ONE STORY TO TELL [Sa, 10-10-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

ONE STORY TO TELL         [Sa, 10-10-20]

Quite a long time ago, I learned that people aren’t interested in the way we do things, only in the results. I was waiting for a mechanic to finish up my car. The owner of the shop decided I should learn how mechanics create and run their business. It was fascinating, to him, and totally boring to me. Also, I ended up not trusting him, for I knew about his short cuts and ways to charge more even when not necessary.

So, be alert. What follows is not about faith, but how preachers get around to talking about faith. It’s fascinating to me. I suspect not nearly as much to you. You have been warned…

Some months ago, [or several centuries, in pandemic time] when we were trying to continue life as it had always been, only on Zoom instead of in person, I was asked to do a program for our church on story-telling. I have a doctorate in theology, so I pointed out that I can talk theology if I must, for in 1977, I had read every page of every book on theology ever written. At least, it seemed that way to me. I can talk about everything from “first cause” to “the rapture,” from Thomas Aquinas’ “five proofs” to the “via negativa.”

From all that study, I have concluded that God gave us theology for fun. It’s when we take it seriously that we get into trouble.

Theology and faith are not the same thing. We often confuse theology/belief with faith, though. Theology is belief, the intellectual expression of faith. Theology is “thought and speech about God.” Faith is living in relationship with God.

Which is why I consider myself not a theologian, but a storyteller.

From the time I started preaching, I was interested not only in faith, but in the way that faith is communicated, for I knew that the way faith is communicated changes faith, helps us grow in relationship with God or deters us from doing so. I knew before I ever heard Marshall McLuhan say it, that the medium is the message.

I also knew from the beginning, although I could not have articulated it then, that story is the best medium for communicating faith, for a lot of reasons, mostly because we live in story form.

When I was in seminary, almost all of us students had churches we served on the weekends. My fellow students would complain when they returned to campus that “They didn’t remember at all the points I made about soteriology, comparing Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard. All they remembered were the illustrations.”

I thought: If what people remember are the illustrations, the “stories,” maybe those really are the points, and what we say about the stories [theology] are the illustrations.

Historians know that the past isn’t just there; it’s created by the stories we tell about it. For instance, the story I told you above about how I read every theology book ever written. If you don’t know the context, and you didn’t real very closely, and you really don’t care, you might repeat that as though it is factually true. 

The same is true of current reality. It is created by the stories we tell about it. Donald Trump and Fox News know that very well. If you can control the stories, you can change the “truth.”

I recently read a person of faith who said that “we are being killed by bad theology.” Well, yes, but not so much by bad theology as bad stories.

There is only one story that matters. As Helen reminded me a long time ago, when I was trying to find some new and novel way to express a particular aspect of faith, “You have only one job when you preach, and that is to remind us that God loves us.”

John Robert McFarland