Talking about stories

[jimkhong]

Our Christian faith is a faith of stories. Nothing characterised this aspect of our faith more than the Easter midnight liturgy. Seven readings of the salvation of our people told over a fire. It always remind me of the chats and stories over a campsite fire. A young child hears the story of the deliverance at the Red Sea and the faith has been handed down one more generation.

Stories are how our faith have been handed down. The Bible is a book of stories, originally handed down the generations by word of mouth. Such stories form the basis of our understanding of truth, as expressed in our faith. Some stories are physically ordinary while others physically miraculous. Both contribute equally to the truth of our faith and both are used to illuminate our lives.

In a modern society, however, which equates facts as truth, stories that are not factually feasible like parables and fables are shunned as a scientifically logical society glances ashamedly to what it sees as its superstitious past. I find it strange that some English-speaking cultures shuns stories while others embrace it. For instance, Irish (and other Gaelic cultures) notions of humour tends to be anecdotal while English humour less so. Stories seem to be an embarrassment to some.

But just as science and faith inhabit different spheres, facts and truth are not necessarily the same thing. Facts are physical records of what actually happened, verifiable by reason or experience. Truth, on the other hand, tells us about ourselves and what we need to do to give meaning to our lives, as informed by our understanding of events, factual or otherwise. Truth can sometimes come from a non-fact, and is not a lesser truth of as result of it. For instance, we all accept that sometimes, slow and steady does win the race. That doesn’t mean that we all believe that a hare and a tortoise met up and agreed to run a race that resulted in the saying.

Truth therefore can come from stories that may not be factual. Or rather to be more accurate, truth does not depend on how factual the the story is. Should we therefore be worried about how factual are stories that we share with our children. No, stories that we share are the stories of our faith, which tells us who we are and the type of people we all seek to be. We educate our children with the stories we tell. With that, we hand down the truth of who we are and how we would like to be known so that the chain of faith finds one more link to the next generation.

The full blog is available at childrenlivingthesundayword.blogspot.com/2013/06/talking-about-stories.html. Would appreciate any suggestions or comments on it. Thanks.

 

[edwest2]

Stories is an inappropriate word. The Bible is the inspired Word of God. It uses different literary forms but it does accurately report things God did. Did Jesus raise the dead, give sight to the blind and cleanse the lepers, or not? Our society too often thinks of what man can do and forgets that God, as God, does not have follow the rules and can break them at will.

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a3.htm

Until we recognize the same Jesus is alive at this moment and is present in the Eucharistic, we deny God has the ability to be God and do things only God can do.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Potato_Skillet]

Ah, yes, Christ has indeed been called genius at storytelling. The Bible is perfect, yes, but sometimes only as an example of what not to do, no? I wouldn’t think God would still want us stoning people, do you? If the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then it goes without saying, my friend, that it would be inerrant. And yet the flaws of organized religion have led people to countless murders and crimes of errancy. I fear people are taking the “shoulds” of the Bible to mean a command of God. But he knows everything, so it could be no more than a mistake of human reason to assume that. Categorically, if he knows we are going to stone people until a certain point in history, then, yes we “should” for causality to exist. Should we really though? No, the word has two meanings. That is the two sidedness of the world today, a certain feeling of wanting depravity of error and sin and a desire to please man alone. Heads or tails.

I do not believe in a God that should stone me. I believe in a God that knows the error of mankind and says, “should it happen, stop when you come to your senses.”

 

[jimkhong]

It depends on how you choose to use the word ‘story’ and which connotations you choose to import into it. The ultimate root origin of the word in Greek is to ‘know from inquiring of a wise man’ (SOD). Anything unscriptural in that?

The problem is the connotation brought in by (I assume, but I could be wrong here) Anglo-Saxon (maybe Victorian) connotations of stories as being ‘unsubstantiated by evidence’ as in hearsay or ‘trivial’ as in children’s stories. So, in much of the English-speaking world, we get embarrassed by the word ‘stories’.

The Bible is a set of stories that tells us the Truth about God and our relationship with him. In mainstream Christianity outside of fundamentalism, the Bible is not intended to be read as a science book, or a history book, or mathematics book in the modern scholastic sense of the word. Even though, science, history, geography, etc are often visible in the context of those stories.

Our modern scholastic mind, with its emphasis on evidence and logic thinking, may seek to squeeze out every last drop of divine meaning in these stories using exegetical or hermeneutical means. Even so, such studies do not constitute the bedrock of our faith, though they may illuminate our understanding of the faith. The bedrock of the faith remains the stories from our Salvation History of our people (the Easter readings being the primary example) and the story of how God sent his Son to die for us.

Calling them stories, therefore, does not deny any scientific or historical or factual content that they contain. However, these are secondary to the objective of illustrating to us the redemptive power of God. We focus on this primary objective and no amount of court-room proof is needed if we cooperate with God in his revelation.

Ultimately, the stories of our people are part of our tradition which we hand down. Some of these stories are factually-proven and some are not. Some are scriptural and some are not. But they are all part of the richness of the faith we hold.

When I talk to children about God, I use stories. Jesus when he spoke in parables, did no different. My blog is intended to share those stories. Let me know if you see any unTruth there that I may need to revise. Thanks in advance!!:thankyou:

 

[jimkhong]

Ah, yes, Christ has indeed been called genius at storytelling. The Bible is perfect, yes, but sometimes only as an example of what not to do, no? I wouldn’t think God would still want us stoning people, do you? If the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then it goes without saying, my friend, that it would be inerrant. And yet the flaws of organized religion have led people to countless murders and crimes of errancy. I fear people are taking the “shoulds” of the Bible to mean a command of God. But he knows everything, so it could be no more than a mistake of human reason to assume that. Categorically, if he knows we are going to stone people until a certain point in history, then, yes we “should” for causality to exist. Should we really though? No, the word has two meanings. That is the two sidedness of the world today, a certain feeling of wanting depravity of error and sin and a desire to please man alone. Heads or tails.

I do not believe in a God that should stone me. I believe in a God that knows the error of mankind and says, “should it happen, stop when you come to your senses.”

Hi Potato, welcome to the Forum.

In the East (more east than the Orthodox, ), we have a story:
In a monastery where monks gather for their daily chant, a cat would make a ruckus outside. One of the monks, then, took it upon himself to tie the cat in another courtyard every day so that the monks could chant in peace.

Later, the monk died and another monk was appointed in his place & continued to tie the cat up. Later the cat grew old and mellowed in its golden years but still the monk continued his daily ritual of tying the cat up.

Eventually, the cat died. The monks then bought another cat so that it can be tied up before their daily chant.

Is ‘why’ we do things more important in God’s eyes than ‘what’ we do?

 

[Potato_Skillet]

I think God considers our intentions more than our actions. It is called the categorical imperative in old-school philosophy. For instance I intend to sound like a believer but sometimes come across as a heretic

God knows.

 

[jimkhong]

So very true about God. Unfortunately people assumes the intention from what they see, having no other way to discern a person’s intention. In the end, it gets rather complicated as we try to work out a rule for every possible scenario because we do not know the intention of the person with any certainty.

Hence, we focus on the meaning rather than the externality of words, with their multiple meanings, shades and connotations. There is a Hindu school which abhors written scriptures and would on transmit traditions orally. Needless to say, it has relatively few following, but it does make a certain kind of sense to me.

 

[Potato_Skillet]

So very true about God. Unfortunately people assumes the intention from what they see, having no other way to discern a person’s intention. In the end, it gets rather complicated as we try to work out a rule for every possible scenario because we do not know the intention of the person with any certainty.

Hence, we focus on the meaning rather than the externality of words, with their multiple meanings, shades and connotations. There is a Hindu school which abhors written scriptures and would on transmit traditions orally. Needless to say, it has relatively few following, but it does make a certain kind of sense to me.

Next time I hear music, I’m really going to hear it and not listen to it. If we become too engrossed in a message, we are vulnerable to not being able to tell stories of our own.