Story Faith
I’ve always been fascinated with stories. One of the reasons I wrote my second novel (Pantheon of Dreams, I’m working on the second draft which is probably why I’m thinking about this) began with a meditation on where ideas come from. Which naturally led to thinking about where the blueprint for stories comes from and why we respond to story. Something within us resonated with this formula and maybe by considering the nature of this supposed blueprint, we could discover why we do what we do and want what we want. My faith follows a story, so I wanted to explore a different way of looking at what I believe–in tune with me being a writer–which also had implications on how I viewed the Bible.
For starters, maybe the Bible isn’t meant to be broken down into its systematic parts--dogmatic bits upon which to set our often self-righteous coats–but rather be read as one overarching story. The ultimate slipstream work, since it fits into no distinct category: part romance, horror, with fantasy elements; part historical work, with the occasional odd excursus into poetry.
A story has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. With the Bible, the beginning starts with ... the beginning, the creation. The act of creation provides not only the setting, but also the characters. But who is the central character, the protagonist? Who is the hero of the story? God? Humanity? The protagonist (for that matter, all the characters) has a long-term goal for the duration of the story, so in this case, it is God interacting with humanity for a purpose.
The action that propels a story is some sense of conflict, in the form of the Fall: the sin of Adam and Eve. Moving beyond a literal interpretation of the story, let’s look at what the sin represents. Adam’s sin represents man seeking his own way. Our pursuit of what we hope to create out of rebellion (the lie of independence), attempting to write our own stories; all the while ignoring the grand story of which we’re a part. The Fall also gives us the main themes of Story. Relationships are broken and look at what we arises from this conflict: man vs. man; man vs. God; man vs. self; man vs. Creation. One of the things that makes suffering so bad is the sense, the part of us that knows, that things aren’t as they’re supposed to be.
In a way, the Bible is part romance, in the best sense of the word (as in no image of a bodice ripping Jesus or anything), about God wooing humanity back to him. Meeting us where we are, messy and broken. Yet with any good story, something stands in the way of the protagonist achieving his goal. Were life a Jerry Bruckheimer production, there would be a single, charismatic and powerful bad guy. Though with character driven stories the conflict may be internal flaws, fears, and prejudices. A balanced story has both.
An especially well-written story has other elements to it, what we’ve come to take as literary flourishes like foreshadowing. Certain images that keep repeating at the story builds to its climax, providing over-arching metaphors. We see this with the repeating images of the high priest, the temple, the (lamb) sacrificial system.
A story builds to a climax. The climax is the point at which the story goes from being an interrelated, deliberately arranged, set of scenes to a cohesive story. It provides a fundamental meaning to events. That’s what the incarnation (birth in human form), life, death, and resurrection of Christ did for human history.
Thus we find ourselves living in the denouement, the resolution of the story (though sometimes it may feel like the last Lord of the Rings movie, Return of the King, which seemed to have multiple endings). This ties into the changes in how I read the Bible. I got tired of all the weird things that we tend to do to the Bible, trying to describe and use it in ways that it doesn’t claim for itself. I started to read it as a storybook, a collection of stories. You see, God has authority, the only ultimate authority. The Bible has authority only in the secondary sense, as it is the story of God’s interaction with His people. There’s no one-to-one correlation for everything we encounter in 2005. We have to improvise some things, learn to move in the mystery and the gray areas of life. No, I’m not dismissing the Bible, in fact, I’m actually emphasizing its importance since we can improv best if we know the Bible well. Think of life as a five act play and we as the actors/characters. We’ve invested ourselves in the first four acts, but the fifth is unwritten. So we, the actors, are improvising the final act, being true to the roles that we’ve been playing all along. Moving in the spirit, not the written rule (or “narrative” law), of the story.
Where there’s a story there’s a plot, there’s a plotter. Not the best proof of the existence of God, but it works for me. We connect with story because we’re a part of a grand story. The story comes full circle as Christ undoes the way of Adam, showing a new way (as high priest and intercessor), and recreating community and relationship with God. In short, He redeems Creation. In turn, we’re all called to live in light of this story, aligning ourselves with this truth. The true meta-narrative of Christianity is that all stories are finally brought not only to fullness and completion, but redemption in Christ. In Christ, all stories are finished.
And even get a happy ending.
That is the “good news”, my hope, and the wellspring of my faith. One way of looking at it, at least.
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Comment on this bit of rantus interruptus anyway you want (I don’t know where you’re reading it from) but if you want to guarantee me seeing it, do so at my message board.
For starters, maybe the Bible isn’t meant to be broken down into its systematic parts--dogmatic bits upon which to set our often self-righteous coats–but rather be read as one overarching story. The ultimate slipstream work, since it fits into no distinct category: part romance, horror, with fantasy elements; part historical work, with the occasional odd excursus into poetry.
A story has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. With the Bible, the beginning starts with ... the beginning, the creation. The act of creation provides not only the setting, but also the characters. But who is the central character, the protagonist? Who is the hero of the story? God? Humanity? The protagonist (for that matter, all the characters) has a long-term goal for the duration of the story, so in this case, it is God interacting with humanity for a purpose.
The action that propels a story is some sense of conflict, in the form of the Fall: the sin of Adam and Eve. Moving beyond a literal interpretation of the story, let’s look at what the sin represents. Adam’s sin represents man seeking his own way. Our pursuit of what we hope to create out of rebellion (the lie of independence), attempting to write our own stories; all the while ignoring the grand story of which we’re a part. The Fall also gives us the main themes of Story. Relationships are broken and look at what we arises from this conflict: man vs. man; man vs. God; man vs. self; man vs. Creation. One of the things that makes suffering so bad is the sense, the part of us that knows, that things aren’t as they’re supposed to be.
In a way, the Bible is part romance, in the best sense of the word (as in no image of a bodice ripping Jesus or anything), about God wooing humanity back to him. Meeting us where we are, messy and broken. Yet with any good story, something stands in the way of the protagonist achieving his goal. Were life a Jerry Bruckheimer production, there would be a single, charismatic and powerful bad guy. Though with character driven stories the conflict may be internal flaws, fears, and prejudices. A balanced story has both.
An especially well-written story has other elements to it, what we’ve come to take as literary flourishes like foreshadowing. Certain images that keep repeating at the story builds to its climax, providing over-arching metaphors. We see this with the repeating images of the high priest, the temple, the (lamb) sacrificial system.
A story builds to a climax. The climax is the point at which the story goes from being an interrelated, deliberately arranged, set of scenes to a cohesive story. It provides a fundamental meaning to events. That’s what the incarnation (birth in human form), life, death, and resurrection of Christ did for human history.
Thus we find ourselves living in the denouement, the resolution of the story (though sometimes it may feel like the last Lord of the Rings movie, Return of the King, which seemed to have multiple endings). This ties into the changes in how I read the Bible. I got tired of all the weird things that we tend to do to the Bible, trying to describe and use it in ways that it doesn’t claim for itself. I started to read it as a storybook, a collection of stories. You see, God has authority, the only ultimate authority. The Bible has authority only in the secondary sense, as it is the story of God’s interaction with His people. There’s no one-to-one correlation for everything we encounter in 2005. We have to improvise some things, learn to move in the mystery and the gray areas of life. No, I’m not dismissing the Bible, in fact, I’m actually emphasizing its importance since we can improv best if we know the Bible well. Think of life as a five act play and we as the actors/characters. We’ve invested ourselves in the first four acts, but the fifth is unwritten. So we, the actors, are improvising the final act, being true to the roles that we’ve been playing all along. Moving in the spirit, not the written rule (or “narrative” law), of the story.
Where there’s a story there’s a plot, there’s a plotter. Not the best proof of the existence of God, but it works for me. We connect with story because we’re a part of a grand story. The story comes full circle as Christ undoes the way of Adam, showing a new way (as high priest and intercessor), and recreating community and relationship with God. In short, He redeems Creation. In turn, we’re all called to live in light of this story, aligning ourselves with this truth. The true meta-narrative of Christianity is that all stories are finally brought not only to fullness and completion, but redemption in Christ. In Christ, all stories are finished.
And even get a happy ending.
That is the “good news”, my hope, and the wellspring of my faith. One way of looking at it, at least.
###
Comment on this bit of rantus interruptus anyway you want (I don’t know where you’re reading it from) but if you want to guarantee me seeing it, do so at my message board.
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