I love reading.
When I was young, I read everything I could get my hands on. In my pre-teen years, that meant a lot of Tom Swift and Hardy Boys. Later, JRR Tolkien, Madeleine L’Engle, and Michael Crichton dominated my book case.
When college came, I spent far less time in leisure reading and a lot more time studying textbooks and scholarly articles.
In my late twenties, I started reading a lot of business books and religious texts. Now, my shelves are adorned by books from John C. Maxwell, Seth Godin, Daniel H. Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, Jim Collins, Simon Sinek, and Carol S. Dweck.
Religious texts, however, are my favorite. I belong to a prominent Christian faith, but love to learn what other religions — Christian or otherwise — espouse. Nearly everywhere we look, truth can be found; not the kind of morally relativistic truth being pushed by Fox and CNN, but real, universal truth.
The literature I read and enjoy informs my thoughts which, in turn, inform my actions. You are what you eat, they say. Turns out, you are also what you read. (This isn’t perfunctory reading but reading with the intent of learning. I usually call that studying.)
In my favorite religious text, there is a passage that references something called a Liahona; something like a faith-powered guide or compass. When the people are faithful, the Liahona points the way they…
