Spirituality Column #786

December 7, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Story Time

By Bob Walters

“Jesus did many other things as well.  If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” – John 21:25

The Gospel of John is the last Gospel presented in the Bible, there exists little doubt it was the last Gospel written – probably late in the first century – and John 21:25 is the last verse of John’s last chapter.

And what John is saying in this closing verse of the Gospels is, “There is so much more.”

The story of Jesus is the Greatest Story Ever Told, and it is a story we will never fully grasp in this lifetime.  The Bible is the guiding light of the Holy Spirit’s largesse, sharing the magnificent story of God, creation, humanity, sin, salvation, love, and grace.

Stories are how humans communicate, and it may be God’s most under-rated gift that our narratives and languages spark creative relationships among individuals, families, neighbors, and nations.  We rarely think of stories as “a thing.”  Yet it is our unique and varied stories that bind humans together, tear us apart, define life as we know it, and make us curious to answer the greatest of all questions: “Why?”

I think it’s an easy answer: Q. “Why?”  A. “For God’s glory.”  If one pursues the plainest truth and purest proof of purpose, reason, logic, and the unmistakable presence of human instincts that go far beyond elemental survival, God gave humans the great gift of stories and language to investigate, discover, describe, expound, discern, and most importantly share all that we come to know, think, feel, hope, and believe.

In that sense, “stories,” I believe, have a divine organizational kinship with “time.”  Both are God’s gifts to humanity that we tend to neither notice nor appreciate.  God is outside of time in eternity, which remains a mostly-opaque notion to my human mind.  Christ, as Jesus, stepped into time and into humanity to communicate the love, glory, truth – the story – of God’s salvation for a fallen world: Jesus beats Satan’s hate with God’s love.  

Science, you ask?  Note that math and science don’t provide stories; they provide facts.  Where the Bible is all about “why” and stories; science is God’s gift to humans about how things work.  Science replaces God’s purpose?  No, science reveals God’s “How.”  Equations and elements and physics, discovered and defined by humans, are God’s universal language: they are the same everywhere for everybody.

New science discoveries alter man’s understanding, but they don’t alter God.

Stories, everywhere for every person, are unique and changing and gloriously promote or monstrously destroy human understanding and relationships.  Stories we errantly construct can also destroy our understanding of, and our relationship with, God.

But they can’t destroy God; He is so much more than we can fully comprehend.

Humans have God’s special spark because we think in stories.  Animals are unencumbered with such existential awareness.  If you want to assign “emotions” on pets, fine, but it is we who imprint “stories” on them.  They possess instincts, notice patterns, can be trained, etc., but who imagines an animal asking, “Why am I here?”

I say all this because I read the Bible as the Truth of God and Creation, and I’m thankful humans have the great power of experiencing and sharing God’s endless story. 

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) often tells stories to his dog Kramer, who listens.