Really Reading: Interpretation & Integration

I used to dislike reading books because I wanted a dialogue. Simply reading what another had written seemed to me to be an empty endeavor. What if I had questions that their work didn't answer? I'd far rather sit down and have a chat with someone where we threw around ideas and made our own theories - as opposed to simply reading someone else's. 

Being a history major, however, is not conducive to maintaining this outlook. Undoubtedly a positive thing for me, I've been "forced" to read dozens of literary works over the last couple years. Works that have forced me to learn how to read. Really read.

Somewhere along the way I'd stopped questioning what I was reading. As I've mused over this trend in the last few weeks, I feel that it started with my Christian upbringing. I mean this in no way as a finger of blame, simply an acknowledgement of the influence - intended or unintended - of my past. 

Somewhere along the way, I learned to feel that my place as a reader of the Bible, was that of a sponge. Listen, absorb, reject nothing. I soon learned two methods of listening - listening with the intend to believe, and listening with the intent to question. I listened to the Bible and my pastors -and really anyone who I thought knew more than I did about any given topic - in order to believe. I listened to everyone and everything else - especially myself - in order to question. 

Further along the road of life I realized that this was a faulty judgement. An ineffectual method of differentiation. 

So what ought to replace this mood of thought? 

It was my sophomore year of college that I realized that I didn't have to believe everything that my teacher was saying. In fact, if I questioned it, I would come to a deeper understanding and thus be able to compare it to my previous opinion and integrate the new information into the old. Interpreting through a lens of my own experiences and thoughts is inescapable. Blind belief shows little respect for an author or professor - as if they had no reasons or support for their ideas. Challenging and engaging new ideas shows that my interest and a willingness to integrate them into an already carefully tended mind. 

I came across this quote today from Ilan Stevans in his book The Inveterate Dreamer, it neatly sums up my revised approach to reading - and why I now enjoy reading so intensely:

• "...as I read, I always react to what the writer is plotting for me. I envision his universe and wonder what it says about him and about me and about life in general. My reaction to the reading depends on my mood, on the events of the previous day, on recent intellectual interests, on ideas bubbling in my mind at random, and what not. In other words, reading is not a monologue. Not for me, at least. The book I read triggers all sorts of responses. a certain page might infuriate me and the next might inspire me." (p. 251)

Looking back at my past, my childhood and adolescence, I wonder how it would have differed had I taken this approach. How would the Bible look when approached as a work with which to interact as opposed to one to absorb, unquestioningly? 

Perhaps some day I will have the courage, the time, and the intellectual prowess to attempt an answer at that question.