A peer told me his new litmus test for deciding whether or not to pursue a longer work of scholarship: would it be spiritually edifying? Would it help him become a better disciple?
Not simply in content, mind you.
As a process.
Would the process of reading and thinking/writing about his topic help him grow as a disciple of Christ?
In this regard, this quotation from Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning has always stuck with me.
“[I]t is everywhere evident in this book that the questions I ask of my material and indeed the very nature of this material are shaped by the questions I ask of myself.”
I should not only practice this but teach it. In fact, Greenblatt advocates this kind of full-bodied application of your worldview. Don’t ask of the text something you would not ask of yourself.
I will be incorporating this Greenblatt quotation into my future research paper prompts.