Eat This Book: The Lost Discipline of Reading Like a Man

Ten audiobooks read counts for something, but it doesn't count as actually reading. The convenience of audiobooks allows for greater consumption with minimal comprehension.

"Men don't read" is the lazy excuse everyone throws around, and I think it hides the real problem: substitution. We've traded sustained attention for background noise, convinced that half-listening while multitasking builds the same mind that full attention does. It doesn't. Multitasking is a myth, a switch between tasks dressed up as doing two at once.

We live in an economy built to profit from that switching. Every app wants your eyes divided, because divided eyes are easier to sell. An ancient prophet was once told to eat a scroll, not merely hear it read. What you ingest with your whole self shapes you differently than what only passes through your ears.

I make the case for a discipline most men have quietly abandoned, and why reclaiming it might do more for your mind and your faith than another hour of content ever could.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Men don't read books is something that I hear from time to time. Why'd you write a book for men? Men don't read books. And I appreciate that concern over how I spend my time. However, I want to push back on that. It is common nowadays for people to throw up their hands and say things like, Well, men don't read. And I think that is super lame. I think it's not true. And I think it ought not be true. And I think anyone who listens to this podcast who wants to be the best version of themselves should make it a goal of theirs to push back on that claim and to not let that generalization become true of them in particular. And here's what I mean by this is I was told from a young age, especially in high school, by my youth pastors that leaders are readers. And I heard that and dismissed it and thought, actually, leaders are leaders, readers are readers, but leaders are readers, is what I was told. And nowadays it tends to be assumed slightly differently that leaders listen to podcasts. Leaders take e-courses, leaders uh consume content on YouTube and things like that. And I don't want to dismiss the value of podcasts. Obviously, I'm doing one. I don't want to dismiss the value of YouTube, but I do want to challenge and encourage people to not just listen, but to read. And here's why is listening promotes uh multitasking or so-called multitasking. You listen to a podcast while you're driving, you listen to a book while you are doing dishes, you watch a YouTube video in the background while you're doing another task. And it promotes this divided mind, this lack of attention. Uh, whereas reading in particular requires attention. It requires focus. It requires giving your whole self to a task. You can't read and do something. You can't read and drive. You can't read and interact with someone else. You can't read and do dishes. It requires attention. And we live now in an attention-based economy that your eyeballs are dollars. People are constantly vying for your attention, trying to get you to watch, trying to get you to listen, trying to get you to multitask so you can be exposed to ads and various content. And I think that the discipline of reading, eyes on a book, is a uniquely formative task in this current economic moment because it requires sustained, disciplined, focused attention to keep your eyes in the book, to turn the page, and to not be distracted or vie for the lie of multitasking, which I think fundamentally doesn't really exist. Your attention is always on something, and multitasking is really switching from between tasks, not actually doing multiple tasks at the same time. This is why I think in the book of Revelation, chapter 10, the angel gives a scroll to John and says, eat this book or swallow this scroll. And what he's getting at here is you take it into yourself and metabolize it, it becomes part of you. You are what you eat. And a hugely formative part of my life was when the light clicked. I remember it was the first spiritual type book I read of my own accord was Desiring God by John Piper. And not only was I blessed by the content of that book, but a light came on when I realized that I can feed my heart, mind, and soul and my faith through eating what I am reading, not just through passively listening, but through consumption of a book. And so my challenge to you is that if you want to be emotionally healthy, intellectually healthy, spiritually healthy, some of that has to do with growing the muscle of sustained focused attention, the capacity to do deep work in a distracted age. And reading builds that muscle, but also the desire and willingness to invest in yourself in a sustained focused way, where you're not just kind of squeezing in content in between other tasks or while you are driving. And so just a pet peeve of mine is when people say they read a book, but they actually listened to it. I do think those are two fundamentally different ways of ingesting material. And I think God's people have been reading people. Protestants have been readers. Uh, literacy has gone everywhere. Protestantism has gone historically way up. And I challenge you to be a reader, not just a listener. That the disciplined, focused task, keep your eyes in the book will grow your heart, mind, and soul. Uh, be a leader, be a reader, be a reader, and be formed more fully into the human and the man that God is calling you to be.