Tag Archives: The Bible

Religion, Writing

‘If you don’t tell them a story…”

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[The following is the text of the sermon I delivered at the chapel at the Free Lutheran Bible College/Seminary this past Thursday,]

And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’” (Luke 8: 9-10, ESV)

Dr. Sebastian Gorka tells a story about when he was writing his book, Defeating Jihad. When he’d finished it, he showed it to his wife and asked her what she thought of it. As a writer myself, I know what he wanted to hear. He wanted her to tell him it was the most wonderful book she’d ever read, and it would certainly be a bestseller and change the world.

But she didn’t say that. What she did was ask, “Is that all there is?”

He said yes. Here were his facts and his arguments. What was there left to say?

She told him, “You need to tell a story. Nobody will listen to you if you don’t tell them a story.”

So he went back to his word processor and he wrote an introduction. In that introduction, he told the story of a young man who’d been in the underground in Communist Hungary, back in the days of the Soviet Union. He was betrayed by the famous English traitor Kim Philby, and arrested by the government. Imprisoned and tortured.

Then, in 1956, the Hungarians staged an uprising. The man was released from prison, but he knew the Communists were coming back. He made plans to escape to the west. When he left, he took a friend’s 17-year-old daughter with him, at that friend’s request. The man wanted his daughter to live in the free world. They made the very dangerous journey across the border, and ended up in England. Later he married the girl, and they were Dr. Gorka’s parents. He says that whenever people talk to him about the book, they never want to talk about the main text. They ask him about that story.

“Nobody will listen to you if you don’t tell them a story.”

If God had asked my advice, back when He was planning how He’d reveal Himself to Mankind through a book, I’d have told Him to give us a book of Systematic Theology. You start out with a chapter on Epistemology – the science of how we know things. Then I’d suggest a chapter on Trinitarian Theology. And a chapter on the Incarnation. A chapter on Soteriology, the theology of salvation. At the end, a chapter on Eschatology, the Last Things. Everything organized, like the books I used to stock up in the bookstore for seminary classes. I’d want it laid out neatly, with headings and subheadings. Charts and bullet points would be nice, too. Think of all the theological arguments we’d be spared!

But for some reason – and theologians marvel at it to this day – God did not consult me on the subject.

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Authors, Reading, Religion

Hubristic musings on Story

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Photo credit: Infralist.com. Unsplash license.

Let’s see. Where am I? I did a Zoom interview with a student from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay this morning. Some kind of history class assignment. She was supposed to speak with a more impressive Viking reenactor, but had to settle for me due to a glitch in the system. It was nice. She was an intelligent young person. Gave me hope.

I’m trying to figure out Adobe Indesign (not Light Desk, as I erroneously termed it last night; I saw the I and D logo in my mind, and they looked like an L and a D, so I vamped). I was referred to a YouTube video for an introduction, but that created as much confusion as it cleared up for me. I bought a book, which I shall try out this evening. I intend to learn this irrational, user-unfriendly mouse maze of an app, or die in the attempt.

Packed for my trip to Brainerd tomorrow. Paid my bills a day early, because I’m flexible that way. Walked to the post office for stamps.

But what shall I blog about? I think, on consideration, that I still have things to say about Story as a key to the universe, as if I didn’t overtalk my intelligence in my previous post on the subject.

Dale Nelson, in commenting on that post, noted that our Lord, when He came to earth, did not come as a philosopher, but as a storyteller. This is an excellent point, one I wish I’d thought of.

So I’ll double down. When God chose to reveal Himself to us in written form, He did not give us a book of systematic theology (I’ve often wished He had, but oddly He did not consult me). Instead, He told us a story.

Wouldn’t it have been a relief if the Bible had begun with The Book of Epistemology? We could have a Book of Trinitarian Doctrine, and a Book of Soteriology, and it would all end up with a Book of Eschatology.

The Quran is kind of like that, as best I understand it, based on my limited examination of the book, though it’s not very organized. The Quran is essentially a book of doctrines and commands. It’s not what you’d call a gripping narrative.

The Bible we’ve been given, however, is a narrative. God chose to tell what is essentially a story. There’s other elements in there – poetry, and law, and wisdom literature, etc. But it’s all set within an epic dramatic narrative. The world is created, Man is created, Man falls, Man runs berserk, God begins calling out a series of individuals, then a family, then a nation, through whom He will – gradually – reveal His purposes for redemption. Finally the Hero – God Himself in human form – appears and – through great sacrifice – undoes the Fall, conquers death and the devil. Finally, we’re given a glimpse of Christ’s ultimate triumph and the eucatastrophe.

A lot of church schism and religious war could have been avoided if we’d had a divine book of unambiguous theology instead of the Bible we got. But God hasn’t chosen to reveal Himself that way, either in His written Word or in His incarnate Word. He seems to prefer stories. And stories tend to be so… ambivalent. The better the story, the harder it is to explain.

During my recent long road trips, I decided to splurge on a couple audio books. Both were by Andrew Klavan – books I’d read before but wanted to revisit. My Minot book was The Truth and the Beauty, Klavan’s manifesto of art-oriented theology. My Green Bay book was The Great Good Thing, his spiritual autobiography.

I found The Great Good Thing easier to grasp. It’s a straight memoir, with its lessons fairly obvious. Great story, too.

But The Truth and Beauty, though fascinating and inspiring, eludes me at some points. Even after two readings, I still have a hard time articulating what the point of the book is. It’s mostly about how the Romantic poets followed their perceptions of beauty, which led them (in some cases not very far) towards the truth of Christianity in a world gone apostate.

But I can’t grasp the nub. I can’t tell you what Klavan is trying to say we need to learn from the Romantic poets.

And it occurs to me that’s the whole mystery of the thing.

Great art generally can’t be reduced to a formula or a moral. It leads you to a place where you confront an idea that is a Person. And persons can’t be defined – not within the limits of human reason. (God can define it all, I have no doubt.)

It’s a little like Zen, where you sit around and meditate until you “get” some irrational concept. I reject Zen, and I reject the irrational too. But the Buddhists have an inkling of some truth there.

Stories can lead us to an encounter with God. Reason can too. But neither the story nor reason automatically produce faith. The faith comes from an encounter with Jesus Christ. That encounter is a miracle; St. Paul knew, and the theologians have agreed, that it’s nothing either our imagination or our reason can produce. It comes from outside. It’s something you receive.

And you can’t always put it into words. You can only tell stories about it.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Untold Story of the New Testament Church,’ by Frank Viola

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In our degenerate times, claiming that you’ve read the Bible multiple times through sounds like bragging (it wouldn’t have been as much of a big deal when I was starting out). That said, I’ll make so bold as to say that I’ve read the Bible, Old and New Testaments, multiple times. I’m pretty familiar with the narrative.

But I was intrigued by the premise of Frank Viola’s The Untold Story of the New Testament Church. The idea is to straighten out the chronological problems. The Old Testament isn’t laid out in order of events, but the historical books are generally chronological, which is helpful to the reader. But the New Testament is arranged by genre and book length. I won’t say that causes confusion, but it makes the message less coherent than it might be.

What author Viola has done here is to tell the story on a timeline, explaining the historical context (this is very valuable) and then inserting the various books (or rather, descriptions plus reading prompts) in their proper order, based on critical opinion and (sometimes) the author’s personal choices.

It’s a little humbling to admit that the book helped me understand New Testament history better, but it did. Some of the author’s choices are subjective and could be disputed, but all in all I thought the thing as a whole very helpful.

And I learned stuff. I was not aware that Titus was (arguably) Luke’s brother. Or that Gallio, the governor of Corinth, was brother to the philosopher Seneca.

The prose was occasionally a little awkward, and there’s a lamentable tendency to employ exclamation marks. But still, I recommend The Untold Story of the New Testament Church. I think it would be a great project for a Bible study group to work through this book, reading the scriptural books as they come up.