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Read the first part of the article here. 

To Rebel for Your Soul

I also want you rebel for your soul. Reading isn’t just a rebellion for the sake of your mind; it’s rebellion for the good of your heart. Reading is war in service of worship.

Does that sound over the top? Maybe a bit far-fetched? Not when we bring the Bible into the picture.

Christians get called, rightly, “people of the Book.” God’s people meditate on God’s Word. And meditation goes deeper than reading. It means to sit, to ponder, to consider, to contemplate. The Bible calls for our gaze, not a glance.

The first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength and with all our mind. How do we learn to love this God? Well, when Moses first delivered this command, he followed it up with instructions on how to make God’s Word the centerpiece of everyday life. The ancient Israelites were to repeat the words of the Word throughout the day, teaching them to their children, discussing them at home and on the road.

One of the biggest obstacles to this kind of Word-soaked life is the distraction of a digital age. We’ve lost the ability to experience the power of great poetry, or feel the weightiness of wonderful music, or stand and stare at a masterpiece of art. It’s often said, most works of art yield their secrets slowly. The same is true for God’s Word. The Bible makes demands of us. It calls for thought, for patience, and for devotion. The path to truly internalizing and digesting Scripture is rugged, intentionally so, for this is how the Spirit does his work in our lives.

But what about all the Christians in the past who couldn’t read? Were they unfaithful? No. Literacy doesn’t equal holiness. Some of the ghastliest atrocities our world has ever seen were committed by the well-read, while many a saint never learned to read or write. Reading may not be essential, but God’s Word is. Illiterate peasants cherished God’s Word by listening to it and committing it to memory.

Just imagine our forefathers and mothers of the faith in centuries past, with only a handful of books and maybe a tattered Bible passing into their possession over a lifetime. What would they say if they saw the thousands of Bible editions and tools and commentaries we have at our disposal? How does it make sense that even with all our resources, we don’t know the Scriptures as well as they did?

Meditation on God’s Word, contemplation of his wonders—this is basic Christian practice. To read and understand God’s Word is to mount an insurgency against the shallowness of an ever-scrolling word and to be rooted, like the tree that describes the righteous in Psalm 1—planted and fruit-bearing through delight in God’s law and meditation day and night. Reading can help you see, truly see, the glory of God. And the glory of God lights the way for you to truly see others.

Consider Jesus’s haunting question to Simon the Pharisee after a woman entered the house and washed Jesus’s feet with her tears: “Do you see this woman?” (Luke 7:44). Not “see” in the sense of acquiring knowledge, but see with the eyes of attention, to see with spiritual intuition. It’s the kind of sight that demands paying attention while stirring in oneself the compassion that destroys any attitude of superiority and changes the one looking.

What receives our attention? What is it we see? What are we missing? The Bible would have us be more attentive to where we give our attention.

To follow Jesus means to pay attention to him, to be like Mary of Bethany, who reclined at his feet and hung on his every word. Theologian John Webster writes,

In our world today, many voices seek our attention. Influencers everywhere hawk their wares. How tragic if we develop the capacity to attune to everything but the Word of the Lord. The most radical, countercultural practice we can cultivate today is an intensity in reading and listening to the Scriptures—a steadfast attention that refuses to allow anything to wrest our focus from the Bible. To listen until it hurts, as Jacob wrestled with God, refusing to let go until he was blessed.

Reading is the best way to rebel in a world that can glance at everything and gaze at nothing.

For God’s sake, and for your own, read.

TheGospelCoalition. Reading as Rebellion. September 11, 2025. Trevin Wax.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/reading-rebellion/