Christians today are not simply needing  guidance as to what to read, they need to be encouraged to read at all. What used to be regarded as a pleasure for times of leisure has now become regarded as a hard discipline to be undertaken when there is nothing good on TV.

Why should Christians concern themselves with literature?

1. Christians are a people of the Word. God has chosen to reveal Himself to us primarily through a book. God’s chosen form of revelation is literary. To the degree we diminish in our ability to be a literary people, we diminish in our ability to know and love God as He has revealed Himself.
2. Literature shapes a worldview. Every book we read is a mini-cosmos, which we enter as we read. Within that universe, certain views of truth, error, goodness, evil, beauty and ugliness are present. As we live in that world, we either reject that world as hostile to God, or we embrace it in some way or another. Whatever we choose, it is certain that when we emerge from a book, we are changed.
3. Literature is a means of knowing invisible realities. It can allegorize real aspect of our world using characters, objects and plot twists. Other times they operate as symbols for material or moral entities. We should notice how The Scarlet Letter provides images of integrity and hypocrisy; how Moby Dick casts light upon the deceitfulness of revenge; how Dickens’ Christmas Carol shapes Scrooge as a paradigm for reform; how Les Miserables pictures redemption.  The “fairy stories” gathered by The Brothers Grimm, or Hans Christian Andersen are the best examples of these elements. As are folk tales, Aesops Fables and Mythologies.
4. Literature shapes our judgement, as we evaluate whether a work is true, false, or distorted. Tozer: “I therefore recommend reading, not for diversion, nor for information alone, but for communion with great minds. The book that leads the soul out into the sunlight, points upward and bows out is always the best book.”
5. Literature shapes our thoughts, since our thoughts are formed with words. Literature can either expand our ability to think concisely, or it can debase and deform it.

How should we evaluate literature?

1. Does the work create a world similar or emerging from a Christian worldview? Are there signs of truth, goodness, and beauty? Ask who the protagonist (hero) is, and what attributes/ pursuits are glorified by the work? Whom does the author seem to praise, admire, excuse? 
2. Even if not, does the work speak clearly and truly about the human condition, without glorifying evil or delighting in obscenity? Does it display man as fallen, with glimpses of common grace, needing redemption? Or does it show reality in a way that suggests meaninglessness or suffering without purpose?
3. Are the characters and plot sophisticated and real enough to transport us into their world?  Is it a coherent and consistent mini-cosmos? Or are they hollow, flat, and nothing like the reality in which we live?
4. Is it written so as to demand we “receive it” (enter its world), or is it written with so many cliches that we simply use it to find what we were already looking for?

  – David De Bruyn, Professor of Church History, Shepherds’ Seminary Africa