Now, I know that Brian Mclaren’s been given stick by a number of so called intellectuals about his writing style, “Brian’s writing is storytelling, it’s not a thesis that’s been based on fact and is read and written like a well studied paper with sources and footnotes” people might say, as if storytelling is not the appropriate way of engaging with people. I wonder how much this is true of how Jesus taught and related with people, I wonder if Jesus was not only killed because of the way he ate, but also because of the way he taught.
Jesus taught in action and in story, the story was an integral part of how he taught and how he disseminated his message. Here’s the thing about stories, they aren’t black and white, they don’t say who is in and who is out, they don’t really tell you how to live or what is right and wrong, and, depending on what character you relate to, or the ears you come to the story is how you hear it, how you understand it.
Take the parable of the talents for example, do we hear the story with Westerner ears which hear “Landlord/Master” and automatically translate it into “God” or do we hear it with Jewish ears that understand the “Landlord/Master” as being someone who has made their money by doing dodgy deals, charging interest (which is illegal), hiring a loan shark, reaping where he has not sown… Do we hear the three servants in different ways, is the one who buried the money the hero or the coward?
Jesus once said “become like children” and I honestly wonder if a lot of that is due to their imagination, their ability to interpret the stories of the scriptures and parables in a variety of ways and, instead of being confused by the multiple meanings be inspired and energised by them, wanting to read them more and more as, unlike many stories these stories seem to inspire imagination rather than have only one ending, one meaning.
Being like children is to understand that when you read The Cat In The Hat from the perspective of the Children, the Parent or the Cat you hear different stories, something that we as adults either have forgotten or just are unable to deal with, to comprehend.
If God exists outside of time, it just seems to me that he’d be able to tell a timeless story that a child in any era would be able to listen to and imagine about… A story is a story, it’s designed to encourage thought, inspire imagination, make the reader or hearer sleep on it, rip it apart, dream about the characters, muse on it for a while… A true story is a piece of wisdom, not a moral disguised as a piece of prose.
True story tellers have told timeless stories that even now people are trying to “understand” because it’s still playing with their imagination, it seems to me that “understanding” doesn’t have anything to do with the effectiveness of a story, which should be based on how much the hearer’s imagination has been triggered…
It’s in this way that i think Story and Art share some traits, you don’t truley understand a piece of art, you’re only ever invided to enter into it and become a part of it…
Over the weekend i retold the parable of the talents (amongst many other things) and, in this rendition I did ask if the one that buried his talent was the hero, if instead of hearing “coward who got what he deserved” we hear “savior who stood up to the power that be and took on the punishment that he knew he’d have to go through.” And, it seems that it’s this reading that has spurred leaders to ask questions about my theology and faith and…
This is the problem about stories you see, and I think Jesus knew it but he chose to continue to teach in stories, just like many many many elders and wise men have taught in the long history of humanity. And I think he got roasted for it, Jesus was killed because of the way he taught, because he was a story teller, and because of the way he ate.
I’m just hoping that I’m not killed because of the way I tell stories… well, not for a little longer anyway (perhaps another 4 years?)