Braden Post #3: The Place of Storytelling

Blog #3

            Many ancient cultures made sense of the world through stories. Why? And how does this affect how one reads the scriptures that make up the old and new testaments?

            One interesting insight I heard recently from an author named Brian McLaren was that in ancient cultures, as a story telling society would create and shape different stories to make sense of things. I suppose in light of what we’ve been exploring in class, making “sense” of anything via story carries some interesting irony to Plato or his followers.

            That said, though, it is interesting that one of the first responses of human consciousness was to tell stories to communicate truth. That seemed to be the most natural way to talk about life, death, joy, pain, and the spiritual—reality. This, as opposed to argumentative essays, lists, or rational language (the last defined generally.) Obviously, there is space and necessity for those things, but as we’ve been discussing and writing about, it doesn’t seem to go deep enough.

            Societally, or within the church at least, I imagine we are still very much in this place of lists and arguments. Few contemporary authors who write on spirituality for instance are writing via wisdom literature, or novels. I’m not sure why this is, though.