Content Acquisition Syndrome
LETTER BY BRIAN MORYKON
I learned a new acronym: G.A.S.
It stands for Gear Acquisition Syndrome, a state of mind musicians like myself can slip into.
Gear Acquisition Syndrome presents like this. You receive a catalog or an email featuring shiny instruments and vintage microphones. Then you visualize yourself playing that instrument and singing into that microphone. Before you know it, you’re in the grip of an irrational urge to own something that ten minutes prior you didn’t even know existed.
Actually, the urge is somewhat rational. The rationale is that the gear will inspire creativity, make playing music as fun as it used to be, and help you attain that sound that’s always just out of reach.
Sometimes that’s the case. Often, it’s not. The gear arrives, the shine wears off, and you realize you’re the same person. Buying Paul McCartney’s bass guitar model won’t spark a song like “Hey Jude.” It just gives you a new tool.
And tools are essential. It’s just that owning them won’t satisfy the hunger that prompted the purchase. For a musician, that hunger is for inspiration, joy, flow, aliveness — things found in practice, play, and community.
As Christians, we can fall into a similar predicament. Let’s call it content acquisition syndrome—the pull to get one more book, article, or podcast with the promise that it will make me closer to God and more of the person God created me to be.
And sometimes it does… in time. Content is essential for spiritual growth. But it’s a tool. For Christians, life isn’t in the content or even in the spiritual practices but in the Spirit who moves through and beyond them.
All of that is my roundabout way of introducing you to the theme of our newsletter and podcast for the next few weeks. We’ve been tempted to think of it as “Books That Changed Me,” but the more accurate description would be “Books God Moved Through to Change Me.”
Just as a vintage, proven, well-designed instrument — while only a tool — can unlock creativity for a musician, a classic Christian book can be an instigating tool in the hands of the Spirit to awaken something in the heart of the reader.
One list of such books can be found in 25 Books Every Christian Should Read, a Renovaré resource edited by this week’s podcast guest, Julia Roller.
The point of reading through such a list isn’t to add notches to our personal knowledge scoreboard or fill our toolshed full of fancy but unused tools. We read spiritual classics asking God to unlock something in us. We read in humility, attentive to the Holy Spirit. We read to be comforted and discomforted. We read to be changed, knowing it is God who works the change in us — through practice, play, pain, and in community with people in whom Christ dwells.
So, Lord, as your friend Paul taught us, we don’t want to be puffed up by knowledge but to grow in love that builds up. Help us, then, to read, listen, and watch yielded to you in humility, with an aim toward love.
Brian Morykon
Director of Communications
P.S. Speaking of books that God can use to change us… the next season of the Renovaré Book Club is coming this fall. Sign up here to be notified when registration opens.
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LET’S DIVE IN...
CURATED BY JULIA L. ROLLER
We’re delighted that Julia Roller — podcast guest and editor of 25 Books Every Christian Should Read—agreed to curate this week’s list below.
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1.
Nathan Foster and I covered a lot of ground in our podcast discussion for this week’s episode of Life with God, including why both of us have a problem listening to audiobooks and whether it’s okay to not finish a book. We read at different speeds, and I particularly enjoyed his thoughts about slow reading.
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2.
In “How Should We Read?”, Christopher Hall discusses some ways to slow down our reading and ruminate over the text. I love that although Hall’s thoughts are inspired by a desert monk (of course they are, Chris!), one of his suggested techniques involves his smartphone.
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3.
I can’t think of anyone who’s written as much about spiritual reading as C.S. Lewis, and Zach Kincaid’s “A Reading Life” post on the official C.S. Lewis site is an admirable compilation of some of Lewis’s best thoughts about reading.
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4.
Lyle Smith Graybeal and I wrote “How to do Spiritual Reading,” an excerpt from the introduction to 25 Books Every Christian Should Read, to offer some practical ideas for spiritual reading as well as some reasons why we should all engage in it.
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5.
Richard Foster reflects on the books that shaped him as a young man in this article from Leadership Journal, “How Significant Books Become Good Friends.” Many of these books made the cut for 25 Books Every Christian Should Read.
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6.
My discussion with Nathan inspired me to look critically at my own all-consuming reading practice. In examining my lifelong love of reading, I had to ask the question: “Is Reading Bad for You?” (See if you can guess my answer.)
TO CONTEMPLATE
Maria
Helene Schjerfbeck 1906
(source)
WORTH QUOTING
We will be addressed and changed, if we read well. We will be challenged and confronted and convicted and offended, bothered, unsettled, and sometimes bored — and even boredom has its uses as preparation for a deeper level of engagement.
– Marilyn McEntyre
Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies (2021)
(source)
TO PONDER
With our screens as another portal to reading, we sometimes don’t realize we’ve begun reading until we’re well into someone’s (or some bot’s) words. Consider this prayer from John Baillie an invitation to be more intentional about your reading:
Guide my mind to read the right books and, having chosen them, to read them in such a way that I am willing to learn lessons that will change my life.
When I read to enhance my faith, may I read in such a way that I am drawn closer to You.
When I read for recreation, may there be nothing in what I read that would take me away from You.
May everything I read so refresh my mind that I seek after everything that is pure, right and true.