I made it through high school without ever reading a single book from cover to cover for English class. I'm not proud of this fact. It just so happened that I could pick up enough through class discussion to do well on an exam. So I let the reading slide.

Turns out I probably had what is now known as IDD, intention deficit disorder. While other kids could sit and read for hours on end (theirs), I suffered from lack of intention.

Believe me, I tried to sit still and read on the living room couch. Within two minutes I would have changed positions at least as many times as the former administration's foreign policy. Until finally, I would be sprawled upside down with my head on the carpet and feet draped over the back of the couch -- being careful not to leave scuff marks on the wall, of course. After an eternal five minutes, the book and I always parted company. It remained on the couch, and I headed for my motorcycle in the garage.

When I went on to college I found some new medicine called "parents-paying-tuition" that increased my intention levels significantly. There I was exposed to a world of knowledge and philosophies I found intriguing. And there I began a new life of reading.

Today I believe in reading. However, I am still a "book squirm." And it still takes effort to sit still in one place as my eyes snail across long sentences.

As a reader and editor of Christian literature and as a frequent faculty member at some leading Christian writers conferences, I notice what we Christians tend to read. So let me take some of the nervous energy that makes me fidget when I read and direct it toward some good old-fashioned worry.

First, I worry about how little Christians read. I grew up in a church that participated in the Women's Missionary Society's annual reading contest. Besides providing young children with perfect soil in which to grow healthy lies about how many pages we read, contests like that said, "We believe reading is important." Where are our people hearing the church say that today?

I recommend the reinstatement of the old reading contest! And if you're from my home state of Colorado with its aversion to any form of competition for esteem-fragile children, hey, let everybody be a winner and get a big star!

Second, what little reading we do tends to be narrowly focused on explicitly Christian topics. Isn't there more to think about than how to raise Christian kids or heal past hurts?

A friend of mine ghostwrote the amazingly popular Prayer of Jabez that made it to the top of the New York Times best-seller list. How did that happen? He spends time lifting his head out of the Christian subculture long enough to understand the larger world of people and their passions.

Are we really only curious about the topics that clog the aisles of Christian bookstores? Don't we want to read about history or foreign cultures? Jesus seemed to be curious enough about even the birds and flowers to discover the laws of the Lord in the way they gather food or grow.

I'm currently sweating through Beyond Einstein: The Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe by Michio Kaku for two reasons: an 86-year-old Christian physician sparkled with delight as he told me dazzling thoughts about the universe and the possibility that the "superstring theory" just might be the holy grail of physics -- the unified field theory; and because I find that non-Christian thinkers are often more awestruck by the mystery of the universe than are Christians who insult God by settling for a ho-hum, God-did-it-in-six-days-let's-move-on-to-something-that-speaks-to-me dismissal of the daily miracle that anything at all exists!

I recommend reading one secular book for every four Christian books. After all, the impulse for liberal arts education with its passion for wide-ranging exploration and broad knowledge was and is a fruit of true Christianity.

And finally, I worry that even our Christian reading is too narrow. Who's reading theology today? Were pre-1970 Christians Cro-Magnon clods who had nothing but grunts to record? These days pastors read to become organizational technicians rather than thinkers. Laypeople read mostly to change their moods more than their minds.

I recommend reading Lewis over Lucado.

But you say, "I just don't enjoy reading that much."

I recommend that you do it anyway -- even if you have to lie upside down on the couch. Both are good for the brain.