was diagnosed with a genetic heart condition in which Mayo Clinic told her to have all of her siblings and offspring tested, I read a lot about Idiopathic hypertrophic subaortic stenosis (IHSS). In the last few months, I have read more non-fiction than I have fiction in order to learn more about a situation in my life. As I look at the text books that I have bought for Fall Semester, I feel anticipation rather than dread.

Just as our reading habits with both fiction and non-fiction reflect our interests, so does our level of discipline in reading Scripture. There have been times in my life when reading Scripture was a chore that may or may not get done. But as I grew in my relationship with Christ, it has become a joy. My level of enjoyment in the Word is a spiritual barometer of my relationship with my Savior. When my eyes are on myself, I tend to dread and put off reading the Word. When my life is Christ-focused, I cannot get enough of the Word. At times like these, my structured Bible Study lessons (like BSF) become like when my son got a low grade in English because he did not do the assignments before reading further in the book. It is hard to pull out the clues in a mystery if you cannot put down the book long enough to write them down before you know where they lead.

Reading non-fiction makes for a well-rounded, intelligent person. Especially when that non-fiction is the Greatest Book Ever Written, the very Word of Truth Himself. And when we really get into the Word, there is nothing boring about it.