'Stories'

Why are stories so appealing to most of us? I like what Lon Allison says about stories in “Going Public with the Gospel”: they are “the only containers big enough to carry truth, because stories convey not just the facts but also the feelings and nuances [shades] of truth. Stories are a bigger and better container for the whole of the truth than propositions, concepts and dogmas. Propositions are wonder when filled out by story, but abstract and skeletal when divorced from story.”

Stories are basic to us because, as Eugene Peterson puts it, life itself has a beginning and an end, plot and characters, conflict and resolutions. Life isn’t simply made up of generalizations such as love and truth, sin and salvation, atonement and holiness; life involves details that connect personally and specifically.

God reveals Himself to us not in an abstract formula or a bullet list but in the kind of stories that describe the journeys He takes people on throughout history. Peterson points out in “Leap over a Wall: Early Spirituality for Everyday Christians” that “somewhere along the way we pick up bad habits of extracting from the Bible what we pretentiously call ‘spiritual principles’ or ‘moral guidelines,’ or ‘theological truths,’ and then corseting [covering] ourselves in them in order to force a godly shape on our lives.”

God gave us truth by telling stories that place truth not just in our heads but also deeply in our hearts. Only stories can speak to us in that level. ‘Thinking through the Bible’ is designed to lead us into thinking about ‘God’s Story’ from beginning to end so that as His Story develops it is lived out in the stories of our lives

Sarah Hinckley expresses in “Talking to Generation X” the state of her media-influenced generation: “We have every little inconsequential [trivial] thing, Nintendo 64s and homepages and cell phones, but not one important thing to believe in. What do you have left that will persuade us? One thing: the story. We are story people. We know narratives, not ideas. Our surrogate parents were the TV and the VCR, and we can spew out entertainment trivia at the drop of a hat… You’re wondering why we’re so self-destructive, but we’re looking for the one story with staying power, the destruction and redemption of our own lives. That’s to your advantage: You Christians have the best redemption story on the market.”

It is our prayer that ‘Thinking through the Bible’ will recapture for you a renewal of the ‘best’ story, ‘God’s Story’.