Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Story

Just like a Children’s book, Scripture is a Story. Though obviously the narrative in the Bible is much more complex and real, it still follows the basic rules of Story. Every Story must have some kind of Protagonist and Antagonist. Scripture is no different. There are many protagonists, namely God and Christ, but many others in Scripture. There also many Antagonists as well, the obvious Antagonist is Satan, but Cain, Pharaoh, and Caesar are all very important antagonists to the Story. What we find in Scripture is a Story about a God that cares so much for His broken creation that He is willing to offer redemption and salvation over and over until finally he offers a permanent redemption for all creation.

What is important to observe is that unlike a storybook from the library, the great narrative of Scripture is a Story about ourselves. It is a story that encapsulates all of creation. Though our personal point in the story is farther down the timeline than the Stories we read in the Bible, we are still equally a part of God’s great narrative. This has extremely important complexities to it though. If the story of the Bible follows the basic rules of Story, with a protagonist and an antagonist, then we clearly have the ability to fall under one of these categories. We can choose to align ourselves with the Cains, Goliaths, and Pilates, and we can choose to align ourselves with the Abels, Davids, and Pauls. It is not that the protagonist in a Story must be a perfect resolute person. It is quite to the contrary. David was a man after God’s own heart yet he still had an affair. Paul was a terrorist of the early Church, murdering possibly dozens of early Christians. A protagonist has the ability to have faults. It would be a travesty if the rules were that we couldn’t mess up to be the Good Guy. But the big point here is that we do have the ability to choose the good guy or the bad guy. What ‘side’ are you going to align yourself with?

It is important to note what a Good Story looks like. What made Abel a good man in God’s eyes were his sacrifices. Abel gave the best he could to God, while Cain did not. Cain is not ‘evil’ for just killing his brother. Cain is labeled evil for not giving all he could to God. Do you have skills that you know could help change our hurting world? A great example of this today would be doctors. Doctors have the unique skill to make sick people better. They are healers. A doctor can choose to practice medicine in America and average 300,000 dollars a year or a doctor can choose to use his skills sacrificially and help sick dying people in Africa that cannot pay him or her. Who lives a better story in these two examples? I know it seems obvious that the doctor in Africa is a better man, but how many of those kind of doctors are there? How many of us get an education for the selfish reason of living very comfortably in life? Even I tend to fall under that category many times. It is not that I don’t want to help the helpless, but I truly would rather help myself. Unfortunately a true protagonist in a story can never be the ‘help myself’ type. A true protagonist is giving. I guarantee you cannot think of a story that you truly enjoyed where the protagonist is not giving in some way. That is because that is the Story we live in. God wants us all to live a good story and a Good story is a story of a person who gives everything to God. It is hard and many times not fun, but it is what we were made for. Remember that even if your story makes you the antagonist right now, you still have the ability to choose to change. We all do. It won’t be easy, but it seems that the right path and the right Story never are. Let us pray that we have the persistence and passion to live as the protagonist in our own Stories.