Why Christians Should Read Literature (And 10 Novels to Start With)
What if the stories shaping your imagination are also shaping your soul? In an age of endless scrolling, shrinking attention spans, and disposable content, we may be forgetting something essential. Great stories don't merely entertain us—they help us remember who we are, prepare us for suffering, awaken our longing for beauty, and point us toward the truest story of all.
We Were Made for Story
“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker,” said Christian apologist CS Lewis.
You might not have known this, but Lewis wasn’t a “professional” Christian. He wasn’t a pastor, priest, or even a professor of theology.
He was an English teacher. Okay, he was a little more than that. He was a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature at Magdalene College in Oxford.
But the point is, Lewis, one of the greatest Christian thinkers and defenders of the faith in the last hundred years, spent most of his time reading and writing stories, and our opening quotation about the value of reading stories to children applies to all of us, as we are all, in a spiritual sense, children.
Each of us will and does face cruel enemies—betrayal, death, cancer, affairs, divorce, grief, the world, and, not to mention, the enemies of Satan and his demons.
We all know that there are dragons—not real ones obviously (but you never know)—but metaphorical ones, what dragons represent—chaos and disorder, fire and death. We all know there are cruel enemies.
Part of the problem with our post-literate age is that we have forgotten that there are heroes who can slay dragons. We have forgotten the Beowulfs, the St. Georges, the Red Cross Knights’s, and the Bards.
Without the power of story, we are ill-equipped for the adventure of life. We often don’t realize that our lives are a story. Our lives have themes and patterns. Our lives have character arcs. Our lives have rising and falling actions. And ultimately our life story has a hero, and I am sorry to break the news. It’s not you. It’s the hero with a thousand faces, the myth that became fact, the God Man, Jesus Christ.
But before we get there, why do we need stories?
The Problem with Our Post-Literate Age
Recently, I was listening to my favorite Podcast, Pints with Aquinas, where the host, Matt Fradd, was interviewing Priest Poet Rev. Malcolm Guite, who has just written a new epic on the Arthur and the Grail story.
Matt commented, “There’s a lot of young men in particular who are quite rightly sad about the fact that they feel like they don’t belong to a culture…They want to. What’s your advice to them?”
Malcolm responded, “Well, I think I’d want to say you only think you don’t belong because you don’t remember.” Pause. What a line.
He continued, “And you don’t remember because you’ve been robbed by the last two generations who’ve just stopped remembering the long stories and the old stories.”
Ironically, we live in an age when we read more than any previous generation. Unfortunately, what we read is devoid of lasting, coherent meaning and permanence. We read text messages, advertisements, emails, comments, news stories, and responses. We are caught in the stream of the endless scroll. But these chaotic “stories” and “shorts” and “reels” are not meaningful stories. They are not rife with the long and deep meaning we crave. We read a lot, but we are empty, dismembered, and disenchanted.
What We Behold, We Become
Ultimately, you become what you behold. You may have heard the phrase, “you are what you eat.” You are also what you read. You become the stories you consume. You become what you behold. Your YouTube algorithm or Instagram For You Page is a mirror, an uncanny reflection of what you love, what you are aspiring to be, what you are enslaved to, and who you are becoming. As we gaze into the crystal ball—the palantir—of our devices, we are spellbound and are being transfigured into what we watch. What we consume is consuming us, and the worst part is that many of us know we are under this spell, and, if we are honest, we like its intoxicating enchantments.
Unfortunately, these “stories” are changing us. They are changing how we interact with one another. They are changing our capacity to think critically and deeply. They are changing how we view ourselves and our bodies. They are changing how our brains are wired.
The human attention span over the last twenty years has dropped to 8 seconds. A goldfish’s attention span is…9 seconds. I hope that alarms you. We are losing to goldfish.
The “magic” number of seconds for a YouTube short or Instagram reel to get the most views and shares is 7. Are you getting the picture? The 7-second micro-stories are remaking us into their skewed image.
We need something to break the spell. As Lewis said, remember your fairy tales: spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. We are in need of a strong spell to break us free from the enchantment of the machine age and make us human again.
Our word “spell” is an old Germanic word that originally meant “story.” Stories enthrall, enchant, and transform.
We need stories to break us free from our bonds, fill us, re-member us by putting us back together and bringing us into wholeness, and re-enchant us to the beauty and goodness of life even as we face seriously and soberly the reality of ugliness and tragedy.
Great Literature Doesn't Deny Suffering — It Redeems It
That’s the thing about great literature from fairy tales to modern masterpieces like The Lord of the Rings or The Brothers Karamazov, they do not deny the existence of catastrophe and defeat and loss, but they often provide a glimpse of a way out, a prophetic call that in the end there will be victory and not final defeat, and a joy, as Tolkien said in his famous essay “On Fairy Stories,” from beyond the walls of the world, as poignant as grief.
Great literature doesn’t make the suffering go away, but it helps you know that you aren’t alone and that the suffering is not ultimately meaningless but meaningful.
You often hear this critique of literature in general and the fantasy genre in particular that it’s not real; why waste my time on something that’s not real?
Here is my response. What do you mean by real?
Is the fact that the United States went to war with Vietnam more real than the heartbreaking, soul-rending tragedies of war represented in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried?
What’s more real? The fact that the Allied nations overcame the Axis Powers in World War II or the stories of sacrifice, courage, friendship, and grief told in Band of Brothers.
Reality is more than a sum of mere facts; truth is more than a statistic. Christian thinker and philosopher Stratford Caldecott beautifully said, “to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality.”
Moreover, where do you turn to in moments of grief and suffering?
Physics, mathematics, syllogisms? Of course not.
You turn to music, poetry, art, and story.
Particularly for me, I turn to fantasy stories like The Lord of the Rings.
When Tolkien was accused of his works being “escapist,” he responded, “Well, of course it’s escapist.” If you were trapped in a prison, you’d want to escape. As we are trapped in the prison of this fallen world, good stories provide a way out, a transcendent glimpse of our true home, heaven.
Stories Consoled Me When Nothing Else Could
After I had graduated from high school and was preparing to play college soccer at Sewanee, I had to run a mile in under 5 minutes and 30 seconds to pass the fitness test. As I labored all summer on the MUS track, I suffered, particularly on the third lap before the final push.
Where did my mind go as my vision got blurry from exertion and heat?
Self-help mantras? Advice from a fitness magazine? Statistics on increasing my VO2 max?
No, I thought of Frodo and Sam laboring up Mount Doom as they suffered from lack of food and drink and utter exhaustion. I thought of Sam Gamgee saying, “I can’t carry the ring, Mr. Frodo, but I can carry you.”
That’s what gave me the strength to overcome suffering and keep going.
Years later, I suffered a brain injury that meant I couldn’t play soccer anymore and I couldn’t run anymore, because the impact causes micro-concussions that bring on migraines, brain fog, and inflammation.
This is a wound that will most likely never heal this side of heaven. That’s a hard reality to face. As I lay awake at night with throbbing headaches, tears in my eyes, grief and sorrow, envy and self-pity, what consoles me?
It’s not syllogisms on the problem of evil. It’s not the apologetics books I read in seminary on the meaning of suffering (though there is great value in these things).
It’s Frodo who, despite being severely wounded from the Morgul Blade, continues on his quest and, after the ring is destroyed, still suffers the wound even as he loves and brings healing to the Shire and to others. It’s Frodo who ultimately must leave the Shire and leave his dear Sam behind to travel to the blessed realm where only healing can be found.
I cannot express how much that story has consoled me in my suffering and given me hope that even though I may not be healed in this life, my suffering is meaningful and will one day be healed in the true blessed realm of heaven.
Stories Also Amplify Our Joys
But stories not only console us in grief; they amplify our joys. They help us to take heart and to be glad. Thinking of Bilbo Baggins enjoying tea and vittles in the Hobbit Hole or story and poetry in Rivendell, Merry and Pippin dancing at the Prancing Pony, Aragorn and Arwen’s coronation, Sam Gamgee returning to his wife Rosie and daughter Elanor helps “baptize” my imagination and helps me savor the joy of tea on a rainy day, a walk in the woods, conversation with a friends, an open fire and song, a return home from work to Courtney and Virginia. Stories help me savor the sweetness of life for what it is—a gift.
Lewis, in his masterful book An Experiment on Criticism, concludes his argument with these powerful lines:
“The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough…Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality... in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”
Literature isn’t magic, but it kind of is. It’s a gateway to transcendence where you forget yourself for a while and live into a larger story than your own. When you return to yourself, your being has been enlarged, your capacity to face grief and sorrow increased, your ability to sympathize and have compassion heightened, and lastly your courage and willingness to love has grown.
Fiction, then, is in some sense more real than non-fiction. The best writers can express the depths, contradictions, longings, grief, and joy of the human heart and life better than you or I can. The great stories are wiser than we are. Often upon reading great works of literature, I will express, “that’s what I had felt my whole life, only I didn’t have the words!” I now have tools and maps to process and live the life that I did not have before.
That is what all great literature does; it grabs hold of us, gives us the passwords and the keys into the chambers of our own hearts, and emboldens us to keep going.
And we all know this intuitively. This is why advertisers don’t sell you a product; they sell you a story. No one wants to buy facts. We want to buy meaning. We want to be a part of a story larger than our own lives. We are narrative beings, made by the author of life.
The imagination, then, is the gateway to our hearts. It is a truth-bearing faculty. If reason is the organ of truth. The imagination is the organ of meaning that helps us fully grasp the truth and take it into our hearts and minds.
How Stories Point to the Gospel
Lewis, in his essay “Fairy Stories,” commented on the fact that many of us, including himself, have grown numb to the stories of the Bible. Surrounded with them from our youth, we fail to hear the stories, let alone take them into our hearts, because they have too many “stained glass” and “Sunday school” associations. A veil has been thrown over the stories. Lewis says,
“Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”
As Chronicles of Narnia readers can attest, Lewis brings the gospel to life, stealing past the watchful dragons of our inhibitions and biases. For many readers, they feel the love of God breathed through Aslan’s mouth, and they feel the terror of the White Witch and the consequences of slavery to sin in a way that can re-orient us to real spiritual evil, to the fact that we have an enemy, Satan, who hates us, and the very real spiritual battle we face on a daily basis.
Stories like Narnia are meant to bring its readers to the truth through the imagination—to present the truth of God, of his Son, and of the battle with evil in an imaginative light that breaks into blind eyes and that allows readers to glimpse reality, physical and metaphysical, as it is, perhaps, for the first time.
Then the readers, with eyes to see and ears to hear, may come into real relationship with God, listen to his real words, and wage war with real evil, equipped with God’s armor. The details may be saturated with fantastical imagery, but the truth remains unchanged. It is the reader, however, who is changed.
Jesus Was a Storyteller
This is how Jesus taught. As Frederick Buechner eloquently put it: “JESUS DOES NOT sound like Saint Paul or Thomas Aquinas or John Calvin when we hear him teaching in the Gospels. ‘Once upon a time’ is what he says.”
He spun tales of gardens and gardeners, sowers and seeds, wedding banquets and guests, all while communicating essential truths about himself and the kingdom of God.
Jesus knew that stories have power. As Andrew Peterson so brilliantly put it, “If you want someone to know the truth, tell them. If you want someone to love the truth, tell them a story.”
Stories stick with you and transform you.
We need good stories again. In fact, stories are the most ancient technology we have. Wherever there have been people, there have been stories. It’s the methodology by which we make sense of the world around us and of ourselves.
And ultimately, we tell stories because we were made for and written into the cosmic salvation story of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation by the Author of Life. As philosopher James K.A. Smith argues in his excellent work You Are What You Love, we will not become who we were meant to be until we become characters in God’s story, until we see the story of our lives woven into the greater story of the Gospel.
As I wrestle with suffering, yes, The Lord of the Rings does console me and give me strength, but ultimately it is the story of redemption, climactically fulfilled in Christ, that gives me lasting peace and lasting hope, even as I limp along.
This year during Holy Week, as I sat and walked in the story of the crucifixion, the station of the cross that spoke most poignantly to me was Jesus being crowned with thorns. As my head throbs with pain, I am taken out of myself to my Lord whose head was pressed with dagger-like thorns. My God, My Hero, My King suffers that for me out of his great compassion and mercy, and His Resurrection is what ultimately helps me keep going by faith and gives me strength in the present.
The Gospel Is the Truest Story
Mankind has always trafficked in the business of storytelling and myth-making because of the Imago Dei burning within us. Within the human imagination there is an innate reaching for God, the ultimate creator, and every human story, secular or religious, consciously or unconsciously strives for Him (or rebels against Him). All good stories and myths, therefore, contain hints and glimmers of the truth, and they, in one way or another, point to the truest story of all, the Gospel of Christ.
Did you catch that? GoSPEL. The Gospel is the “Good Spell” that we need to finally free us, redeem us, and transform us by its truth, goodness, and beauty—by the love and power of God.
Tolkien, in the conclusion of his essay “On Fairy Stories,” says that the Gospels contain the story which embraces all the essence of great stories, only this story has entered history and the real world, and ultimately, as we have said, this story ends in Joy.
Tolkien then says, “[t]here is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits…To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.”
The Gospel is the truest story, the realest story, where “Legend and History have met and fused.”
The stories that move you, heal you, put you back together ultimately do so because they point to the Logos, the Word beneath the word, the God-Man, Jesus.
So Where Do You Begin?
So then, if you want to take up the ancient technology of stories again and read good literature, where do you begin?
First, curation is key. As Justin Earley argues in The Common Rule, curation implies a sense of the good.
There are too many bad stories around us: 24/7 news stories meant to manipulate our passions into an activist frenzy, the never-ending stream of social media stories, and the “slop” of content that is peddled on streaming services (though there are a few gems here and there).
In this almost endless sea of bad stories, we need to curate for the best stories.
The test of time is a great metric. There is a reason some stories are told from generation to generation. Don’t be afraid of old books and the classics. They remember what we have forgotten or what has been concealed from us. As you take on the task of reading these old masterpieces, don’t be intimidated. They are actually usually easier to read than you thought.
Secondly, find a mentor (or a wizard). Great heroes usually become great because they had great mentors. Dante had Virgil. Arthur had Merlin. Luke had Obi-Wan. Danny had Mr. Miyagi.
Ask those who are older than you, wiser than you, and further along the walk of faith than you what books spoke to them and moved them. Personally, I recommend The Literary Life podcast. It’s run by Christian homeschool educators whose mission is to take story from the ivory tower of the university and bring it to “your home, your kitchen, and your commute.” Pick out some of the books they recommend and start reading!
Lastly, when you find a book or author that you like, find out who inspired them and read those authors. For instance, if you start reading Tim Keller books, you’ll very quickly realize that Keller was heavily influenced by Lewis. When you start reading Lewis, you will discover the glories of G.K. Chesterton and George MacDonald, and so on and so forth. It’s really quite thrilling.
These are 10 books that I personally recommend. The first five are for adults and the second five are for children and families.
5 Novels for Adults
1. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
No surprise here. Poet Malcolm Guite commented on The Lord of the Rings that “passage after passage of that story gives us the story and the symbol and the image of which to get a hold of who we are and how to keep going.” Tolkien was a devout Catholic and strong Christian who played a major part in bringing C.S. Lewis to faith, and this story, while not an allegory, certainly conveys the depths, beauty, and truth of the Gospel in powerful ways. Tolkien said that the power of fantasy stories lies in the eucatastrophe, or the sudden joyful turn, at the end of fairy tales, when all is made right by an unlooked-for grace. The eucatastrophe of The Lord of the Rings is piercingly joyful and gives your heart a glimpse of the redemption of all things. You will also find in this story bravery, friendship, song, love, and beauty that will nourish your heart.
2. The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
This novel is short and punchy, and it will haunt you in the best way. It can be read in an afternoon or over the course of a few days. The premise is that the main character (a fictional Lewis) wakes up in what the reader later learns is Hell, and he gets the chance, along with other ghosts or souls, to go on a holiday to Heaven. Each soul is then invited to leave Hell and enter Heaven, and the power of this novel lies in showing how each of these souls turns down the invitation to the deep joy of Heaven because they hold on to the things they think make them happy, all the while making them miserable. Whenever I recommend this book to people, I warn them that one of the souls in this novel is you. You will find yourself and your hidden agendas, your subtle manipulation of others, your shame and selfishness in this novel, and after those dark parts of your hearts are exposed, you can then offer them up to God and receive His Joy.
3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina is a tour de force. It is quite long and can be intimidating, but it’s not a difficult read (other than keeping track of the Russian names). It surprisingly reads quite smoothly. The characters feel utterly real. Tolstoy writes embodied souls and fully fleshed-out persons. And he brilliantly captures the depths, tragedies, and glories of the human heart and of human relationships. This story will break your heart wide open and increase your love. Tolstoy is also one of those authors who will put words to your hidden thoughts, motivations, and feelings with a depth and piercing accuracy that is both unsettling and incredibly healing.
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky earns an honorable mention here as another Russian novel worth reading!
4. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
My high school English teacher, who taught me to love stories and see Christ in them, gave me this book, and he wrote in it that while it isn’t Lewis or Tolkien, it’s certainly fantastical and worth many re-readings to parse out its theological depth. After having read it two or three times, I certainly agree. The novel is about Charles Ryder, an Oxford student turned painter, who becomes intrigued by and enchanted with the Marchmain family, an old Catholic aristocratic family in the waning years of their wealth and glory, and his relationship with this family is, in a sense, analogous to the soul’s relationship with the church. This story is not “pious” but “devout.”
5. Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry (other than J.K. Rowling) is, in my opinion, the greatest living author, and he is an American and a farmer by trade. Berry is a brilliant poet, essayist, activist for small-town culture and local farmers, a novelist, and a Christ follower. His novel Jayber Crow is about a local barber in the fictional town of Port William, Kentucky. Like all great novels, the story of Jayber Crow is the story of the soul, from slavery to selfishness, and of the flesh to the freedom of loving others charitably and sacrificially.
6. (Bonus!): Read the detective novels of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Detective novels come from a particularly Christian imagination, since they hold the belief that evil will be brought to light and that justice is a tenable reality worth fighting for. The end of the detective novel, where the killer is exposed and wrongs are made right, is a little glimpse of the final judgment and restoration of all things. And these novels are just fun! Start with Murder on The Orient Express or Death on the Nile.
5 Books for Children and Families
5 novels for children and families (hopefully read aloud before bed) and for adults who have grown cynical and world-weary.
1. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
My goodness. This is one of the most delightful and soul-healing stories that you can read. It’s about the friendship and adventures of Mole, Ratty, Badger, and the mischievous yet lovable Mr. Toad. Reading this novel feels like Christmas morning or the first morning of summer break. It is just wonderful and will make you both laugh and cry with joy. It’ll make you want to savor, protect, and fight for what is good and holy in this fallen world—the most notable being the wonderful gift of friendship.
2. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The whole Chronicles of Narnia series is worth reading, but start here. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is technically the second book in the series, but it was written and published first. I, and many others, think (rightly) that this is the best place to begin one’s adventures into Narnia. Not only is there the magic and wonder of stepping through the wardrobe, but there, in that wintry landscape, you will find the love and warmth of Christ, the Lion of Judah.
3. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit was Tolkien’s first published story about Middle-earth, and it grew out of stories that he would tell his children before bed. At Lewis's encouragement, Tolkien submitted the book for publication, and since then it has become one of the most beloved and widely read stories of our modern age. It follows the adventures of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, who must leave the comforts of the Shire and his hobbit hole and set out on a daring adventure with a rag-tag band of dwarves, guided by the Wizard Gandalf, to slay a dragon and take back the Dwarves’ homeland. Over the course of the quest, Bilbo slowly learns courage, friendship, and heroic sacrifice. It’s a fun read with deeply interwoven Christian truths.
4. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Yes, this story has witches, wizards, and magic, but it is not demonic in any way. The Harry Potter novels are actually a profoundly Christian story. The owl’s name “Hedwig” comes from St. Hedwig, the patron saint of orphans. Harry’s patronus is a white stag, a medieval symbol of Christ. The antagonist is a snake-like Dark Lord, a clear analog to Satan. The magic in these stories is an imaginative way to portray spiritual realities, both good and graceful and malevolent and evil. Rowling didn’t write these books to encourage children to practice witchcraft. She wrote them to help children see that their own stories are part of a larger story of meaning, wonder, and ultimately, despite the reality of tragedy and loss, of resurrection and victory through Christ.
5. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
What’s your favorite movie rendition of A Christmas Carol? The Muppets version? Mine is the animated Jim Carey version. Regardless, many of us have seen the movies or the plays about this story, but the book is brilliant and short! Around the Advent season this year, gather your children around the fire and give this beloved story a read.
As St. Augustine miraculously heard, as recorded in his autobiography The Confessions, Take and Read! Tolle Lege!
TL;DR
Stories are not an escape from reality but often a deeper way of understanding it.
Great literature helps us process suffering, cultivate courage, and find meaning in life's hardships.
Christians need stories because stories shape our loves, desires, and vision of the world.
The greatest works of literature often point beyond themselves toward the Gospel and the story of redemption fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Ultimately, every great story echoes the greatest story ever told: creation, fall, redemption, and new creation through Christ.
