Stories Matter
Sometimes our inherited stories about God, ourselves, each other and the cosmos need to be reimagined - through Love. Many of our beloved inherited stories aren't whole making, beautiful or loving.
Our stories matter. They are the fundamental way we create, hold, and communicate meaning and, more so, deepen our experience of connection with ourselves, others, the planet, and God. They provide us with our origin/belonging stories. Our stories hold and give shape to our beliefs, values, and behaviours. They help create emotional connections while often conveying wisdom in ways that are relatable, memorable, and easier to share. These shared stories also serve to facilitate a unifying cohesiveness and cooperation within a community with a shared sense of values, kinship, taboos, and enemies.
Our best stories are those of self-discovery, formation, deconstruction (loss), and transcendence/overcoming (resurrection). These stories are based upon a universal desire for an experience of being alive and are clues to our inner mystery, spiritual potential, mortality and transcendence.
Dr. Mike Petrow, Center for Action and Contemplation, offers:
“It seems that from the moment we are born, we start telling and being told stories about how the world is. We cobble these stories together to form an internal GPS to help us navigate life to find our way in the world and our way around the world. Stories about God or the Gods, our master narratives about the fundamental principles of existence … the story for a group of people who live with that story of God…. And then the story of our people and our beliefs about humanity, society, relationships, and social systems.”
When we talk about massively big ideas, like God, there is no way we can adequately communicate God in terms that exhaustively encompass all that is God. Rabbi Bradley Artson, in a 2020 interview with Jay McDaniel, reminds us that Jews don’t use the name of God not because humans can’t vocalize the word but rather because “… there is no way to encapsulate it verbally.” So much of God is beyond language, our comprehension, and our own experience.
Ilia Delio reminds us:
“The name God points to the mystery of an unspeakable source of eternal love that flows endlessly from the divine creative heart into the mouth of creation, an eternal divine kiss that is, at once, a deep intimate presence (Word incarnate) and an erotic attraction (Spirit) toward ultimate transcendence and fulfillment.”
God defies complete understanding, and our best experiences of the ineffable God are so profound/abstract that when we talk about God, we can only employ figurative language, like analogy, simile and metaphor. As good as these language tools can be, inevitably, they fail us. For example, there are many ways indeed that God is like a father, but it is true to say that in many ways, God is not like a father and more like a mother, or a shepherd, a rock, a potter, a shield and fortress, healer, and judge.
Stories, with their figurative language, can be carriers of truth in the sense that they carry aspects of truth without being literal truth in and of themselves. Our stories can be powerful communicators and convey meaning well until they are hijacked as pseudo-facts, coopted by other stories, or become concrete absolutes.
Sometimes, our stories become like suitcases, carrying a whole lot of ideas in one package. If we understand the difference between the suitcase term and the contents it represents, there is no harm. However, it is common in some Christian circles to make the suitcase term synonymous with the big ideas it is intended to carry. This might look like deifying the metaphor of father, sheep, yeast, mustard seeds, crosses, dove, rushing wind, masculine gender of a leader, a beast, or a lamb … or even the Bible. Alfred North Whitehead refers to this as the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Whitehead realized that abstractions can sometimes be “credited with functions they cannot have” and be treated as if they were concrete.
This is particularly relevant for people of The Book. It is important that we understand what the Bible is, the various kinds of literature, and what the authors were communicating in the context of the time and stage of human development. For instance, Genesis was never intended as science (certainly not as we understand it today). This doesn’t mean the Genesis account of creation is untrue. Instead, it is a different way of being true.
A flat, literal reading of scripture will almost always result in significant problems, especially when this kind of reading conflicts with what we know to be true about the world and the progressive revelation - the arc of the biblical story from a tribalistic god of violence and blood that evolves towards the Abba of Jesus – where the writer of 1 John would say God is love. Through Jesus, we can read the scriptures in such a way as to mine love from its pages – sometimes through rich, wide veins and sometimes through veins where we must work hard to get a glimpse of God amongst the horrific stories (genocides, plagues, etc.) that its writers cast God from their context, including political and social purposes.
When scriptures are read in a flat-literal way, they can lend divine legitimacy to our own violence that manifests in abuse, neglect, discrimination, violence, scapegoating, and genocide. It is a problem when we tenaciously defend the flat literal reading and application of the scriptures at the expense of the good nature and character of God.
Sometimes, such a misreading of the scriptures can cause us to act in ways that are the antithesis of what the scriptures are prescribing. For example, a common misapplication of Matthew 11:12, “the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and violent people take it by force,” mistakes it as prescriptive instead of descriptive. Leading some to hold that the Kingdom of God is achieved by force/coercison.
Similarly, Revelations 5:6-7 “Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah … has triumphed. He can open the scroll and its seven seals.” When we stop here, it affirms coercive power via the symbol of the Lion (metaphor of empire/might). However, we need to keep reading because the Lamb stood up upon the throne to correct the Elder. It was the Lamb who was worthy to open the seals. The Lion (metaphor of empire/might) often mistakenly overshadows the Lamb who was slain (self-giving love).
The scriptures are polyphonic and often contradictory while also a lovely and rich source of comfort, insight, and inspiration when used well. Unfortunately, a book that has been a source of comfort for many has often been weaponized against others and used to rationalize significant bigotry, evil and injustice. Hence, reading, interpreting, and applying the scriptures through the lens of love, as demonstrated by and through Jesus, is critical.
Stories can change. While the story itself may stay the same, the way it is interpreted changes depending upon who is reading it and the story they bring to the interpretation and application. A combination of factors, including power/privilege, race/ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, education, and socioeconomic status, influences these. The big idea here is our theology is akin to a story and, as such, needs to be handled somewhat openhandedly, with humility and honesty concerning our biases and that which we bring to fill in the gaps within scripture.
To this end, Brad Jersak offers this reminder:
“All theologies are constructs developed by people. All people. … Theologies are simply inferred reflections and personal projections of our individual and communal perceptions and experiences. It’s part of being human. Each of us composes and sings our song of and to the Divine. That’s fine. Sometimes, those songs are achingly beautiful. Sometimes, they are cruel and ugly. The sad reality is that so many divinize their theology or ideology, seek to impose it and fashion it into a bludgeon of exclusion. The mystical (recognition of mystery) streams of most faiths call out that misuse of theology as an egoist barrier to the Beloved. Salvation is not found in my assent to any theological assertion, but in the infinite love of Whatever or Whomever the divine Beloved is and isn’t.”
Join me at ORTcon ‘24 - July 8 - 12 at the Grand Targhee Resort.
More info: https://c4ort.com/ortcon/