Why the Test of Time?

If you are curious enough, and if you go to any trouble about the list of books on the left, then you'll notice that all of them are old, by which I mean all the authors of those books are dead. They belong to another era, another time. They lived and wrote and wept and rejoiced in a generation removed from our own. The most recent book was written by Francis Schaeffer, who passed away in the '80's. But he wrote most of his works in the sixties and seventies, including some of the most influential and imminent approaches to apologetics of any author at any time. The book mentioned here was actually not "written" by him, but was recorded on a tape recorder as he went through a systematic Bible study with some students. Later, someone else put it on paper. Over the last four decades of the twentieth century, the self-destructing culture in America was minutely analyzed and embraced by this man of God, and several of his later books have become modern classics; notably The God Who Is There and How Shall We Then Live?

Missing from this list are any books written in the last ten years - or the last forty years. I want to share why. Elie Wiesel recently wrote that books no longer have the influence they once did, and he is right. When printed books were a new innovation, an author could write one small work and change the world. Today we have such an outpouring of books that they have become much less valuable. There are so many that we take them all for granted. There are so many which are bad, and so many which are worthless, that they invariably undo the good being achieved by the rare ones. In the twenty-first century in America we Christians tend to put too much emphasis on what is new. The most recent is automatically the best. The more modern it is the more we swamp bookstores to snap them up. We have made our standard for excellence the New York Times Bestsellers' list.

I don't want to sound like a killjoy, but we could stand to be a little more discerning. After all, popularity has never been a good gauge of what is worthwhile. One Christian writer observed years ago that if you see all the Christians around you running after a new development, you should run as fast as possible the other direction. What he meant was that trends (monuments to the momentary) pop up among the church just as frequently, if not more, than among non-believers. The more we can recognize them and avoid them, the better. After all, if a movement is truly God-inspired, then it will have staying power in its effects and usefulness. Truth endures because truth does not change. The more true and worthy a book is, the longer it will generally last. Christian classics speak to succeeding generations because they speak to something in the spirit which does not alter with technology or church-growth strategies or psychological breakthroughs. They get in under the surface to the deep part of the soul, to a place where cell-phones and i-pods can't reach. They have weathered the changing of the tide as one generation shuffles off and another takes the stage.

Most books written in any one year are reduced to garbage bins and used-book shelves shortly before they disintegrate. Only a very precious few have staying power, and they demand our attention. We ignore them at a very great risk to ourselves, because they have the lingering aroma of eternity upon them. They never attain to the level of their more popular, less substantial cousins, but somehow after decades have gone by we continue to see them sitting on bookshelves, one or two at a time, while the bestsellers have disappeared. They insinute their way into the world: here a young student, there a lawyer, in another state a middle-aged pastor and on the other side of the country a truck driver each are thinking fresh, deep thoughts brought to the surface by a writer they will not meet in this life. They are connected to an earlier generation by a reality which spans all ages and all races.

This reality has bypassed most of the recent stars of popular Christianity, but it is preserved in the stalwarts. There is magic there, and depth, and familiar surprises which astound and comfort us. By no means should you stop buying and reading new books, but under no circumstances should we ignore the giants of our heritage, the men and women who wrote without much reward or recognition. Their greatness has been proven; their success does not depend on advertising or mass appeal. That is why the test of time matters. It isn't everything, but it's more than what we've become used to.