{"id":1089,"date":"1996-12-29T06:42:28","date_gmt":"1996-12-29T06:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/december-qtelling-the-old-old-storyq\/"},"modified":"2014-02-02T01:59:45","modified_gmt":"2014-02-02T01:59:45","slug":"december-qtelling-the-old-old-storyq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/december-qtelling-the-old-old-storyq\/","title":{"rendered":"Telling The Old, Old Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Christian literature, to be accepted and approved by the evangelical leaders of our times, must follow very closely . . . a kind of ‘party line’ from which it is scarcely safe to depart.\u00a0 A half-century of this in America has made us smug and content.\u00a0 We imitate each other with slavish devotion and our most strenuous efforts are put forth to try to say the same thing that everyone around us is saying.<\/span><\/p>\n

A.W. Tozer1<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

As I began this season, in my normal pattern, to speak of “the Christmas story,” I found myself strangely uncomfortable with such a designation for the Incarnation.\u00a0 That word, “story,” has become a most popular word for today’s communication models.\u00a0 However, a quick scanning of the dictionaries confirmed my suspicion.\u00a0 In a 1967 dictionary, the first synonym listed under “story” is “history,” but in a 1993 dictionary, the first synonym is “tale.”\u00a0 In other words, if I use the word “story” to describe the birth of our Lord, Mary and Joseph, the angels and the shepherds, it may come across very naturally to my audience as a “tale; an anecdote; an account of imaginary past events.”2<\/sup> You see the dilemma.\u00a0 I can better relate to my audience by telling a “story,” but risk meaning. Or, I can explain “history,” a boring subject to today’s image-conscious generation.<\/p>\n

We feel a right to object since the four gospels are given to us in narrative form.\u00a0 But are they “story” in today’s sense of the word.\u00a0 They may be (technically) “narrative” but they are emphatically “history” as any past fact is history and yet must also be narrative (if it actually “happened”).<\/p>\n

Why are we confused about this?\u00a0 I think because of a Christian exploitation of a modern error.\u00a0 That modern (or postmodern) error is that history doesn’t matter as much as how the “story” of history affects you.\u00a0 It is not the fact but the feeling about the fact.\u00a0 Why do we think commercials appeal totally to fantasy in order to persuade us to buy?\u00a0 Because we care about the facts?\u00a0 As Troy Aikman ironically says, “get real!”\u00a0 Now, we communicators, knowing full well how our audience is affected by story-telling, often capitalize on the method without thought of the results.<\/p>\n

We all know the popularity of Christian fiction by the volumes in the book store.\u00a0 We have all listened to contemporary music that drones on and on telling of someone’s recent dream about going to heaven and back.\u00a0 A recent issue of Leadership magazine reports, “Pollster George Barna agreed on the importance of stories. ‘Busters are non-linear, comfortable with contradictions, and inclined to view all religions as equally valid.\u00a0 The nice thing about telling stories is that no one can say your story isn’t true.'”3<\/sup> And, of course, no one can say your story is true!<\/p>\n

In the 40’s, C.S. Lewis lamented, “In lecturing to popular audiences I have repeatedly found it almost impossible to make them understand that I recommended Christianity because I thought its affirmations to be objectively true.\u00a0 They are simply not interested in the question of truth or falsehood.”4<\/sup> In the early 70’s, Francis Schaeffer warned about erasing the line between fact and fiction.\u00a0 “History as history has always presented problems, but as the concept of the possibility of true truth has been lost, the erosion of the line between history and the fantasy the writer wishes to use as history for his own purposes is more and more successful as a tool of manipulation.”5<\/sup><\/p>\n

More recently, William Lane Craig has explored the problem of presenting historical knowledge.\u00a0 “The narrative approach tends to ignore the intent of the original author and evaluates texts only on aesthetic or non-cognitive grounds, while the objectivist hermeneutical approach seeks to discern the author’s intent and so to penetrate more deeply into the past.\u00a0 Narrative non-realists are thus unconcerned with historical truth of narratives or with what actually happened.\u00a0 Indeed, it is not clear whether there really is such a thing as the past on a thoroughgoing post-modernist view.”6<\/sup><\/p>\n

The question remains:\u00a0 how far do we adopt our generation’s methodology knowing that, though we are speaking their language, the further we walk this path with them the more they are unconvinced of what is real?\u00a0 If we stop and insist, “we must now come back to reality and believe or not believe facts,” we risk losing the buster generation.<\/p>\n

But it is a risk that must be taken!\u00a0 As a matter of fact, it is what the New Testament calls preaching the gospel.\u00a0 Roger Lundin warns, “The language of postmodernism is anything but a morally neutral tool that people of any persuasion might pick up and use to some appointed end.\u00a0 Instead, that vocabulary commits its user to a very specific vision of the self, truth, and the ethical life–a vision fundamentally at odds with the most basic affirmations of the Christian creeds.”7<\/sup><\/p>\n

I love stories for stories’ sake.\u00a0 But the reason I have eternal life is because of a fact of history.\u00a0 God became man at a time and place.\u00a0 He died and resurrected in like manner.\u00a0 If I can call that a “story” it is fine with me.\u00a0 If I have to choose between a happy audience and the facts of the gospel, I’ll stay with the facts.\u00a0 In rhetoric, we really don’t gain by giving up.\u00a0 As Chesterton said, “In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don’t know it.”<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/span><\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
1. A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit Of God (Harrisburg:\u00a0 Christian Publications, nd) 92.<\/address>\n
2. “Story,” The Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Oxford University Press, 1993.<\/address>\n
3. “This Is Not Your Boomer’s Generation,”\u00a0 Leadership, Fall 1996, p. 17.<\/address>\n
4. C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986) 65.<\/address>\n
5. Francis Schaeffer, The Church At The End Of The Twentieth Century (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994) 70.<\/address>\n
6. William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Wheaton:\u00a0 Crossway Books, 1994) 167.<\/address>\n
7. Craig quoting Lundin, 39.<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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