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.