BAD BOOKS
Chapter 12 of
THIS WORLD: PLAYGROUND OR BATTLEGROUND?
by A. W. Tozer
Books and Moral Standards
The late Jimmy Walker, playboy mayor of New York during the roaring 20s, was widely quoted for a quip viewed as the distilled essence of gospel truth by those who wanted to believe it. "I never heard," said Jimmy, "of anyone who has ruined by a book."
These profound words were tossed off, as near as we can remember, during an official inquiry into the effect of certain questionable literature upon the morals of the reading public. Now, we can offer no proof that Mr. Walker had ever heard of anyone who had been ruined by a book, but that could only mean that the man's knowledge of the subject was vastly small or that his idea of what it meant to be "ruined" was not the same as that of the more conscientious persons within our population who still feel bothered about the effect of bad reading upon the collective public mind. Whatever the explanation, Walker's implication that no one had ever been ruined by a bad book is 100 percent false. The facts are against it.
History will show that bad books have ruined not only individuals but whole nations as well. What the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau did to France is too well known to need further mention here. Again, it would not be difficult to establish a cause and effect relationship between the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the bloody career of Adolph Hitler. Certainly the doctrines of Nietzsche appeared again in the mouthings of der Führer and soon became the official party line for Nazi propagandists. And it is hardly conceivable that Russian Communism could have come into being apart from the writings of Karl Marx.
The trust is that thoughts are things and words are seeds. The printed word may lie unnoticed like a seed through a long winter, only to burst out when a favorable time comes and produce an abundant crop in belief and practice. Many who are today useful members of the church were brought to Christ by the reading of a book. Thousands have witnessed to the power of the lowly gospel tract to capture the mind and focus the attention on God and on salvation.
Just what part evil literature has played in this present moral breakdown throughout our land will never be known till men are called forth to answer to a holy God for their unholy deeds. For thousands of young people, the first doubt about God and the Bible came with the reading of some evil book. We must respect the power of ideas. Printed ideas are as powerful as spoken ones – they may have a longer fuse, but their explosive power is just as great.
What all this adds up to is that we Christians are bound in all conscience to discourage the reading of subversive literature and to promote as fully as possible the circulation of good books and magazines. Our Christian faith teaches us to expect to answer for every idle word – how much more severely shall be be held to account for every evil word, whether printed or spoken.
Tolerance of noxious literature is not a mark of intellectual size – it may be a mark of secret sympathy for evil. Every book should stand or fall on its own merit, altogether apart from the reputation of its author. The fact that a nasty or suggestive book was written by an "accepted" writer does not make it less harmful. If it is bad, it is bad, regardless of its origin. Christians should judge a book by its purity, not by the reputation of the author.
The desire to appear broad-minded is not easy to overcome, because it is rooted in our ego and is simply a none-too-subtle form of pride. In the name of broad-mindedness many a Christian home has been opened to literature that sprang not from a broad mind but from a little mind, dirty and polluted with evil.
We require our children to wipe their feet before entering the house. Dare we demand less of the literature that comes into our home?
