I do not deliberately decide how long I study, but if I study whenever I want or whenever I have some time, I end up doing a lot of it. I had done up to 12 hours of reading a day, but that happened during vacations when I was in high school and college. Now I do not read 12 hours a day.

My personal library filled a commercial storage, not on shelves, but in boxes stacked in columns. It took two construction trucks several turns to move them. Several times it took me more than a week to find a book I wanted. It would take this long because the columns filled the storage area solid, with only four to twenty inches between each column. So even if I remembered the exact location of a book, it would take a long time to move the other boxes out of the way to get to the one I needed. It was such a big deal looking for a book that at times I had to bring food and water, and called my wife occasionally to report that I was safe.

So I have owned many books and done a lot of reading, and I will offer you an honest opinion. Most theology books are so bad, so tedious, so pretentious, and so full of errors and unbelief that, if I could do it again, I would spend a lot of that time sleeping instead or reading more “devotional” works and Pentecostal books. Of course, these also contain errors, but they are much less annoying. On average, I would say that I find 4 errors in theology or reasoning on every page in a Reformed theology book. Sometimes I would find as many as 20 errors on a page. I suppose that’s as many as they could fit on a page. I would write down all of these errors for reference, with comments. It was very painful and boring.

Reading was my favorite habit since a kid, but reading Reformed theology almost destroyed my interest in reading. It almost made me hate books, because many of the books that I read were by these people. In reality, I hated their errors, unbelief, and pretentious way of writing. However, that time indeed helped me build a good foundation and become familiar with the theological situation throughout church history. But I received a good foundation not because I accepted what they said passively, but because I engaged them with an active mind.

When I first started serious studies, at times I had to stop to give my mind some rest. But instead of watching TV or doing something like that, I would rest my mind by reading computer programming books. Reading computer code was relaxing to me, because reading theology was a battle, since the arguments and reasoning of the theologians were usually very poor. At times their arguments were very stupid even when their doctrines were right. I had to fill in the blanks or correct them in my mind. But a computer does not forgive errors and does not fill in logical holes, and so programming code has to be precise and complete, and all assumptions must be declared. After a while, I no longer needed to take breaks, and so I stopped reading computer codes for relaxation.

As a side point, despite reading thousands of pages of book on programming, I never programmed anything. I didn’t do the exercises in the books. I just read the code like I would read a novel. I would imagine the code and the results in my mind. And I became good enough that I received several basic certifications for programming. I did not need them, but I took the tests just to amuse myself. You do not need experience or practice to learn many things. This is my point. But you need to think.

Anyway, I am telling you this so you would not feel guilty if you think that the theology books you have to study seem very boring, very wrong, very useless, and the prose seems very poor, very convoluted, very pretentious. They are. In fact, if you do not get this impression, then you are not understanding them. However, since you are in seminary, you will need to read them anyway, so you will be forced to study them. That’s good, so you don’t have to force yourself to get what little benefit you can from them. And it is good to become familiar with some of the literature. It is not necessary to become familiar with all of them.

Study is good, very good. But make sure your study increases your faith. Many books tend to hinder faith, plant doubt, and destroy zeal, so you will have to wrestle with them and overcome them. Overcome the theologians. When you win against them by superior arguments, you might have increased in faith, because you will have refuted their unbelief. Also, read the literature from other theological perspectives. I do not mean you should read Mormon books or Buddhist books, but just Christian books that are beyond your narrow denomination or circle. For example, if you are already convinced about the doctrine of election, total depravity, and so on, it would not hurt to read some Arminian books and Pentecostal books. Their errors will not affect you, but they will say some things that the Reformed missed — the Reformed are wrong on a lot of things. Don’t fall in love with a human tradition. If you are in love with a human tradition, your spiritual zeal is an illusion. It would feel like a love for Christ, but it is fake.

This suggestion applies to those who are relatively established. Some people are influenced by the most recent position that they are exposed to. They get tossed back and forth by every wind of doctrine. So they change from week to week. Sometimes they are Calvinist, sometimes Arminian. Sometimes they are charismatic, sometimes cessationist. Sometimes they believe in a hell, sometimes not. They slide from dispensationalism to full preterism, and then back again depending on which web site they are reading that week. To someone like that, I would recommend staying with one reliable theologian or at the most several teachers for a while until he is established in the basics. But start with a teacher who has some faith.

Length of time spent in study is not the most important factor. Do not read for pride. Read for faith, love, and knowledge. I see many people who spend a lot of time reading, but they are very bad at theology. Spiritual intelligence is more important. And even more important than that is faith. Even good theology will be useless to you if you don’t believe any of it. Most theologians do not believe the Bible. They believe themselves, and they appear to believe the Bible only because part of the Bible agrees with them. There is a big difference.

It is a very good idea that you study English. In Christian studies, I think it is overall more useful than Greek, Hebrew, Latin, German, etc. Make sure you become very good at it. It will help you with your studies, and also increase your ministry audience in the future. Make sure you become very good at English. Reading will be easier, but try to become good at writing and speaking too. Writing and speaking are harder because there is not much room for error. It is not enough to be generally correct, but you need to be precise. Writing is probably easier, since you can read over what you have written and correct mistakes before sending it to someone. So at least become good at reading and writing in English.

Between serious studies, read things that are less pretentious, read things that are full of faith. I cannot emphasize this enough. Read things that are full of faith. Faith does not only mean having a good attitude in defeat. Faith overcomes. Faith wins.

From: email