I Stopped Buying Because It Felt Dishonest

You put it back on the table and walked out, and you told yourself that was integrity.

The reasoning went like this. There are eleven unread books beside your bed. Buying a twelfth would be pretending. It would be the act of somebody who reads, performed by somebody who does not, and you were not going to be that person about it.

So you left it there. And you have left several since, and it has been about two years, and you have not read any more than you were reading before.

Which is the part that does not fit. If the buying was the dishonest thing, stopping it should have made something truer. Nothing got truer. There is just one less good thing in your week now.

Two things are not coming here, and you have met them both.

Nobody is handing you a list. Not a title, not an author, not a genre, and no shelf of what a woman ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book, and mostly it adds one more thing to be behind on.

And nobody is saying one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows. Being told again by a stranger returns nothing at all.

What I want to look at is the verdict, because there was a verdict passed at that table and you have been serving it ever since.

The pile was never evidence of anything. You made it into a charge sheet and then pled guilty.

There is therefore now no condemnation

There is a sentence at the front of Romans 8 that arrives immediately after the most honest chapter about failure in the New Testament, and the position of it is the argument.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1, King James Version)

Look at where it sits. Romans 7 is a man describing a gap between what he intends and what he does, in exhausting detail, and it ends with him crying out about it.

And then Romans 8:1 does not resolve the gap. Read it again. It does not say the gap is now closed. It says there is no condemnation, which is a statement about the verdict and not about the performance.

That distinction is the whole thing. The gap between intending and doing is described honestly and left standing, and the condemnation is what gets removed.

You are standing under no condemnation with the gap still there, and eleven unread books have never once been a charge that could be brought against you. Romans 8:1 removes the verdict immediately after a chapter that describes the gap and never once closes it, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a nightstand tonight.

There is one more word in it worth having, and it is the smallest one.

Now. There is therefore now no condemnation. Not once the reading is done. Not when the pile has gone down. Now, at the point of reading the sentence, with everything exactly as it is.

You have a verdict already settled in your favor, and a pile that has not moved has never once been able to reopen it. It is written there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, the word now is doing the load bearing work in that sentence, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The verdict was self-issued and it took the wrong thing away

Here is the mechanism, and it is worth naming because it was well intentioned.

At that table you did not decide about a book. You accepted a description of yourself.

The description was: a person who buys books and does not read them. And it came with a moral shape, and once a moral shape is attached the only honest response is to stop doing the thing, which is what you did.

You have a verdict entered already, and buying a book has never once been a promise anybody could break. His Spirit is in that bedroom tonight, and it is written that there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.

But look at what got stopped. Buying a book is the moment of appetite. It is the moment where reading looks good, where a person reaches out for something they want, and it costs almost nothing and asks nothing of the evening.

Reading is a different act, in a different hour, with a different obstacle. Stopping the buying did not touch the obstacle at all. It removed the only part of the whole business that was still working.

You are down one good thing and no closer, and stopping the buying has never once been the same thing as starting the reading. Romans 8:1 lifts the condemnation while the gap stands, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman who took the wrong thing away from herself.

And there is a second layer, and it is the one that keeps the pile heavy.

Once the pile is a charge sheet, it cannot be approached. You cannot browse a charge sheet. You cannot pick something off it lightly, on a whim, because a whim is not an appropriate posture toward evidence against you.

So the eleven books stop being eleven possibilities and become one object, and one object with a moral weight is not something anybody reaches into at half past nine on a Tuesday.

You have eleven possibilities that got fused into one accusation, and a stack beside a bed has never once been a document about your character. The written word removes the condemnation and leaves the honest description of the gap intact, and His Spirit is the one who takes a charge sheet and makes it a shelf again.

One off the pile, somewhere you actually sit

So here is the assignment, and it is about location rather than about reading.

Take one book off the pile tonight and put it somewhere you will actually sit.

Not the whole pile. Not a sort, not a decision about which ones to keep, and nothing at all about getting rid of anything. Nobody here is going to suggest that, tonight or ever. The pile stays exactly the size it is.

One book. Off the top or out of the middle, chosen badly, and then carried to the chair you sit in, or the counter you lean on, or the arm of the couch.

You are standing under no condemnation with the gap still open, and eleven unread books have never once been admissible. The Holy Spirit is the one in that bedroom with you, and Romans 8:1 lifts the verdict immediately after a chapter that describes the gap and never closes it.

Here is why moving it is the assignment and reading it is not.

While the eleven are one object, nothing can be taken from them. Removing one and putting it somewhere ordinary is what breaks the object back into books, and a single book on the arm of a couch has no moral weight at all. It is just a thing that is there.

And where you actually sit, not where you mean to sit. The good chair in the room nobody uses is not where reading happens.

You are able to take one book out of an accusation, and moving one thing four feet has never once been too small an act to matter. Romans 8:1 says there is therefore now no condemnation, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman carrying one book to a couch.

Read ten pages of it if you want to. That is not the assignment and it is not required, and if you only move it and go to bed, tonight worked exactly as intended.

You have a pile that is allowed to stay the size it is, and eleven unread books have never once needed to be reduced before one of them could be opened. It is written no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, the sentence lands with the gap fully described and standing, and the Spirit of God is landing it here.