Tell me a story

I love stories. Of all kinds. I love novels (with the exception of the gratuitously nihilistic and depressing kind – Camus’ L’Etranger left me cold, for example). As a child I devoured Greek, Roman and Norse mythology as well as Grimm’s fairy tales and I still do.

I love movies - which have become our culture’s most common way of storytelling. I even love movie trailers. And I love a well-told, preferably humorous and self-deprecating anecdote. I grew up in a family that specialized in the entertaining anecdote and learned the craft listening to my father at dinner parties or extended family get-togethers.

But I find a problem. There is a part of us that does not value stories because they are, well, just stories. Stories have the literary appellation “fiction” which means, in essence, not true or at the very least not factual. To say that someone is telling stories is to say they are lying.

But there is profound truth in stories. Stories just communicate truth in a different way than an encyclopedia entry or a spreadsheet. Jesus, who told us he IS the truth told stories. He called them parables. The kingdom of God is like a man sowing seed or a woman sweeping her house. There was one a man going from Jerusalem to Jericho.

And Jesus wasn’t the first biblically to tell stories. Nathan told David a story about a rich man who appropriated a poor man’s sheep. Factual? Technically, no. True. Absolutely. The truth is always powerful.

Now some stories are both factual and true. Included in this category are the Gospels and most of the content of my father’s well-crafted anecdotes (there was some hyperbole known to creep in). Another example is our own story. Which we are exhorted to tell. We call it our testimony in Christianese, but it is simply our story. There is power in our story. Spiritual power. St. John puts it this way in Revelation 12: “and they have conquered him (the accuser or Satan) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” (v. 11, ESV)

It matters that the Gospels are factual stories, as our testimonies. In them we know him who is the Truth made fact in the Incarnation and in our lives through the Holy Spirit. Jesus becoming flesh initiates the story. Just try to tell someone about Jesus without story. It might be possible, but I cannot think of how to even begin. Either in my life or in the biblical narrative, the reality of God incarnate in Jesus Christ, comes in story.