Tell Me a Story

I wrote this a few weeks ago. It's meant as an exercise for a small group meeting in a church, perhaps as an ice-breaker activity for the beginning of a bible study (hence the 'stage directions'). I've never actually tried it in real life -- it's just one of the many ideas I've had for creative ways to inspire church members. I hope.

Break group off into small groups (3 or 4) and say "Tell each other one story. The story must be no more than a few minutes long."

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I said to tell a story, and the only restriction I put on it was a time restriction (I didn't want anyone retelling the entire Odyssey). So, what kind of story did you tell? Was it a story of your own life, or someone else's? Was it a true story, or a myth, or a fiction? Was it a story of faith, or of life? (and I recognize that those two categories are inextricably intertwined most of the time) What kind of story did you tell, and why did you tell it? Please tell each other why you told the story you did -- was it because of an assumption you made about what kind of story you should tell, about the kind of story other people would want to hear, about the kind of story I think you should be telling, or was it simply the first thing that popped into your head?

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The point I'm making here (besides getting you to tell each other stories, which is an entirely useful and under-appreciated skill in today's society) is that when we tell stories (whether it written, spoken, sung, or cinematic form) we choose what to tell and how to tell it based on the audience we have and the expectations we have of that audience, as well as our own interests. When I went to Japan for a year I started up a blog, very creatively titled "Lydia in Japan". I told everyone I knew about it, my parents, my friends, my coworkers, my great-aunts and grandparents. To tell the truth, I had a blog before I went to Japan, but I wanted something new, something fresh, something where I would write knowing that everyone was reading. This is not to say that I hid things from my family and friends, just that I write differently, using different words and focussing on different things if I'm writing to my best friend as opposed to writing to my grandmother. That's not being false, that's just being human.

And so I can almost guarantee that if I had set this task to you in a pub, you would have told an entirely different set of stories than you just told now. Many of you assumed, because I was speaking in a Christian setting, that when I said "tell a story" what I meant was "tell the story of your faith". And that's fine. The point here is not that making assumptions and accommodating ourselves to our setting and audience is bad, just that we all do it almost unconsciously.

Which is why it's so very, very important to know the background of any biblical text we decide to study. What kinds of stories does Jesus tell to his trusted disciples? What kinds of stories does Jesus tell to suspicious Pharisees? What kinds of stories does he tell to unlettered fisherman and farmers? To extend this beyond the parables -- look at how Paul's letters differ in tone and content depending on which community he's writing to. Look at the different focus of each gospel and what that tells us about the audiences they were being written to.

This is just as important in the Old Testament. Scholars debate over when certain parts the Old Testament were written, because that matters in terms of their thematic thrust. Books like Samuel/Kings, which were likely written while the Jewish people were in exile following the Babylonian conquest, making the question of the text "Why are we, God's chosen people, in exile?" are very different from Chronicles, which, since it was written after the exile when the Israelite nation was being restored, is more concerned with things like "What are we to do now that we are back in the land?" and "What is our connection with Israel in the past?" (Longman and Dillard 22). The audience, as well as the writer, changes the message, just as we automatically omit telling our grandmother's the more salacious parts of our personal history. Well, at least I do -- perhaps you tell your grandmother everything!

In any case, selectivity has nothing to do with authenticity. None of the Bible writers took an oath to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth", and while my faith assures me that truth has reached us despite centuries of translation and editing, that doesn't mean that everything is in there, or that there's no room for the changes made by good writers looking to create a comprehensible narrative out of something as complex and messy as the history of an entire people. Or the complicated and full life of Jesus. So remember when you read the bible, and when we interpret it together, that nothing was created in a vacuum, there's always a social, historical, and cultural context which has shaped the story, even before it began to be told.

Longman, Tremper III and Raymond B. Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Michigan, Zondervan, 2006.