For the Love of Books

By Dr. Douglas Groothuis

The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth. The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd. And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil (Ecclesiastes 12:10-14, KJV).

At some point, one’s “books” become one’s “library.” This transition happens not simply with the increase in books, but in the attitude one has toward them. This happened to me long ago, probably shortly after I graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. In college, I had started to amass many books in addition to my textbooks—books on philosophy, apologetics, theology, psychology, and more. I had pursued a parallel Christian curriculum to match the curriculum given by the University of Oregon. A secular school will not help you develop a Christian mind, worldview, or apologetic. Nor will it teach you biblical ethics. Rather, it will likely tear down a Christian approach to any subject, or simply ignore it. It is worse now than when I was an undergraduate in college, 1975-1979.

After I graduated in 1979, I began working for a new campus ministry called The McKenzie Study Center, which had been inspired by the work of Francis Schaeffer and his L’Abri community. My focus was on teaching a worldview survey class at the University of Oregon called, “The Twilight of Western Thought: A Christian Response.” Our main text was James Sire’s book, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalogue, which is a modern classic. It was remarkable that the university allowed non-faculty members to teach some classes if approved by a faculty member. I began to co-teach with my friend, Karsten Musaeus, seven years older, who knew the head of the sociology department, Dr. Benton Johnson. Karsten left the area after the first year of co-teaching with me and I taught the class for the next four years, except for one term when I concentrated on writing and researching my first book, Unmasking the New Age (InterVarsity, 1986). I also mentored students and began to publish reviews and articles. I lived in the rented ministry building with four or five other young men. My room was soon filled with books stacked everywhere, on the topics mentioned. I kept a record of books I read in 1981 in my vocabulary book. It came to 116. You see, all I did was teach, study, and raise support for my ministry. At some point, my books became my library.

Now, consider two days before Christmas in 2023. I returned from a short trip to visit friends in Omaha, Nebraska to find that the book area of my basement had flooded with sewage. My wife seldom went into “the philosopher’s cave”—largely because there was room only for my dog, Sunny, and myself, given the area’s inundation with books, periodicals, records, and CDs—so, she did not know about the plumbing apocalypse. I only lost a few books, including a newer edition of Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Geist (poetic justice since I am an analytic philosopher). However, the bathroom and much of the surrounding area had to be restored. That meant getting the books (as well as records and CDs) out of the way for the mitigation and reconstruction. This began my serious boxing up of books pursuant of my move to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to take a position as Distinguished Professor at Cornerstone University in the fall of 2024.

It took me six weeks to box up my books. I kept the Banker Box Company in business during that time, because their product was perfect for my ordeal. After the Great Box-Up, I asked friends to help me move the books from the study area into the storage room and to take away many of my old bookcases, including many bricks and boards, which I had been using since the late 1970s. Their kindness—plus beer and pizza—drew them in. 

For a solid year before this, I attempted to thin out my library, mostly by giving away books to friends, to Goodwill, and to Denver Seminary, where I worked. I was able to sell a few books to a used bookstore, but only a small percentage. When all the books from my home as well as the books from my office—about fifty boxes—were filled, the total came to about three hundred boxes of books. Please do not ask me the total number of books, because life is too short and I am too old to know or care.

Before the packing began, a friend of my wife’s looked at my book-lined basement and said I was a “hoarder.” I was shocked, since I had (unfortunately) watched a program on hoarding.  When it reaches a certain level, hoarding becomes a psychological disorder requiring intervention (and a TV show, of course). Even when books crowd out room for people; even when you stack them so high that they fall on you or your dog; even when you buy a new copy of a book you know you own because you cannot find the original one; even when you accidentally buy a book you already own; even when your brother-in-law discovers that you have four editions of Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents; even when you discover a book you forgot that you owned; even given all that (and more), you are not a hoarder if these books are good (or at least important) books and are related to your calling in some way. Perhaps a few of my books are merely recreational, but I don’t know if anything in my library fits that category, even my books on jazz, the band Metallica (!), and Jimi Hendrix.

Moving my library to my new home in Michigan has been nothing less than an ordeal, which now spans over seven months. Many of my volumes were imprisoned in boxes for months. Most have now been liberated after new bookcases were put into the great room in the basement. This room is now literally lined with books placed in eleven large bookcases. That is how I envisioned the room when I first saw it empty and unfinished in March of this year. Unlike my previous basement cave (not a “man cave”), it has an open feel, with the windows unobstructed and much space in the middle (so far). More bookcases are on the way, which will be easily filled by more boxes of books in the basement and garage. It is likely that many more boxes will be taken to my new office at Cornerstone University, which already holds fifty boxes. A few of my books have been damaged, but not many.

Even though I did not load the book boxes onto or off the moving truck, and even though I have had a lot of help moving them in the house, I have had to move and empty a myriad of boxes and into the bookcases. More is to come. At sixty-seven and with a bad back, this can be painful and exhausting. And all the empty cardboard boxes have to be disposed of. This all raises a question: Is it worth it?

Yes, it is worth moving your library when your books are your tools for study, writing, teaching, preaching, mentoring, and plain enjoyment. Yet, they are more than tools. They have constituted much of my life. Probably the first serious books I bought were when I was in high school: Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception and a collection called The Metaphysical Poets, which features John Donne and George Herbert (who I would later come to appreciate) There is a different story within and behind each book. Some have great sentimental as well as intellectual value.

I purchased Francis Schaeffer’s book, The God Who is There (1968) in the fall of 1976, shortly after my conversion and just after I had moved to Eugene, Oregon, to attend the University of Oregon. Although someone had advised me to read Schaeffer in the summer of 1976, for some reason I did not. Of course, the intellectual content of that book is significant, since it launched me on an apologetics and theological journey that continues today. In fact, I have several editions of this seminal work. But I savor the book itself, the physical object, with its art, its type of print, and its history in my life. I have taken it with me everywhere. Although I often search with Kindle for passages in that book, the paper copy holds a special place in my sentiments. It is literally priceless.

A large library also stimulates thinking as well as providing resources already read. When anyone asks me if I have read all these books, I realize that they don’t understand the difference between “having books” and “having a library.” For a teacher and writer such as myself, having access to these books is vital. I don’t like to check out books from a library, since you cannot—or should not—mark them. I make a book my own by marking it up. (Perhaps I’ll write an essay on my philosophy of marking books.) The exception is when a book is so expensive that I do not want to purchase it. Some academic books are in that category and are purchased mostly by libraries (and seldom read).

When people see the size of my library, they sometimes ask how I organize it. I wish they would not ask that, since I am not good at organizing. I am better at purchasing books and reading them (or wanting to read them). Over the years, several students have helped me organize my library, but I usually help disorganize it shortly after. My books wee in some order in my last home, and were boxed for the move in general categories such as “theology,” “philosophy,” “apologetics,” “jazz,” “psychology,” and “art,” but they were not packed in careful order. Nor are they being unloaded and stacked in careful order—although there are odd pockets of order. Unless I hire someone to work on this (or someone volunteers), I will likely roam around the stacks and rearrange here and there as I see fit. I can remember where some books were in my previous two homes, but recreating that here will be challenging.

Do I need every book I own. No, I do not. There is an embarrassment of riches in my library. However, none were purchased without some purpose. The overarching purpose of my library is to increase my knowledge of what I need to know for my calling. It takes books to write books, and I have written twenty books so far. Five more are in the oven and under contract. As I get older, I may give more books away or loan (some of) them more readily. (I never loan a book I treasure.)

As the Preacher of Ecclesiastes wrote, “of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” Yes, study can be wearisome, but if it is your calling, you will acquire and write books to that end. We should both enjoy and thrive in our calling as well as sometimes be weary in pursuing it. Schaeffer sometimes wrote of ministering through fatigue. That is part of the Cross for the scholar. The Apostle Paul uses sports metaphors for the Christian life, all of which assume focused effort, if not pain.

Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize (1 Corinthians 9:25-27).

To that end, I will develop, enjoy, and suffer with my library. And no, I am not a hoarder.