Years ago, if someone used the word "story" it had a pejorative connotation for me. It had the ring of something that wasn't true. From childhood, we're read stories which are usually intended for life lessons, but they're usually fables for the imagination. Add to that that my mother's way of asking us children if we were lying was to say, "Are you telling me a story?" Stories to me were fables and myths with an undertone from mom that connected them to lies. So when I was in my twenties, if in a Christian context someone said "let's talk about the stories of the Bible," I would recoil at the thought because I believe the bible to be true. To use the word "story" for the bible, cast doubt on its veracity for me and so "story" and "bible" were two words in opposition.
Then life happened. Then walking more deeply with others in their hardship happened. Then counseling happened. Now I see all of this very differently. Now I receive the word 'story' as a person telling what happened, as a person telling about their life and their experiences and in so doing, they are telling about themselves. Now I listen very differently than I used to.
Human beings are the only living things that have articulated language (except for God and that's for another post). Surely this has a great deal to do with the fact that we are made in the image of God, for intimate relationships. Human beings are the only living things that have the ability to tell their story - which is to know and be known - a deep longing of the human soul. Given this uniqueness, when a person begins to tell a story, I am keenly interested. Part of the beauty of a person telling a story is that the very way they tell it tells me a lot about that person. I love words and so I'm drawn to the words people use. I can get pretty interested and animated about words. I might ask for instance, "Why did you choose to use the word 'frightening' there?" If you listen to someone tell a story and pay attention to the person's voice, it can tell you a lot. How much character is in that voice? How much experience? Is the personality animated? curious? angry? a know-it-all? Listening to the words, the tone, the resonance of the voice is part of what I now love. Mostly because they all help us know the story teller better.
Often, our stories, our life-stories, are a big mixture of life's experiences. That usually means we have both positive and negative things in our lives. While most of us aspire to live well, most of us have our good moments that yield happy stories, and we have our not so good moments that may yield hard stories. But here's the thing - good and not so good, it's all part of our story. And now the challenge of stories in church contexts...
For various reasons, many of them unfortunate, most of us sterilize our story when we are sharing our lives in church contexts. Because we fear rejection if there are unsavory aspects to our stories, we clean them up, telling only parts of our story - which is to say 'we don't tell the whole story' which is to say 'we manage the information we share' which is to say 'we're not telling the full and authentic story' which is to say we are often dishonest about the reality of our lives. This dishonesty, this telling of the partial story leaves many of us feeling just as lonely as ever. Ironically, church becomes like Facebook.
Facebook is the largest story telling community in the world today. People, especially in today's tech age, want badly to be known. But most Facebook pages are nothing other than "let me try to impress you with my life" pages. The best pictures from the party, the best pictures of the family and the vacation - you get the picture. So everyone reads everyone else's Facebook pages and wonders "why isn't my life as happy as that?" Well the fact is, no one's life is as happy as their Facebook page. The pictures on the page are not the life I have, but the life I wish I had. And so we continue to peddle false impressions of our lives, telling incomplete and false versions of our lives - all the while leaving us to feel lonelier than ever. I find that ironic, that Facebook and church are similar - both places where we're looking to share our stories, both places making people feel lonelier.
Finally, to enter into a story is to learn the art of paying attention. Much of art is about just this - "paying attention." Listen closely, look closely - pay attention! One problem with many evangelical culture is that we are not good at listening to people share their stories. This is because we are prone to listen in order to judge what we think is wrong with the story. So we're not listening to embrace the person and know them and appreciate their story, we are listening to judge. This needs attention - because listening to judge aborts the authenticity of a person's story and has the effect of rejecting the person. Yes, this is why in church most people sterilize their stories and why people never find the quality of relationships they are looking for in church. So how might we listen to stories? We're no good until we begin to listen with sympathy - "feeling with." Sure there may be unsavory aspects of the story and we don't condone that, but one can listen with sympathy, even to the unsavory parts. At least a mature person can. We do well to be reminded that there is a Lord for every story and I don't have to be Him. Thank God, the master of all stories.
