Story

From Ikon

Some of my ramblings about the importance of story, may be relevant to the discussion about Ikon for Kids:

One of my favourite authors is Terry Pratchet, who writes fantasy stories set on the Discworld, a flat planet which travels through space on the back of four elephants standing on the Great Turtle A'Tuin. In his books 'The Science of Discworld' (Books 1-3) he interweaves his story with some of his own scientific and philosophical thoughts.

I was captivated by his thoughts about imaginsation and story. He says that we shouldn't be called Homo Sapiens (wise man) but instead Pan Narrans (storytelling ape). Storytelling is how we make sense of the world, how we handle its complexity. He also points out that it is an important survival trait. Early man was able to use story to anticipate an encounter with a physically superior animal, and imagine an outcome where the man defeated the animal. Cave paintings stand as a testimony to the fact that the earliest humans told stories.

With this in mind, it is interesting to note that our faith is communicated through stories and the most common literary genre in the Bible is narrative. Pratchett is an outspoken atheist and would perhaps consider this as evidence that we just made the stories up to explain the unexplainable. So for further comment let me turn to another fantasy author, J.R.R. Tolkien.

In September 1931, Tolkien spent the evening with C.S. Lewis, who was at that time an atheist. Lewis complained that he could not see any relevance in the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) 2,000 years ago, except in so far as we could be inspired by his example. Tolkien pointed out that this was an imaginative failure on Lewis's part. Lewis was moved when he read myths of dying and reviving gods, but the gospel stories left him cold. Tolkien said that this was because when Lewis approached the Christian stories, he left behind the receptive imagination which allowed him to apprecite myth, and became narrow and empericist. He should understand that "the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with the tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way."

Tolkien went on to argue that "doctrines" extracted from the "myth" are less true than the myth itself. The ideas are too large and too all-embracing for the finite mind to absorb them. This is why God revealed himself in story.

(Lewis later confided in a letter to his friend Arthur Greeves that this conversation had a great deal to do with his subsequent acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Son of God.)