I used to think of stories as “kid’s stuff.” Nice little entertaining things, maybe with a moral lesson. I thought serious people didn’t use stories to convey important things like spiritual truth. I was way off.
Why do we love books and movies? Why do some have incredible mass appeal?
“Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience reveal that our brain is hardwired to respond to story; the pleasure we derive from a tale well told is nature’s way of seducing us into paying attention to it. In other words, we’re wired to turn to story to teach us the way of the world.’
“The rush of intoxication a good story triggers . . . makes us willing pupils, primed to absorb the myriad lessons each story imparts.” –Lisa Cron, Wired for Story
And where did that hardwiring come from? God could have made the Bible a theological textbook. Instead he filled it with the stories of all the things that happened in his work to love people and the world.
And it all adds up to one big story. God’s good news is a story. You could say it’s a love story. There’s a romantic beginning in a garden. A bad guy seduces and woos the beloved away. God persistently pursues, and at great cost and sacrifice proves his love. But then everything goes wrong and all seems lost.
Yet at the last minute there’s a heroic turn of events and an incredible climax that defeats the bad guy. And in the end, the relationship with the beloved becomes even more glorious than it was in the beginning in the garden.
This is the original Story.
And now it’s as if every human is wired to be sensitive to the story form, so that we might be sensitive to God’s story for us.
That’s why stories matter.
Here, let’s test how built-in it is:
“I was standing in line at Wal-mart the other day, minding my own business, when the guy in front of me started to….”
You want to know what he did, don’t you? You can’t help it. You’re wired to be curious about “what happens next.” Stories are a built-in super power that we can use for good.
If you want to dig in even more into story, consider our Finney Media StoryGold® Course for your team. You can find out more information on our STORYGOLD STORYTELLING page.
