The need for stories
It's an amazing aspect of being human.
We long for stories.
They make us laugh, cry, and experience every emotion in between.
We spend billions of dollars to be told stories in various forms of media.
Why?
We long for the complete story. Every story tells us about an aspect of our humanity from things we are capable of doing to things we wish were possible. Stories engage our senses and take us too a different place.
The beauty of stories, even the worst ones, is that they reflect some aspect of the image of God in man. They reflect something that we can relate to and something that we feel.
Through the characters in stories we turn into a world where the hero is something we think we can aspire to, or the villain is someone we are fascinated with because we sense our capabilities of evil.
There's a problem with stories though. They can't tell the whole picture. They fill a little aspect inside us, but they cannot complete us.
One story does. The real story of Jesus coming to accomplish redemption for humanity. Every story in the Bible points in some way, implicitly or explicitly, points to our need for redemption or God's provision of redemption for humanity.
This is wonderful because God's story, creation, fall, redemption and consummation can speak to us in a way that Star Wars, Crime and Punishment, the Da Vinci Code or The Illiad cannot. It speaks to us in a way that changes our lives and leads us to a real relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth.
This brings me to preaching.
Those who preach God's Word must not be afraid to go to the stories in the Bible and use them to explain how they speak to the human condition.
It's not just post-moderns who need to hear stories, but everyone. Sometimes in conservative churches, we love to preach epistles and prophets and use the instructional material to teach doctrine and warnings to the people of God.
While we do need doctrine and warnings, we must realize that we can derrive these from the stories in the Bible.
We must use them, and use them not in a moralistic way, but in a way that is relevent and transcends time and context.
The message in these stories is timeless and can speak to any culture in any context in any generation.
We long for stories.
They make us laugh, cry, and experience every emotion in between.
We spend billions of dollars to be told stories in various forms of media.
Why?
We long for the complete story. Every story tells us about an aspect of our humanity from things we are capable of doing to things we wish were possible. Stories engage our senses and take us too a different place.
The beauty of stories, even the worst ones, is that they reflect some aspect of the image of God in man. They reflect something that we can relate to and something that we feel.
Through the characters in stories we turn into a world where the hero is something we think we can aspire to, or the villain is someone we are fascinated with because we sense our capabilities of evil.
There's a problem with stories though. They can't tell the whole picture. They fill a little aspect inside us, but they cannot complete us.
One story does. The real story of Jesus coming to accomplish redemption for humanity. Every story in the Bible points in some way, implicitly or explicitly, points to our need for redemption or God's provision of redemption for humanity.
This is wonderful because God's story, creation, fall, redemption and consummation can speak to us in a way that Star Wars, Crime and Punishment, the Da Vinci Code or The Illiad cannot. It speaks to us in a way that changes our lives and leads us to a real relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth.
This brings me to preaching.
Those who preach God's Word must not be afraid to go to the stories in the Bible and use them to explain how they speak to the human condition.
It's not just post-moderns who need to hear stories, but everyone. Sometimes in conservative churches, we love to preach epistles and prophets and use the instructional material to teach doctrine and warnings to the people of God.
While we do need doctrine and warnings, we must realize that we can derrive these from the stories in the Bible.
We must use them, and use them not in a moralistic way, but in a way that is relevent and transcends time and context.
The message in these stories is timeless and can speak to any culture in any context in any generation.
posted by Bobby's blog at 3:16 PM
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