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Story

Doubt, Hope, and finding our place in the Story

07/02/2012
blogging, Doubt, Faith, Narrative Theology, Spirituality, Story, Writing
3 Comments

First off let me note that I was deeply encouraged by the response to yesterday’s post. My hope is that here on the blog, in our homes and churches, in coffee shops and pubs, we might find places to have the difficult and necessary conversations about how we are choosing to shape our identity and what it might look like to tell a better re-constructive Story.

Thankfully we do not have to start from scratch, the Christian story, though it has at times been twisted and bent into something that speaks darkness instead of light, has been told well by many brothers and sisters throughout the years.

We do well to learn from their wisdom, and to find inspiration in their stories as we reimagine our own.

One author who speaks to this beautifully is Lauren Winner. I’ve not read her latest book, yet, but after being urged by some co-workers I did read the preface and plan to pick it up once I finish a couple books I’m currently reading.

In those first few pages I found this quote, and I could do no better in explaining why the Story we tell is so important – it’s about more than propositions (though it includes those as well), it is about identity and hope, about who and where we are and what God is doing in the world.

“For whole stretches since the dream, since the baptism, my belief has faltered, my sense of God’s closeness has grown strained, my efforts at living in accord with what I take to be the call of the gospel have come undone.

And yet in those same moments of strained belief, of not knowing where or if God is, it has also seemed that the Christian story keeps explaining who and where I am, better than any other story I know.

On the days when I think I have a fighting chance at redemption, at change, I understand it to be these words and these rituals and these people who will change me.

Some days I am not sure if my faith is riddled with doubt or whether, graciously, my doubt is riddled with faith.” –From Still, by Lauren Winner

Despite frequent bouts of discouragement and disenfranchisement, that right there is why I keep returning to the story of Christ and the Scriptures, that Story has a power to explain and give hope that no other story does.

There’s more I might say, theologically, ethically, sociologically even about my faith, but I must say at least that – I find my place in life by taking part in the Story of what God has done, is doing, and will do in this world.

For and Against – on Identity and Conflict

06/02/2012
blogging, Community, Faith, Love, Spirituality, Story, Writing
12 Comments

Last Friday I got up early before work and wrote a response to Piper’s suggestion that Christianity has “a masculine feel.”

I worked on it during breakfast and while I sipped my first cup of coffee, but when it came time to hit “Post” I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead I shared this interview about the power of Story.

The same thing happened a few days before that, this time while I was drafting my thoughts on the controversy around Mars Hill, Driscoll’s marriage book, and some of his recent interviews. Again, I got part way through preparing my post and just stopped, unable to continue. Eventually I ended up posting something different that day as well.

Part of my hesitation is simply exhaustion. It is incredibly emotionally draining to sustain the continual outrage that sometimes feels like the only proper response to the damaging things I see being done in the name of the faith.

But it’s more than that; I’m tired in a different way, tired of defining myself by what I’m against.

There is a place for that I think, for a time. As I started to rethink the assumptions I had about of my faith – to question the theology, reconsider the social implications, reimagine what it might mean to take God and his Word seriously – it was unavoidable and perhaps even necessary that at the beginning of that journey I would find my identity in what I was against.

For a time that may be a necessary part of our stories, we have no alternative narrative yet, only the knowledge of what we have chosen to reject.

The danger is that it’s easy to get stuck there. It’s easy to go through life defining ourselves by what, or who, we are not.

I know it’s easy for me.

But I also know it isn’t healthy, not forever.

Eventually we must break away from the pull of finding our identity in conflict and opposition, and be for something.

There will be things that need to be spoken out against from time to time, but perhaps it is more important, and more effective, if we spend our energy creating something beautiful, powerful, and transformative.

We must start to tell another story, to articulate an alternative narrative that is shaped by what it affirms, what it creates, more than what it denies or destroys.

[I expanded this post this afternoon for Deeper Story - you can find it here]

Sally Lloyd-Jones on The Power of Story

03/02/2012
Books and Reading, Story, Writing
3 Comments

Yesterday Ed Stetzer interviewed Sally Lloyd-Jones about the power of stories.

Sally is the author of The Jesus Storybook Bible, which I’ve been quite impressed with. My wife and I plan to make it the Bible our kids grow up with, and a friend of mine actually used it to great effect while teaching an adult small group last fall.

Her words on the power of Story are well worth hearing out, no matter our age.

“People have approached me, holding up one of my children’s books, flicking through it backwards–awful for a writer because it implies the order of the words don’t matter–and cheerfully announcing, “I’m going to do one. I mean. REALLY. How hard can it be?”

How many of us would dream of going up to a surgeon and saying, “I’m going to do an Angioplasty. I mean. REALLY. How hard can it be?”

That people feel free to say this about children’s books tells you a lot–not so much about what they think of children’s book writers. That’s not important. It tells you what they think of children.

I think it’s because they don’t have a high enough view of children.

Our proper attitude before children should be humility. We need to be writing up to children–never down.

It also tells you something else: that they have too low a view of Story.

What is the lesson in that story? What is the message? I’m often asked that. But a story is not a sermon.

As writers we know we better not preach on the page. Our job is to tell a story. Not teach a lesson. If we have an agenda, a message in code we want to get across, a moral we want to teach in our writing–it might be an excellent lecture. But it won’t be a good story.

It’s too low a view of what a story is, of what a story can do. A story can do more than teach you.

A story can transform you.”

You can read the rest of the interview here.

Imagining a Better Redemption

31/01/2012
Eschatology, New Heavens & New Earth, Story, Theology
2 Comments

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?

But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.” – Sam, The Two Towers

Sam’s right, often we seem not to believe the Story could have a truly happy ending.

Too much bad has happened, the world has been marred by the fall and its consequences, and it’s hard to imagine how things could ever be set to rights.

But that, I think, is the key - imagination.

Our imagination, when it comes to the end of the Story, is far too small.

We can imagine apocalyptic wars and judgment raining down from a dark sky, Hollywood special effects and a last day of devastation before we are taken away to heaven, but the idea that this place in all its beauty and brokenness could be set right can seem beyond our ability to envision.

Our eschatology is inhibited by a lack of imagination.

The stories we’ve defaulted to for too long, stories of escape into an ethereal heaven and the destruction of God’s good creation, are easier to imagine but lead us to share a Gospel that isn’t as good as the real good news.

Those stories of escape and destruction inhibit us from working towards God’s future here and now, towards a day when all things on heaven and earth will be set to rights, because it’s hard to believe things or act on them when you can’t even begin to imagine them.

Perhaps in imagining the Story’s end the theologians and the exegetes must become painters and singers, sculptors and poets, taking language to its end and then some as we attempt to articulate a better and more biblical hope than what we’ve often settled for.

Young Earth Creationism is not the Problem

26/01/2012
Church & Culture, Creation, Evolution, Story
3 Comments

[Update: Louis responded to Ham's post this morning]

After all the discussion of evolution and creationism lately, I thought I would clarify something – I don’t think that Young Earth Creationism (YEC) is the problem, at least not in and of itself.

I may not personally find the science or theology behind YEC persuasive any longer, but if you do that’s fine, and really not something I feel like picking a fight over. There are many people who have wrestled with this question and come to a YEC position for perfectly understandable reasons, and I respect that.

What I’m frustrated with is how some YEC proponents have turned their position into something that is causing harm and division in the church, and needlessly driving away scores of people from the faith.

See I have spent most of my life among Christians for whom YEC was not only a majority opinion, but something of a badge of orthodoxy.

In classrooms, textbooks, and Sunday school lessons, the YEC position has been co-opted by Ham, AIG, Bob Jones, etc., and kids are taught from a young age that evolutionists are the bad-guys, that it is inherently anti-biblical, that evolution is really a way to justify sin and not have to believe in God, and that deep down even scientists know evolution has no real evidence behind it and the Bible clearly disproves it.

I’m speaking from experience here, because growing up that is the narrative I was sold by pastors, teachers, and peers.

Yet none of that is necessarily inherent to YEC, so why have we allowed such divisive voices to define the YEC conversation? Do we not see the damage that it is doing; to individuals, to theology, to education, to the way people understand the Christian faith, even to the place of YEC in the larger theological dialogue?

I’m tired of the narrative that evolution and Christian faith are inherently opposed and the entire conversation is off-limits, of hearing that yet another brilliant Old Testament professor was fired over their views on evolution, and of seeing the personal attacks on people I know and respect.

But most of all I’m tired of the way this false dichotomy creates an unnecessary crisis of faith for countless believers and a needless obstacle to the Gospel for those who are seeking God.

I’ve had my own crisis of faith, my own baggage that I’m still working through after being immersed in that narrative for far too long. And honestly, it didn’t have to be that way. [You can read some of that story here]. Yes I have residual frustrations, this debate can strike a nerve still. But looking back, YEC wasn’t the problem, it was the way YEC was held as an absolute on par with the Gospel, and the way it was taught as the only way to faithfully follow God.

Whatever position you take on creation, evolution, or the age of the earth, can’t we agree that faithful Christians come to many different conclusions on these issues, and have the actual debate over the science and the text, instead of turning it into a propaganda war?

 

Peter Rollins – The Embrace of Unknowing

24/01/2012
Doubt, Faith, Peter Rollins, Story
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As we wrestle with difficult questions like evolution, I thought it might be worthwhile to reflect on Rollins’ video, which encourages us to acknowledge that these debates are about more than texts and traditions; they are about identity and the stories we tell ourselves.

Stories of who’s good and who’s bad, who’s in and who’s out, and how the Bible we so value happens to reinforce those narratives, giving them divine sanction.

Like his book Insurrection [you can read my review here] I’m wary of the way the video ends up deconstructing without offering something constructive in return, but it is an important reminder nonetheless – those stories that shape our identity may play a larger role in our supposedly objective theological and ethical debates than we’d like to admit.

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