The Bible vs. The Books

Are books on Christian living giving us biblical teaching or sanctified advice? I’ve been struck as we’ve been teaching through the last part of Colossians recently how briefly Paul writes to this young church about big Christian living topics: marriage, parenting and work (admittedly the latter is really about slaves and masters!).

Look at any Christian bookshop or online retailer and you will find book after book (some of them really quite large), telling you how to be a Christian husband, wife, parent, employee, employer and so on. I’ve got quite a lot of those books myself and I’ve even read some. I’m trying to work through my parenting teenagers ones at the moment, as I’ve realised it’s not too long until it will be a bit too late to read them (I really ought to get rid of most of the younger children parenting ones now!).

Let me say, some of those books have been very helpful (others inevitably less so). Furthermore, I understand that there is more in the Bible than just the few sentences in Colossians (or Ephesians or 1 Peter for that matter) on these subjects. I’ve just read a book on teenagers which went to Proverbs and made the argument that as much of it is advice from father to son, it applies well to parents and adolescents. There were things I didn’t like about the book, but that at least was biblically interesting (although you’re going to have to take care to read a book like Proverbs in light of the coming of Christ).

What I’ve enjoyed about teaching through Colossians is that Paul has a laser-like focus on the key principles. Here is a young church, with potential problems of false teaching (especially about how they live the Christian life) and Paul lays out in a few sentences what the real Christian life looks like in these particular areas. When faced with shelves of books claiming to teach you how you should do it, it’s frankly a bit of a relief.

In some ways this was confirming a suspicion (maybe a prejudice) that the books I’ve read over the years often contain a bit of Bible with a lot of what might be considered application, or wise advice or, as much as anything, a description of what the author did and it seems to have worked out OK.

There are a number of risks with this. First, we remove the freedom the Bible leaves us with and replace it with a legalism - “this is how to bring up your children,” “this is how you should act at work” etc. We regularly need to ask if the Bible actually says this is what we should do, or if this a possible application, or if this is little more than advice (we are free to ignore the last two so long as we take the first seriously).

Second, we prepare ourselves to be disappointed. It’s all too easy in these situations to think that if only we follow the system for whatever area of Christian living we’re addressing, we will see the results we want. This applies beyond the areas we’ve been thinking of in Colossians. For example: “I set up this entire system that this book on prayer suggested, but my prayer life is as woeful as it’s always been” or “I followed this exact plan for eradicating this sin and I still fall to that temptation.” But I wonder if part of the issue with some of the areas we’ve been reading about in Colossians is that our disappointments are so painful.  When we do everything the book said to do for our marriage and it is still miserable or ends in divorce for example. Or when we follow all the things we’ve been told to be a good Christian parent and our child still rebels and doesn’t trust Jesus (although what an opportunity for another book on how to parent after you’ve failed as a parent right?).

Third, we become desperately driven by guilt. If, on the one hand, some people are disappointed by the results of keeping the system. Others will inevitably beat themselves up for not keeping the system. “Perhaps I should have followed this book instead of that one!” “I never really managed to be consistent with that set of rules and so it’s not surprising it’s all gone wrong.” Of course there can be a place for guilt when things go wrong - we will inevitably have sinned as parents, husbands, wives etc. But I suspect the response when things go wrong of disappointment (perhaps with God) or guilt says as much about our personality and tendency to blame ourselves or God as it does about our application of a system!

Fourth, things don’t always go badly of course. So when I have a great marriage, wonderful prayer life or believing kids who have planted 25 churches before they’re 25, I will have the tendency to think this is down to my amazing godliness as a husband, prayer warrior or parent. That is, I’ll be proud.

Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, this kind of thinking leads us away from the gospel. The disappointment, guilt or pride that we may feel is because no Christian living book can deal with sin, Jesus did that on the cross. We have fallen for the old lie of law-keeping salvation. I think that’s why Paul spends the first couple of chapters of Colossians dealing with the gospel. If we read his instructions out of this context, we could still fall for pride, disappointment or guilt when things don’t work out. It’s harder when you have just read words like:

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, (Col. 1:19-22 ESV)

Should we not have these books then? Well, perhaps some of them could do with binning. I would love to see more that took a more careful approach both to being obviously gospel-centred and to being clear what was biblical principle and what was possible application and what worked for them.

I also think we need to be more discerning readers (and to encourage more discerning reading). It’s OK to ask: “Is that really from the Bible or does it tell me more about the author?” We would, I think, be better to spend the time thinking about what the Bible says. I’ve been reading the Keswick Convention book celebrating 150 years recently. One of the commitments early attendees made was to read nothing but the Bible during the convention. I was quite stuck by that, when now we often celebrate how many Christian books are sold at the convention (and yes I do still think that’s a good thing).

I also wonder if we could do to reflect a little on the Christian publishing industry. I suspect there are lots of books on these issues of the Christian life because they sell. Why do they sell? Because they’re good? I suspect it’s more because we Christians are desperate for an answer to our problems and hope that this book will finally be the one to give it.

I always despair a little when I go to Christian bookshops and bookstalls (even good ones), and find a tiny section of stuff on getting into the Bible, compared to a huge range of issue-based books. I despair because the former would probably make the need for the latter much less and they would at least make us more discerning as we read them.