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Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. Could you even imagine the world without the wheel? Simple, really, but undeniably one of the most important inventions in the history of the world. Think of the vast areas of industry and progress made possible from this one small stroke of genius. And yet, when Life magazine ranked the 100 most important events and the people of the past millennium, it was Gutenberg's 1455 printing of the Bible using his movable type printing press that came in at number one. Why has the written word, even more than our greatest technical innovations, exercised such enduring cultural power? Joel Miller explored this in his book the Idea How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future in it, Miller traced the development of the book and explained why it remained such a vital force for shaping culture and thought even amid declining literacy and various large language models that write for us now. For Miller, books function as both hardware and software, a physical format uniquely suited for human interaction and the transmission of knowledge. A tool that spreads ideas across time and space. From ancient scrolls to the codex, books and the words they contain have built the world. Here's how Miller put Books are a portable collection of written ideas designed to elevate the human mind beyond its natural limits a of experience, memory, distance and time. They're a vessel for numbers, narratives, laws and lyrics. They facilitate history, politics, philosophy, religion, science, self discovery. They enshrine traditions while providing direction as they shift and grow. They inform the ignorant. They remind the learned, travel far and cheat death well. Christians in particular have long advanced books as instruments of cultural renewal and for good reason. As N.T. wright has argued, biblical inspiration applies not only to what the scripture says, but but also to how God chose to say it. God revealed himself both through and as the Word. From inspired authors who wrote stories, poems, parables and letters. The medium and the message are always divinely intertwined. This explains why Christians were so instrumental in the development of the book and why tyrants have often opposed the book. The zeal to preserve and spread the gospel drove innovations in format, design and production. And in fact, Miller describes how the sheer bookishness of early believers I love that phrase accelerated the advancement and design of books to spread the good news. Christianity is a worldview that's fundamentally word centered. Words are central to God's nature, purposes and work in the creation, redemption and restoration of the world. According to Genesis 1, God spoke creation into existence. His power and authority are displayed in the words that brought reality into being. In this sense, postmodern thinkers are not entirely wrong when they claim that words shape reality or that narratives provide the structure by how we know. What they miss is whose words create the world and whose story we're really in. Only within the Christian worldview is the true nature and purpose of language understood. John 1 identifies Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, as the Word himself. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God. The Word was God. Despite repeated predictions in the modern age that images would eventually replace words, whether from television or the Internet, God's created order runs the other direction. Images must serve the Word. The Word does not serve images. Colossians 1 teaches that all things are held together in Christ, who is the Word. Thus the universe is actually infused with God's words. It's sustained by them. Hebrews 1 also tells us that it is Christ who upholds the universe by the Word of His power. Books therefore matter because they reflect humanity's created capacity to use words to communicate truth and shape culture. Imitating, though never fully replacing, the author of creation, these passages are themselves part of a collection of books bound together as God's revealed Word. The only book that is divinely inspired, inerrant and infallible, Jesus declared his words would never pass away. Peter reminds us that the Word of the Lord endures forever. The Though the wheel did make possible the expansion of territory and industry, books expanded the human mind, delivered salvation to the human soul. Words are how God chose to express his own nature to us and are embedded in his created order. And this truth is crucial to remember in an age like ours, when the books growing dusty on our shelves, could spark new ideas and genuine creativity in ways that artificial intelligence, which merely rearranges existing patterns and regurgitates content creat could not. Like Augustine, we should all heed the call to take up and read and when appropriate, to take up the pen and write. Both acts are among the most God honoring and culture restoring practices in which a Christian could ever engage. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co authored by Andrew Carico. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And to download and share this commentary with others, go to breakpoint.org.