In a recent article in The Guardian, it was reported ‘Fewer than one in 10 boys aged 14 to 16 in the UK read daily, according to research, which found reading for pleasure was being crowded out of teenage lives by schoolwork, screens and sports.’ This is an interesting article for a few reasons.

I used to read all the time. In fact, I still do. But the thing that killed reading for pleasure for me was studying A-level English Literature. There is little that will ruin the joy of reading faster than making you analyse and then write essays on the finer details of some set text.

Perhaps making it worse, I went on to do degrees in History & Politics, followed by Religious Studies & Philosophy and subsequently Theology. All of this involved a lot of reading that was not entirely pleasurable. If you’ve ever determined to read any academic-level book in just about any field of the humanities, you will know what I mean. Being asked to then write theses and papers on all these things doesn’t tend to engender a love for reading it all.

Adding Pelion upon Ossa, I then became a pastor and found myself having to wade through commentaries – which are not exactly riveting reads, even if useful and valuable – and an inordinate amount of Christian books on every subject under the sun, many of which probably didn’t need to be written (see here for more on that should you be interested). When you spend all day reading papers, journals, articles, commentaries, theology books of various stripes, the last thing you want to do at the end of the day (at least, I find) is give myself over to more reading. It feels a bit too much like work!

The article at the top of this post, as you’d imagine, is obviously concerned with how we might reverse this trend. The assumption underlying the article is that reading for pleasure is fundamentally good and we need to inculcate it in children and teenagers. This is with a view to it continuing into adulthood. You can read the article itself and decide whether you find the means of encouraging reading credible or not.

My reason for raising it here is I got to thinking about the same thing in relation to reading the scriptures and, beyond that, Christian material more broadly. I wonder how many of us still read for pleasure? I wonder, if we do still read scripture and Christian books for pleasure, whether we actually find it pleasurable or more like hard work? I wonder what we might do to help those who struggle with all this to actually find pleasure in reading these things again?

I don’t have any firm answers here. I have no silver bullet. But I do have a hunch. Nothing more than that. Just a simple, straightforward hunch.

I suspect we lose pleasure – and therefore the desire – to read scripture and Christian books because we are repeatedly told this is something we must do. We simply don’t read scripture and Christian books for pleasure, we read out of duty because we think it is something we ought to do. It takes all the pleasure out of reading any of it. It ultimately feels like work to be done. More work, just like the reading I do all day in my work.

If my hunch is right (and I don’t offer it as any more than that), I wonder whether a simple step is to stop being so prescriptive about reading. Don’t tell people they must read scripture. Let them read scripture as they want to do so. Don’t tell people they must engage this or that Christian book, let them be moved to read it themselves.

I know I always enjoy books more when I have got the bit between my teeth about them and have chosen to get them for whatever reason – when I have been moved myself to get them and read them. I almost never welcome people telling me I absolutely must read this thing because it feels like them spending my time for me and creating work for me. Perhaps we would see people read more if we stopped telling them they must and simply encouraged them to read – whatever it may be – such as the mood struck them. My suspicion is, they would read more.