The List Became a Debt

Two hundred and eleven. You know the number because the file tells you, at the top, every time you open it.

It started as a pleasure. That is worth remembering, because it has been a long time. Fifteen years ago it was a note of things you had heard about and wanted, and opening it was a good feeling, the way a menu is a good feeling.

Then it grew faster than you read, which happened almost immediately, because it grows at the speed of other people's recommendations and you read at the speed of one man.

Somewhere in there it changed category. It is not a list of things you would like any more. It is a list of things you have not done, and the two feel entirely different from inside, and the change happened without a single decision.

Now you finish a book and you do not feel the satisfaction. You feel the number go from two hundred and twelve to two hundred and eleven, which is not satisfaction, it is servicing.

And there are four on there that have been on it since the beginning, that you have carried past every house move, that you know perfectly well you are never going to read.

They are the heaviest four, and they are the ones you cannot take off.

What this page will not do

This is the closing category and the rule is that nothing is added, so nothing here is going to be recommended to you.

I am not going to tell you to read less. Reading is a genuine good and it is a large part of how you have been fed and how you have fed other people, and I am not going to make you suspicious of it. None of that is mine to declare on my own. Scripture said it first in Colossians 2:14, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it the distance.

I am not going to give you a method for prioritizing the two hundred and eleven. That is a system, you would build a good one, and it would be a two hundred and twelfth thing.

I am not going to tell you which four to drop, because that is the move you have been unable to make for fifteen years and me making it would not be you making it. Scripture put that in writing long before you read it here, in Colossians 2:14, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes written words land.

And I am not going to tell you the list was a mistake. It was a pleasure for years and it produced a great deal.

You are not behind on anything. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and nearness is not calibrated to a completed list, and the Holy Spirit is in that study with a man servicing a number.

The verse cancels rather than reduces

There is a line in Colossians about a document, and the image in it is exactly the shape of what you are carrying. I have no authority to say that by myself. Scripture carries it in Colossians 2:14, and the Holy Spirit carries it to you.

Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.Colossians 2:14

The handwriting there is a specific word: it means a certificate of debt, a bond, an IOU written in somebody's own hand.

And what is done with it is not a reduction. Not a restructuring, not a payment plan, not a lower balance.

Blotting out. Then took it out of the way. Then nailing it to his cross, which in the ancient world was what you did with a canceled bond: you fixed it up publicly, defaced, so that everybody could see that nobody was owed anything on it any more.

Three actions and all of them are about the document itself rather than about the amount.

Now, I am not going to pretend that a reading list is the debt Paul was writing about. It is not; he was writing about something infinitely larger.

But look at the instinct in that verse, because it is God's instinct with documents that have somebody's name on them and a figure owing. He does not reduce them.

You are not being asked to service a smaller balance. Scripture says blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and took it out of the way, Colossians 2:14, and the treatment described is cancellation rather than reduction, and the Holy Spirit has never once handed anybody a restructured account.

Who is owed

Ask it plainly, because it has never been asked in fifteen years.

Who is owed those two hundred and eleven books?

Not the authors; most of them are dead and none of them knows you exist. Not the people who recommended them; several would not remember doing it and none is waiting.

Not God, who has never at any point issued a reading list.

Not your students or your congregation, who benefit from what you have read rather than from what you have not. That is Scripture's sentence and not mine, Colossians 2:14, and it is the Holy Spirit and not this page who makes it true where you are.

There is no creditor. The account has one entry in the ledger and it is you, and you have been paying yourself interest for about eleven years. Scripture stands under that in Colossians 2:14, and the Holy Spirit does the part no sentence can do.

That is not a small thing to see and it cannot be argued away, because it is a matter of fact rather than of attitude: name the party owed. There is not one.

You are not in arrears with anybody. Scripture says who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth, Romans 8:33, and the question is asked rhetorically because there is nobody to bring the charge, and the Holy Spirit is not holding a note against a man for unread books.

What is put down

The list itself. Not the reading.

Delete the file. All two hundred and eleven, including the four, and especially the four.

You will feel it, and what you will feel is not the loss of the books, because the books still exist and any of them can be bought in four minutes if you want one. What you will feel is the cancellation of a bond you have been carrying, and it will be disproportionate, and that is the evidence of how much it weighed. It is written, in Colossians 2:14, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.

Then take one book off the shelf. Not from the list; the list is gone. One you already own, that you want, tonight, for no reason except that you want it.

Read some of it badly, out of order if you like, and stop when you stop.

There is nothing after this. No new list, no policy about recommendations, no rule about only reading what you want. Those are all documents.

You are not required to hold a document with your name on it. Scripture says come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, Matthew 11:28, and the rest is given rather than earned down, and the Holy Spirit is not administering an account He never opened.