Story and Us

Thus far I have argued that story is the real meat and potatoes of truth. Thus, only in story do we truly discover who God is and what He is like. Now I think it is also true that only in story do we discover who we are, what we are like, and what we should be. As I stated before, story connects more deeply with us than propositions. The reason for that is because in general we do not define ourselves by propositions but by stories. When we read or hear a story without fail we identify ourselves with one or more characters. We begin to imagine life in their shoes. We feel what they feel. We enter into them and they into us.

Sociologists will tell you that if you want to get to know a society, learn their stories. I hope you can see why. Americans, for example, are by in large a patriotic bunch, and that is especially obvious when compared to, say, Canadians. It is a strange thing since our American heritage covers a very small period. We do not have the cultural roots or deep attachment to our land that other nations have. Nations like those in Europe or Asia, for instance, whose people have populated their land for millennia. So why aren’t Americans a bit more tempered in their patriotic zeal like our friends to the north? The answer is found in our national story. The story of our nation is one of revolution. Our American colonies were forced to “join or die.” Our heroes said things like, “I regret that I have but one life to loose for my country.” We are the first nation in which the people formed a government of their own choosing, and through choosing wisely have become one the most powerful in the world. This is our history, and this story is deeply imprinted consciously or unconsciously upon each individual. This story defines us and what we think about ourselves.

Stories get inside us. And the reason they get inside us is because we can get inside them. If I tell my little Lizzie that she should be kind, it won’t make much of an impact upon her. And it would do no good to pull out a dictionary and read the definition of “kind.” That is the trouble with definitions. They are useful but only in their proper place. You cannot put yourself inside of a definition. Lizzie, and all of us, need stories to tell us what “kind” really means. If I say to Lizzie, “You need to be kind like your brother when he shared his candy with you,” she can put herself into that story and know exactly what her course of action should be. As she hears the story, she puts herself into the story, and by doing that the story gets into her. You cannot get into definitions, and so definitions cannot get into you.

Now as we make choices each day, some mundane, some life-altering, what guides us? When we make a choice, without any effort whatever, without even consciously thinking about it, we are shaped by story. We are a certain character in a certain story. We know how that character should act. When we choose to act in accord with the story we feel right, justified, even proud of our choice. If we choose to act in discord with that story, we feel guilty and ashamed.

Life is most difficult when stories are in conflict. A man struggling in his relationship with his wife meets an attractive associate at work. She’s witty, adventurous, and drawn to him. He feels connected to her. Suddenly, two stories are in conflict. There is the story of marriage, and he knows how it should go. A life of devotion, love, romance, intimacy, and companionship, that is what the story should look like. Now there is another story, a story of lovers. What do you do when the story of marriage and the story of lovers become two separate stories? When choosing to pursue one story puts you at odds with the other story? The most difficult periods of our life occur when the stories in our heads do not mesh with the stories in our lives.

In C.S. Lewis’ autobiography Surprised by Joy, he speaks much of the horrible experiences he had at Wyvern, a boys’ school where he spent his teenage years. Lewis, however, lived through far worse things. Most notably, he was a British solider in the brutal trenches of World War I. And yet he says little of the war, and not because he wishes to avoid the subject as many battle-traumatized men do. At one point, Lewis even says “it was in a way unimportant.” He explains this seeming anomaly:

I am surprised that I did not dislike the army more. It was, of course, detestable. But the words “of course” drew the sting. That is where it differed from Wyvern. One did not expect to like it. Nobody said you ought to like it. Nobody pretended to like it. . . . And that made all the difference. Straight tribulation is easier to bear than tribulation which advertises itself as pleasure.

Stories that are supposed to be hard are easier to endure than stories that are supposed to pleasant but turn out to be hard. Marriage is supposed to be a pleasant story, but far too often it is not. A story of love turns into a story of pain and hurts all the more for it. In many ways, life in the opulent, comfort-laden land we call home is more trying than the struggles of our pioneering forefathers or those in the third world. I’m not throwing an American pity party, nor seeking to diminish the spilt blood and gnawing hunger of our human brothers and sisters in the East and South. But a hard life is easier to endure when you expect a hard life. When you expect green lawns, picket fences, 2.5 children and a relatively easy life, and get instead divorce, disappointment, loneliness, and an aching sense of your own meaninglessness, life becomes unendurable.

So if stories are so important to who we are and how we live, you can see how essential it is that we live by the right stories. I say “live” by the right stories and not “learn” the right stories, because we must learn the wrong stories as well as the right ones. Knowing a wrong story is good so long as you know it is a wrong story. Right stories say, “This is how it is,” and wrong stories say, “This is how it is NOT,” and that is very helpful. The danger then is not in knowing the wrong story, but in believing that a wrong story is a right story or that a right story is a wrong story. A story, for example, that tells you that the marriage story is easily forsaken for the lovers’ story, that the benefits of personal satisfaction, instantaneous pleasure, and freedom from the wearying strain of marriage gained in the lovers’ story far outweighs whatever trifling difficulties that may arise, is a very wrong and dangerous story. Whether you believe in the lovers’ stories presented by Soap Opera’s or HBO, or whether you believe in the lover’s stories of Anna Karenina or David and Bathsheba, will make all the difference in the world.

Therefore, we must ask what stories do we believe? Where are our stories coming from? What stories are our children being taught? These are important questions, and ones we must re-ask over and over again.

Story and God

In my last blog entry I championed the significance of story. Following Daniel Taylor, I suggested that propositions are “short hand” for story. Propositions, I said, are like titles on a folder, but stories are what’s inside. Is story then superior to propositions? No, but, and this is key, neither are propositions superior to story. Propositions serve story. They tell stories, explain stories, interpret stories, and give hooks upon which to hang stories. Without them story is impossible to communicate. That is, they are essential to story, and story is essential to propositions. Without story you have folders with titles but no content. You have empty categories. When someone refers to September 11, 2001, we instinctively visualize burning buildings, suicide jumpers, the tears of a widowed woman. We think of tragic, painful stories. September 2, 2005 holds no such meaning. In fact, unless something especially good, like a wedding or birth of a child, or especially bad, like a loss of loved one, occurred on that day, nothing whatsoever registers in your mind at the mention of the date. Such are propositions without stories. They would be nothing more than dates without events, names without the person.

Now let us ask the question, “What is theology?” For too many of us I fear that theology is nothing more than properly stated creeds and confessions. That is, theology is propositions. “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth,” says the Westminster Catechism. That is theology: accurate statements about the nature of God and His works. If you can utter orthodox responses to prepared questions than your theology is good. If your can’t, your theology is bad. Now I’m all for orthodox creeds and confessions, but is not something seriously missing? Surely theology is something more than precise, formulaic answers.

Humans have long known that propositions have their limits. There is truth deeper than words can express. To make up for the deficiency we (and I shamelessly say “we,” for you and I played no part whatsoever in the development) added poetry to our prose. We use meter, rhyme, metaphors, and even (when we add music) melody, harmony, and rhythm to compensate for all that is lacking in our words. “God is spirit, infinite, eternal, etc.” sinks no where near the depths as a rousing edition of “How Great Thou Art” or a solemn and fervent “Holy, Holy, Holy.” That is because human beings are not like computers who simply need the right data download to operate. A person is more than a rational mind, not less than than that, but certainly much more. And God is much more than that as well. He is not a book of statements or compilation of abstract ideas. He is a person. In fact, He is tri-personal (or super-personal as C.S Lewis said). Persons don’t simply communicate via facts. In communication, emotions and will get blended all up with intellect. I reveal myself and my thoughts to others not only through a steady stream of truthful indicatives, but also by altering the tones and volume of my voice, by gesturing and gesticulating, not to mention by sighing (which I apparently employ too frequently according to my wife).

Therefore, it should not surprise us that when a super-personal being (i.e. God) communicates himself to personal beings (i.e. us) there is more than a steady flow of factual statements. There is not less than that, but certainly much more. There is poetry, hymns, apocalypse, and most of all there is story. And that should not surprise us. The life of a person is all story. Indeed, that is what story is. It is either pieces or the whole of a person’s life. Story, then, is one of the most effective means of self-expression. Story not only reveals who we are, but it also connects deeply with others. For example (and this is a good piece of marital wisdom) when your wife asks, “How was your day?”,she doesn’t want to hear, “It was good.” With a guy that response works, but that is because a guy, unlike your wife, didn’t ask because he cared. He asked because he should, and he is relieved to hear nothing more than “It was good.” Guys are not totally disinterested, but they must ease into answering those kind of questions. And they answer them best when they are not asked. A few insults, a few jokes, and a few years of friendship, and a guy will reveal such things unbeckoned. With your wife, however, “It was good” only works as a segue into stories of the day’s events. That is because, unlike a guy, your wife actually cares. She, the wonderfully communicative creature that she is, wants to know you now. She wants to know you as you are, and so intuitively she seeks for stories.

So as I said, it is of no surprise that our super-personal God and master of communication should reveal himself through story. And that very fact says much about who God is. The Western world following Greek metaphysics have tended to conceive of God as a sort of motionless mind. Or perhaps even more crudely as an old man sitting on a throne lost in thought. For such a God there is not much else to say beyond propositions. “God is good.” If He’s just sitting there on his throne what else can you say about Him? “He’s good. If He ever got up and did something, I'm sure it would be good. His thoughts at least are good.” But the God of Scripture is not a stationary being. He is an actor in a story, His story. And He reveals who He is by telling that story. So if you want to know God, you need more than the epistles. You need to soak your mind in the stories of Scripture. A theology light on story is a frail and sickly thing, for apart from God's stories God cannot be truly known.