Today in one of my worldview classes, I touched on the issue of how we have had "our" Christian worldview story distorted and how it has somehow become "lost in translation" to this generation. If meaning equals communication then so much of what is represented and communicated currently as the Christian story has become meaning-less. Of course not only the christian story has become meaning-less - the whole world has somehow lost its story, both individually and corporately, in our generation. We search for someone to blame, someone to vent our anger at, but the story's been lost and all we can do is plead like Neo in the Matrix- "Can you please tell what I am to do"... Ivan Illich once commented that "if you want to change the world - you must tell a different story". A meaning-full story...Meaning-full stories are those that capture our imaginations and take us to other worlds. Meaning-full stories transport us out of our mediocrity and into a world of uncertainty, risk-taking and daring adventure. Meaning-full stories make heroes and heroines out of the ordinary and the everyday. Meaning-full stories inspire us to live lives of significance and purpose. Meaning-full stories have powerful resolutions to even the most complex of problems and obstacles... and meaning-full stories have a redemptive climax that always sees good triumphing over evil in the end. The dialogue between Sam and Frodo in the The Two Towers wonderfully encapsulates the desire to live the true Christian story in all of us: "We shouldn't be here at all [Sam says to Frodo], if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way... in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually ... I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?"
I wonder what tale we've fallen into... and what our response will be to watching generation that is unknowingly longing to find meaning in the greatest story ever told?
4 comments:
HEy Darren,
I think we have lost our story because of all the distraction society brings. There is no direction or right way of doing things precisely because everyone has their own "religion" their own "God". Be it TV, Drugs, Sex, Music, Allah. Even Christians lose their story their true self, i have experienced that many times. Where in following Christ we give up things thinking it is not christ-like when in fact it is apart of who we truly are and needs God's grace upon it to redirect the flame for good, typical dualism (old self new self).
The cultural and historical changes such the emergence and acknowledgement of childhood, the desturction of the "nuclear' family to which a child looks to for truth, identity and love. New age philosophies, Cosmopolitan magazine, pornography are slowly desensitizing people to immoratlity. People then seek more risky and provocative things as they become bored; in turn shutting the voice of God more and more. Hence we lose our true identity as God is the source of truth and the author and creator of life.
Hi Esther
I agree...distractions of many kinds quench the life giving story of our Maker and our Message. I think the dualistic "story" where we play hide and seek with God and make Him align with our ideas are the root of so much of this. What a difference the Author makes to the story though!! Perhaps its time to let Him do the writing within my life instead of me!
This is wisdom.
Well, you wrote this a long time ago and your probably don't even check this blog anymore, but that's fine, cause like your blog title says, "Write like no-one's reading."
So here I go... and if no one reads at least I will have written.
You see, I too have lost my story. Not perhaps in the way you were meaning in this blog post, but in a way that is devastating just the same. I am a writer who, for some reason, cannot write at the moment. The story is... lost.
Your line, "If you want to change the world you must tell a different story." Indeed. We must. And if we are who we are, if we know who we are than the story will of course be different because there is no one like us. But when we lose our own inspiration, when we forget for a moment our sense of place and belonging, meaning or value then our story begins to seep away... dripping... until it is as if we never knew it. Then we are left to consider how we might go about regaining our own water droplets from the ocean of life.
I know God. I know Him well. It is still possible to lose something that we once kept inside ourselves... like a story. One that will again change our world. So here's to all the souls who look for lost stories. All the individuals who once had their tale memorize and then... forgot.
My prayer is that God helps me to remember to write like no one is reading all the time. That He gives me the courage to begin again. That He gives us all the courage and fortitude to become the greatest stories yet untold that He might ultimately be seen.
Now if I could only get all that into a novel I'd be fine...
Post a Comment