TRUST the STORY
Credit me with this: I’m not talking about the nonsense we can see so much of in the movies or on the television! I’m talking about the well thought-out, well-written and well-acted dramas that there’s plenty of if we’re able and willing to tolerate some material in them that’s distasteful. [How much and what that is you’ll have to work out for yourself.]
We’re all gripped by such stories; our emotions are stirred; we make inner vows as we identify with the heroes we feel like applauding and we rage at the villains as they set our teeth on edge. We often speak to one another about such stories—I don’t doubt for a moment that’s part of the pleasure—we can’t keep quiet while the images continue to burn in us.
We feel satisfaction when the rogue finally gets “what’s coming to him.” [I’m not talking vindictiveness—a hunger for fairness is not the same as spite or vindictiveness though, of course, we’re capable of the worst, aren’t we?] There’s something about even a single case of fairness shining through that lifts our hearts and triggers a hunger for a world filled with such fairness.
But it’s often more than that, is it not! Sometimes it acts as a promise and assurance; it’s as if life won’t let us believe that lies are forever, that evil is all there is and all there will be. Every now and then when we see the oppressed vindicated and we’re thrilled to watch and listen to their joy fully restored, every now and then an actual event seems to whisper, a great story that has stayed in touch with reality and life seems to whisper: “Yes, do smile, do rejoice, don’t feel foolish, believe in happy endings—a day is coming when that is all you’ll see and hear; joy without end.
Great literature, great movies and dramas send out the same message. They may be fiction, it’s true but “fiction” that reaches down into the deep places in us and stays around for years is not based on “fiction”—it’s based on the very best that’s in us—and the very best that’s in us is there by the grace and work of God; there, via all the ways that He who loves us ceaselessly and relentlessly works it in us and leading us to believe even when we don’t really believe or maybe we presently don’t want to believe; and yet, we wish we did [just as Steven Weinberg, theoretical physicist and atheist, wistfully confessed that at times he wishes he could still believe that the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky shows his handiwork—Psalm 19].
I meant to say and got a bit sidetracked, when we see such an event, watch such a movie or read such a story we don’t need people to spell it all out for us in an overload of detail. A glorious event clearly seen, a great story well told has its own power without others micromanaging our thoughts and feelings about it. If Holywood [now and then], if creative writers and story-tellers are able to imagine wonderful things, speak of things that reach us in the depths of our beings and in doing so move us so—if they can do that with fiction why can’t ministers of “the gospel” do it with truth?
If our truth is duller than fiction...?
If our truth is duller than fiction...?
Perhaps we will come to trust the Story to work its lovely magic in human hearts [Acts 20:32] and we’ll dispense with the eternal micromanaging with the same banal moralizing. If that should happen maybe people will come to believe that we who preach really believe what we’re saying about the glorious gospel and they will begin to believe it and find themselves inspired and liberated. Who knows, maybe they will begin to tell it to others.
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