The first in a series on restoring the drama to the study of the Word of God. People are storytellers. Their tales are heard around campfires, read in libraries, watched in the media, and imagined beside a giggling forest brook. Modern technology builds stories around spoken words framed in elaborate settings and underscored with vibrant action. Students of holograms speak of a day when stories will “live” three-dimensionally on the equivalent of a living room coffee table. Internet gamers race to create “stories” where people can forget their real-life selves and become a virtually-real self in a narrative where they start out on terms of their own choosing and pretend to have more control of their fate. We long for a discernible plot, for resolved questions, and for dots that connect into a meaningful whole.
All
of this is the result of being in a story – the story of the Author of the cosmos and the Author and Finisher of the epic which is the mother of all other epics be they real or imagined. It also rises from being made in the image of that Author.
I
have said before that any college course on bible study, especially any
course teaching the science and art of biblical interpretation (hermeneutics), should include a serious unit on the art of storytelling. To repeat: we live in a story. The Prequel which gives meaning to the sequel has been published in narrative form.
To
ignore the elements involved in a story is to deny that those factors are God-created,
God-driven, and clearly God-sanctified by the very ministry of Jesus himself. They are an embedded part of our creaturehood. No matter how well we exposit the outlines of the texts we teach, it is a
robust grasp of the overall Story line which connects the dots of Truth into a meaningful whole.
For
a few devotionals, permit me to consider some of the elements of storytelling as a part of God’s
creative work and, therefore, an important discipline in the study of his
inspired, inerrant Word.
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