Welcome to the Feminine Podcast. This is Nancy Wilson. Thanks for joining me today.

Today I thought I'd do something a little different. Falls arriving, schools starting,

many of you are gearing up to teach, or to have kids in school, seems like a good time

to talk about reading like a Christian and what that means. Hopefully all of you are

readers, whether you're reading assignments, reading for pleasure, reading in a book

group, teaching your kids to read, or teaching your older kids how to think about what

they read. So obviously I'm not talking about the mechanics of reading itself, but how

to read with a Christian worldview. CS Lewis in the discarded image says this about the

purpose of literature. Literature exists to teach what is useful, to honor what deserves

honor, to appreciate the delightful, the useful, honorable, and delightful are superior

to it. It exists for their sake. Its own use, honor, or delightfulness is derivative from

theirs. This is just such a useful quote how he packed so much into this. So the useful,

the honorable and delightful line up so nicely with truth, goodness, and beauty. And so

I'd like to go through these briefly just to get you thinking about these things. Literature

is a creature, and it exists for a purpose. It should teach us something. And as Lewis

points out, it should be something useful. It's impossible if you think about it for literature

not to teach. It is always teaching. The question is, is it teaching truth, or is it teaching

falsehood? And there are three questions for you to ask, as you're reading regarding

this. One, what is this teaching about man? Is man just an animal? As per Jack London's

take? Is man created, or did he just appear out of nowhere? Does his life have meaning

or purpose? Or does he simply exist to seek his own pleasure until he dies? Or misery

until he dies? Second, what is this book or story or poem teaching? Or saying about

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