What Are Stories?

Stories are not just a bunch of fragmented stuff that just happens. Stories are moving accounts that are headed for a destination. So when we hear or tell a story, it is a whole entity. We need to guard against putting fragments together [ref]Tom Wright. Scripture and the Authority of God, 20.[/ref] that produce the creation of a different story and then pass it off as if it were God’s story.

The Story of God that Scripture presents is to be told as a challenge to the story of the present world. God’s EPIC Adventure is subversive and will subvert the dominant paradigm when told and enacted. The telling and living of this Story challenge the authority of this present evil age. In telling and living God’s Story we are undermining the current worldview of what the world is and offering the world a new worldview. The Story we tell and live is that there is only one God. He is the creator of all that there is. He not only created the world, but he lives within his creation. He is not up there and we are down here (dualism). He is not a landlord who made the world and left it to run on its own (deism). He is not an absentee landlord (agnosticism). He is not absent (atheism).

This Creator God is transcendent over his creation and is deeply wounded by its fall away from goodness to sinfulness. He was loving enough that he was willing to get his hands dirty, as it were, to bring about its recreation.

The Story of God is about the world that was created by God and functions as an open invitation for all who choose to participate. The hearer can make the Story his or her own by turning away from idols that hinder one from making the Story one’s own and worshiping the God who is revealed in this Story.[ref]Wright, Bringing the Church to the World, 152.[/ref]

Knowing the Story is not an end in itself. The Story is there so that the Creator God may be glorified and that his creation may be redeemed. It is our task to be the vehicles through whom this magnificent Story is told and retold, not just in words but also with drama, art, or any form of creative expression. We have been entrusted with a great and wonderful privilege.

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