Waxing Philosophical: On the telling of stories.

Authors Note: This is simply opinion piece. If you disagree with me I would love to hear about in the comments section.

-This needs a little editing still but I wanted to get it up before I was out of internet contact all weekend.

After reading a rather thought provoking article recently, I was completely convinced of the thing that really speaks to us in life is stories. Not that this is a new, striking or particularly deep epiphany, it just one that seems to hold an increasing weight in my life. The article that it came from was talking about how things like alternate realty games (ARGs) and elaborate hoaxes can seem so real not because they have solid evidence backing them, but because they are normally well written emotional stories and anecdotes.

Take for example the radio drama or Orson Welles War of the Worlds. Now had that been perpetrated by a man who just broadcast a list of facts in a monotone voice over the radio, no one would have believed it. Most would have just been confused or turned it off in boredom. However, since the drama was presented with such an elaborate story surrounding it, one that touched on the childhood fantasies and nightmares of its audience, not to mention the compelling acting of the presenter; people everywhere fell under its spell. It did not matter how far out there or strange the story seemed. The story was enthralling and consistent with itself and that was good enough for the people listening.

Trial lawyers are another example of just how compelling stories really are. They are some of the best paid people in our society and what are they paid to do? They are paid to create stories from evidence. I bet in the past a lot of the people hired to be lawyers now would have been masterful raconteurs and entertainers. In all honesty people could care less whether or not the persons DNA, fingerprints, micro-fibers, or signed confession was found at the scene. They want to hear from the lawyer how the accused was connected to the victim, what his motivations were, what his feelings are, how the DNA got at the scene, and why that matters; they want a story. They do not want a story to be entertained (at least we can hope not.) They want a story because the evidence from that is how they best know to make the right decisions. In fact most people will tell you that jury’s are not normally swayed by the hard evidence, but by the testimonies and accounts of eye witnesses, which is the most unreliable form of evidence. This is why defenses love CSI. CSI already gives you a picture of how evidence should come down the line, and makes you think that the ends should all wrap up together in a nice episodic format, just like a TV show. Even some of the most “simpler” cases that your average prosecutor or investigator is involved in is more difficult to present and confirm than some of the most convoluted episodes. It essentially allows them to open hard evidence to an eyewitness-esque attack.

Please do not get me wrong, I love CSI. I watched through the first seven seasons without missing an episode. It is a highly entertaining and can often be a thought provoking show. What makes that show great though is exactly the thing I am talking about here. If the show was just the crew collecting evidence at a murder scene, taking it and handing it over to the detectives in charge of the case, and occasionally testifying in court about their findings; it would have been the worst show on television. Instead of that we get the initial discovery of the body, an awesome one liner from Grissom (or Mac or Horatio if you like one of the other two better), bunch of cool experiments and test with really quick results, flashes of how the case happened, the arrest, the questioning of the suspects (which the CSI would most likely not be involved in in real life), and at the end we get the dramatic reveal and the final thought provoking comment. That’s why we love the show, and that’s why we are constantly coming back. We want to see what the new story of the week is and we want to see the stories of the investigators lives unfold through the cases they investigate.

I thought the only exception to this might be the people that are Halo junkies. They do not care about what’s happening to their guy running around the screen, they do not care how cerebral (or un-cerebral as the case may be) the story line is. All they care about is blowing people up, winning matches, and unlocking achievements. Then I realized that stories matter just as much to them as anyone else, they just like to build their own stories. Really that is all the bragging rights that they work so hard to achieve are. Just ask one of them. They would love to tell you about their twenty-one “headshot” match and how they found the perfect sniping perch. The will keep you up all night telling you about the conversations that they have over their headsets at two in the morning after they finished a case of Rockstar and how hilarious it really was. (That is till they see you starring off into space or rolling you eyes when they will abruptly finish with “Dude, if you would have been there you would have understood.”) The stories matter as much to them, they just want to get them in a different way. (And really, the same thing goes for avid hikers, rock climbers, surfers, authors, and racers.)

As I have been thinking about all this it really makes me appreciate how brilliant Jesus communicating in parables really was. If he had come down, gathered a crowd, looked them all in the eyes, and then said “I will give you faith and its going to grow;” People would have looked at him confused and then asked how or what that looked like. However, when he told them that faith was like a mustard seed in that it starts small and gets big, or that it is like seeds that grow after being spread in different places, people started getting it. Not perfectly, since most of them still needed it explained, but it started and continued till now. People knew what it is like to see something grow or fail to grow, it painted a picture in their head, gave them a story that they could relate to. The same thing goes for the coins given to the servants, both faithful and unfaithful. Not every one in the group could quite gel with the idea that what God had given them was gong to be demanded back, but they all knew what it was like to have a boss. Suddenly these abstract, hard to comprehend, or just difficult to apply practically ideas of faith and responsibility started to become real.

It goes beyond the parables too. Very few places in the Bible do you see God just list a bunch of do’s and do not’s. You may point out that Leviticus is a listing of commandments (even though it is still in a narrative fashion) but try looking at it this way; most of the rest of the Old Testament is made up of stories of what happens when people do or do not live up to these commandments and stories of people living their lives and the influence that God has on them and how them changes them to become His. It is what makes these commandments real to the reader. The New Testament also, has six books entirely made up of stories or narratives; Matthew, Mark, John, Luke leading into Acts, and Revelations. That is pretty close to 75% of the Bible being stories. And even the Epistles paint a good picture of the struggles of the churches or people it is addressed to and the road they need to take to get back to the place where God intended them to be, or get to it in the first place.

This is one of the main reasons I get annoyed with so many people ignoring the Old Testament. If stories are the main things that influence our lives, why do so many of us ignore the part of the Bible that contains most of the stories. I once attended a church for a number of months and started keeping track of how long they went without even referencing an OT story. There was a span of nearly three months where they went without even acknowledging the majority of the OT existed. (To be fair they did reference the Psalms and Proverbs but nothing else.) In this same time I watched six different movie clips, heard about fourteen sports stories, four Max Lucado stories, and every week heard a personal story from the speaker. Now I am not discouraging the uses of any of these things. There are plenty of good authors’ short stories or excerpts from novels can make a sermon extremely powerful; I taught a class on how to use movies and TV shows to witness or spark discussions with the people around you; I think sports can be extremely inspirational; and, as I have talked about before, if God is the author of our lives we would be completely remiss not to use our own experiences and interests in sharing him with others. But, when you use all of these things and neglect utilizing a large percentage of the Bible, I believe you have committed a grievous error. Especially for three months straight.

So if you find yourself wondering how to talk to someone you encounter and fear you have nothing in common with them, try telling a story.