How We've Lost Our Story

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?

Alert and Orientated Times Zero

Matters of the heart intrigue me. Whilst tomes of text have been written on the subject, there remains something elusive about that phrase "whole-hearted". Perhaps it has been my life experiences that have fuelled this fascination but one thing is certain - out of the heart flows the wellspring of life. I was born with a congenital heart defect. You could say I've been "broken and half-hearted" since birth. I learnt from an early age to conceal this defect and covered my deficiencies remarkably well. I became very successful in a range of sports, ignoring the warning signs and pushing myself to be the very best on the playing field. But despite my efforts, I was living with half a heart. That's the first thing I learnt about heart matters- Broken hearts often don't even know they are broken. A life of half-heartedness becomes the norm before we know it... John Eldredge suggests in his excellent book entitled Waking the Dead that such a life is like being alert and orientated times zero - a reference from the book "The Perfect Storm" and the para rescue code whereby the injured seaman's understanding of the world is reduced to the fact that he exists and nothing more. Tragically, so many people live lives that are alert and orientated times zero, aimlessly meandering through life without direction, purpose and intensity - put simply living life with half a heart. We get up, go to work, go to school, perhaps go to church (when convenient), do the stuff, read the books, see the movie, grab the CD but never really embrace the magnitude of our strategic role in His unfolding grand story. The tyranny of mediocrity sets in and before we know it we forget how broken are hearts actually are.

But inevitably every broken heart needs to be repaired... and every broken heart needs a healer... I have experienced this twice - that's right 2 open heart surgeries and I have just turned 40 - but when hearts are broken, when life is lived half-heartedly, we need to have them "fixed". I've also learnt that getting a broken heart repaired is a long, lonely and painful process. There are no quick fixes, no pills or panaceas to make things better quickly - just patience, dark nights, long, lonely days and a dependent, childlike trust in the healer.

The one thing that gets you through the pain... the lonely nights, the limited movement, the frustrations of the road to recovery is that someone else shares my pain, someone else knows the feeling, and someone else bears the scars... Four times in scripture three words are written that put this whole heart process in perspective - "His heart broke".

Another lesson I've learnt is that broken hearts always live with their scars despite their healing. I love teaching Christian worldview. But Christian worldview can at times become so "heady". That is why I regularly view my scars; they remind me not of the pain of my past but of the promise of my future. What a miracle of transformation it is that broken hearts can be made whole. There is hope for the broken hearted, hope for the half-hearted, hope for those who are alert and orientated times zero... just gaze upon His scars - touch them, see them, feel them, accept them, embrace them... For out of a truly whole heart will flow the full wellspring of life. That is why, in Christian worldview as in life, - the heart matters more than anything.