I have access to more information than any generation has in history and I still don’t know that much about anything.
500 years ago, 74GB of information would be what a highly educated person consumed in a lifetime, through books and stories. That’s what we consume each day.
Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened. —C.S. Lewis
I work in sales.
I know what you’re thinking. In addition to being a critically acclaimed Substacker, I am also a Salesbro? Yes.
Kidding. But, also—not really. I work in university admissions, which is essentially a sales role. The product I am selling is a private, Christian university experience. This job is fulfilling for me because the school I ‘sell’ is my alma mater—aka it is the school that I attended for undergrad.
My job feels natural for me, because a lot of my job is sharing my experience of attending this school and sharing anecdotes of thoughtful professors and campus resources. It is easy to promote something that I know contributed to my personal and spiritual formation so significantly. This technique of storytelling is Sales 101. Nobody really wants to buy a product; they want to buy an experience. And you sell that through stories, not just by facts and figures.
On my way to and from my sales job, I often listen to podcasts. It is usually a mix of news and entertainment; since I talk about pop culture a lot on here, that is probably not surprising! Anyway, I was reflecting on one of my drives as I was listening to music—my podcast-to-music listening is probably a 3:1 ratio, I love my pods—and I thought about how much information I have ingested on my drives to and from campus, and shockingly, how little of it I can recall.
The forgetting curve—the cousin of the learning curve—illustrates how quickly we lose new information over time. This phrase was coined by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.
His research showed that we forget about 50 percent of what we learn within an hour, 75 percent within a day, and up to 90 percent within a week. Without reinforcement, even the most compelling ideas can quickly fade from memory.
Even though these stats are shocking, you will probably not be able to recall them in a week!
I did not even need this research to back up my reflection as I cruised on I-5. I tried to think about the podcasts I had listened to that week, or the week before that. And I found myself with only a vague familiarity with what the hosts discussed. This concerned me.
What was I doing, just listening to a bunch of nonsense (I’d like to think what I was listening to was valuable, but for the sake of argument), only to forget it the next day?
Which led me to download an audiobook, despite my preference for reading on my Kindle or paperback. But I decided to try to run a little *unofficial* experiment. Let’s see if I find myself learning more from listening to fiction. I wanted to see how it shaped not only my memory, but my commute. Below are my findings!
Shockingly, I found integrating fiction into my commute to be much more life-giving than just intaking another stream of information.
I have since started my second audiobook and I have found myself cringing at my past self for the ways that I thought I was bettering myself when I remembered so little from the amount of stuff I was shoving through my head by listening to podcasts.
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. -Ray Bradbury
Our culture is so focused on efficiency and optimization that even though we know things that take time are better, we can’t help but skip the fast-forward button—or the 2x speed button if you are on TikTok, if you know you know.
We live in an information age. You probably hear that phrase a lot. Let me illustrate it for you.
Information scientists have found that the average person living today processes as much as 74 gigabytes (GB) of information a day through TV, computers, cell phones, tablets, billboards, and many other gadgets. That’s the equivalent of watching 16 movies, reading over 200,000 words, or scrolling on TikTok for nearly 200 hours.
No wonder I often get to the end of my day exhausted by the amount of information I have ingested.
According to this source, 500 years ago, 74GB of information would be what a highly educated person consumed in a lifetime, through books and stories. That’s what we consume each day.
As I read through the gospels, I sometimes think about the gap between the disciples’ everyday life and mine. How I have a car, a commute and a 9-5. And an iPhone. How I have access to more information than any human has had in history but I still don’t know much about anything. I think about how Jewish boys in Jesus’ age, by the time they were 12, were expected to be experts at the Torah. I fantasize about a version of myself that consumes scripture enough to rewire my brain that way. Or to just know that much about anything—anything important.
I am not an expert at scripture memorization. I’m not even close. But after years of reading the gospels, I can pretty easily map out the story of Jesus’ life through stories. I can recall his parables. The Sermon on the Mount. Him at the temple as a little boy. Him on the cross as a man. A roof being lifted for a disabled man. Bread being multiplied. Fish being cooked on a beach for friends.
This is not because I am somehow particularly Holy. It’s actually a part of our design as humans. Stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone, according to Stanford Marketing Professor Jennifer Aaker. Stories stick in our memory in a particular way that general information fails to.
These stories have been told to me hundreds of times over the years. Both formally in church services, among friends and family and in personal study. And they have irrevocably changed me. Every. Time. I. Hear. Them.
The stories in scripture are the best because they are about God stepping into the world and enacting His will. Weaving in His grace with our brokenness. Restoring and repairing what was lost. Redeeming something completely.
These are the plots that we read in our novels and watch on the big screen with clenched fists and damp cheeks. Our measly attempts at storytelling only get a glimpse at the Greatest Story Ever Told.
What I am trying to get at, friend, is that we are meant for great stories. Even if we often settle for poor entertainment.
When we are little, it looks like curling up in bed with our parents while they read a bedtime story. And when we get older, we snuggle under the covers to watch Netflix. We don’t do this just to turn our brains off, but to satiate our insatiable appetite for narrative.
I have some books, songs, TV shows and movies that almost hurt when I think about them, because of the way that their stories have changed me. You know when you hear that one song that fills you with such visceral nostalgia, that transports you to a different time, and you find yourself physically in one place, but emotionally, somewhere completely different?
Narrative can be found in many different forms, as described above. You don’t need to pick up just a book to experience this. But—I believe, and this is completely my opinion, so if you don’t agree, go back to listening to your podcasts and short-form videos and just close this article already—that books are the most sacred form of narrative we have. It’s no wonder that we read as Christians are instructed to read from a sacred text daily, and to meditate on it day and night.
“Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.” -Günter Grass, The Tin Drum
There are plenty of good Christian resources out there (podcasts included) that help us connect with the greater narrative of our faith, both in exploring the gospels as well as church history, theology, apologetics—all that stuff. But these are not supplements to reading our physical Bible, and reading great books. We can’t just listen to sermons and read articles about God. That’s not how we are changed.
I just finished listening to one of my favorite books from my childhood, The Magicians Nephew by C.S. Lewis. Digory finds himself in many challenging situations, weighing good and evil and right and wrong.
Digory’s journey mirrors that of Adam and Eve in the garden. He has to make a choice. Will he take the easy, fearful way—or will he choose to trust God and embrace mystery?
I learned much more from this book than I could have from sitting down and cranking out a John Piper sermon on God’s will. Although that would have felt infinitely more practical in the moment. I probably would only be able to point out general points of what he said. Even if it felt like it resonated in the moment, it wouldn’t stick. And not for lack of trying.
I guess what I am trying to say is that in a world where you can Google something and access information on any topic at any moment, embrace the slower way of learning things. It took me 10 hours to listen to The Magician’s Nephew, but I have internalized the story in a way I simply can’t with non-fiction.
Everything we do is shaping us.
To quote C.S. Lewis—ironically, from one of his non-fiction books.
Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state of the other.
Your spiritual formation is how you are being shaped, either more like Christ or like the world. In Lewis’ words, are you becoming a more heavenly or a hellish creature?
Don’t misread me—you aren’t in danger of going to hell if you don’t read a book. You aren’t evil if you don’t have an affinity for fiction. But the kind of stories we consume shapes the people we become. And if the only stories we engage with are shallow ones, then we may find ourselves gorged on information and starved for meaning.
If you are wondering where to begin, this is a great place to start:
Just skip the short-form media. It’ll only stick in your memory for an hour, a day, or a week at most. Feast on stories. The best ones will stick with you forever.
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Your friend,
"What I am trying to get at, friend, is that we are meant for great stories. Even if we often settle for poor entertainment."
Absolute banger of a line.
this is sooooo good & I would like to this to be in the 10% of what I remember at the end of the week !