EVERY STORY I KNOW BEST I LEARNED FROM A FLANNELGRAPH

A Well-Storied Faith

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Wisdom ... has prepared her meat and mixed her wine; she has also set her table.

PROVERBS 9:1-2

Have you ever said something you wish you could take back? I've certainly written some things I wish I could take back. One of these mea culpas is a mocking of certain people I have tardily come to honor and celebrate.

In one of my early books, I wrote about how the church finds itself in a digital, electronic culture with computer-savvy kids. Yet our churches are still trying to teach the Bible through flannelgraphs, chalk talks, and chalk artists. I made sport of those people and their ministries.

Now I am so repentant, so embarrassed I ever said such a thing. Every time I meet someone who uses flannelgraphs, I kneel down in front of them and beg, "Please forgive me. I'm so sorry for what I've done. I'm grateful to God for you."

Why the turnaround? Every story I know best I learned from a flannelgraph.

I'm a slow learner about some things, and it took me too long to realize this. For much of my life I have unknowingly suffered from a serious and stealthy illness: versitis.

No, not "bursitis." "Versitis."

What is "versitis," you ask? A burglar broke into a home late one night while a couple was sleeping upstairs. The woman of the house, a Christian who knew her Bible, came to the head of the stairs, saw the shadow of the burglar in the living room, and shouted out, "Acts 2:38!"

That's the verse where Peter tells the crowd, "Repent!"

Immediately the burglar fell to the floor, his hands over his head. He stayed there motionless until the police arrived and took him away.

As he got into the car, the cop said, "So it was Scripture that got you to give up?"

"What? That wasn't Scripture. She yelled she had an axe and two .38s."

From my childhood I have accessed the Bible through the template of books (66), chapters (1,189), and verses (31,103). The problem is that this template is alien to the material. The Bible wasn't written numerically. The Bible was written narratively, metaphorically, in stories and poems and songs and letters and memoirs and autobiographies and dreamscapes. The original template of the Bible is not numbers; it's narraphors.

I started learning the chapter-and-verse template as early as my nursery days, through the church's "farm system," a training regimen made up of Sunday school pins, Upper Room certificates, "sword drills" in youth group, college "mission bingos," N. A. Woychuk's Bible Memory Association prizes, and Awana "jewels." This training regimen is systematically being dismantled, however, as more and more resources are being diverted from the farm system to preserve the bureaucracy's factory system. Hence our children's increasing biblical illiteracy, even of the alien template, not to mention their disconnect from the ritual life of the church.

Because the farm system was still vibrant as I grew up in the church, I entered college well-versed in the Bible. At least I thought so. It wasn't until well into my ministry that I realized that, while I had memorized hundreds of Bible verses, I had never memorized a Bible story. Not one. In other words, what I had learned "by heart" was not the story, but the verses. I had "hidden ... in my heart" (Psalm 119:11) only the parts, not the whole.

When I began itemizing what stories I knew best (Daniel in the Lions' Den, David and Goliath, Jonah and the Whale, Noah and the Flood, the Woman at the Well, the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Feeding of the Five Thousand), it suddenly hit me: I had learned all these from flannelgraphs at vacation Bible school, chalk talks at Sunday school, gospel songs at camp meetings, chalk artists at summer camps. If it had not been for the narraphorical teaching of the flannelgraph, I would have a worse case of versitis than I do.

THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD

How bad is our versitis? In my public speaking, I often showcase the greatness of Jesus' communication skills by probing how he masterfully weaves a story around a metaphor, and then declaring, somewhat sarcastically, "This is not a Jesus method of communication: 'Here are the seven habits of highly effective discipleship.'" I can always count on a substantial number of people immediately bowing their heads, programmed by this alien template to write down the seven habits I had just said Jesus did not give us. Similarly, I have given entire sermons exploring a biblical story in depth, only to have someone come up to me and say, "Missed our having a text this morning." When a Jesus story only counts when it's broken down by the numbers, it is time to be averse to verse. It is versus-verses time.

You can test the severity of your own versitis by a little experiment. Can you recite from memory the most famous Bible verse, John 3:16, "the gospel in a nutshell"? I bet you can recite it perfectly. Now recite John 3:15. No? John 3:14? How about John 3:17? What story is this verse a part of? Because of our versitis, the Bible is too often stripped of story and mined for minutiae; it becomes not "the greatest story ever told" but the greatest story never told, or half-told.

Don't feel bad. I too was once a Nicodemite. I still am in some ways.

Nicodemus — Jesus' conversation partner in the flannelgraph version of John 3:16 (encompassing John 3:1-21) — is the patron saint of all of us suffering from versitis, as well as all left-brained people. Nick- by-Nite comes to Jesus with a left-brained approach about how to enter the kingdom, and when Jesus tells him he must be born again, he responds, "How can someone be born twice?" And Jesus responds with a right-brained metaphor: "You must be born again of water and of the Spirit." This "ruler of the Jews" interpreted Jesus literally, and mocked Jesus' metaphor: "Must I enter my mother's womb a second time and be born?" Nicodemus met the law, and the law lost. Nicodemus could understand truth as text, as words, as laws, as left-brain logic. But Nicodemus could not process Jesus' right-brained imagery and poetry of being "born again."

How many Nicodemites are there in every corner of Christianity whose versitis has caused them to be more committed to words than to the Word Made Flesh? How many have made a religion of words and lost sight of God's Image-Made-Story? Jesus was trying to show Nicodemus how crippling versitis can be. A faith that doesn't know what a metaphor is can't sustain us, nor can it grasp who God is and how God relates to us. In the fourth century, for example, the Arians read the Nicene Creed literally, believing that Jesus was literally "begotten" by the Father in the same way we are "begotten" by our parents. They never did get the "begotten" metaphor. They could only think literally, and by beating down and banishing the metaphor, they knocked the stuffing out of an inspired, imaginative truth.

Meaning in life is not found from reducing things into smaller categories and making finer distinctions. Meaning in life is found in putting things together; connecting the dots; and getting the "big picture," which can be told in narrative and metaphor.

You furnish the pictures. I'll furnish the war.

newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951)

YOUR BRAIN ON STORY

One of the most exciting conversations today is taking place at the intersection of theology and brain science; it is the most fertile and generative conversation going. We have learned more about the brain (and by extension, us) in the last twenty years than in all of previous history. For example, the human brain processes forty thoughts every second. How? Its complex circuitry of 100 billion neurons make 100 trillion connections. In other words, you can never only do one thing. Even though much of this research treats the brain as a computer, which is vulnerable to reductionist assumptions, the thrust of the research suggests that when it comes to the human brain, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. With so many connections being made at such a rapid pace, the brain assumes a grand narrative within which everything else fits. In this way brain science and cognitive studies are telling us about the built-in human need for religion: The human brain, it appears, is hardwired for God, the Prime Mover. We were made for a relationship with our Maker.

We are also learning from cognitive science and its ancillary disciplines that words come last. Behind every word there is a backstory, which is based on a root metaphor. The right brain is primal and primary, as we prove every time we dream in wordless images and cinematic stories. To be human is to possess, and live out of, a store of stories.

Paul Ricoeur, in a series of revolutionary studies, demonstrated that mythos (the defining stories of a culture) and mimésis (the culture's underlying understanding of reality) are two features of the same process. A narrative is the extension of a metaphor; a metaphor is an extract of narrative. The three "transcendentals of being" — beauty, truth, goodness — Ricoeur describes as "metaphorical acts": After every disaster, the first thing survivors look for amid the rubble is not their diamonds, jewelry, or even safes. They look for their pictures, the images that tell the stories of their lives.

Narraphor precedes principles, and stories and images are the crucibles of thought. Metaphors are the primary path to perceive reality, including the reality of God. To testify to truth is not to versify but to storify.

Lunch will keep us together.

Neil Sedaka

GATHERING AROUND THE STORY

The church used to have "story time," or "testimony time." The early Methodists called this practice a "love feast," and it featured food and a table.

The best place to tell a story is at a table. When you tell a story, you are transferring your experiences directly to the brains of those listening; they feel what you feel, think what you think, smell what you smell. You are teleporting your story to their brain. Research on the brain activity of storytellers demonstrates that the brain patterns of their audience can start to mimic their own. Professional storytellers tell of getting an audience in a "story trance"; people so come under the spell of a story that they start breathing together, nodding their heads in unison, gasping in unison, smiling in unison, moving eyes in unison. It's almost as if they are reenacting the story in real time. Could this be what it means to "have the same mindset as Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5)? By the telling and retelling of the Jesus story, God syncs our mind with Christ.

It is important for each one of us to tell our story and hear each other's story. Every person is a story wrapped in skin. Moreover, everyone lives multistoried lives; as our lives intersect, so do our stories, and new stories splinter out from each encounter. As the old country song put it, "We live in a two-story house. / She's got her story and I've got mine." But the ultimate story is the Jesus story of what God has done in the past, is doing in the present, and will do in the future. It's that story that binds all our stories together.

What we need more than anything else is not more storybooks but more storypeople — people who together participate in the bigger story being told by Jesus. We need to tell a bigger story with our life than the story of ourselves. Our stories should point not just to ourselves but to Christ. If storytelling is brain-syncing, then telling God's story is God-syncing. As we gather around the table, we learn to live well-storied lives, and to connect our story to God's story.

Beyond God-syncing, as storytellers we need to engage in world-syncing. Every company that understands its audience is reorganizing itself not around the product it sells but around its story, its core identity in relation to its context. In a story-driven world, the one with the best story wins.

A proposition is a picture of reality.

A proposition is a model of reality as we imagine it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

THE WAY OF THE TABLE

When we all speak the same language, fewer words are necessary. When we don't speak the same language, more words are required. One of the reasons for the "wordiness" of the church at this point in its history is that we no longer speak the vernacular of the culture. This culture speaks the language of narraphor. Maybe it's time we learned the vernacular of the culture we're in. People are now organizing their lives by adding the best chapters they can to their life story. A sense of self is no longer about "worldviews" or "values clarification" or "leadership principles." It's all about dramatizing and monumentalizing one's life story.

The stories and images Jesus gave us, on the other hand, lift our stories into his. The narraphors of Jesus constitute a universal language with many dialects, each one collapsing the distance between ourselves and the people who came before us, each one connecting ourselves to the people who will come after us. Jesus' narraphors are monumental in and of themselves; they point to the epic story of God and God's world; they are worth living for and dying for.

"If the world could write by itself," the Russian short-story writer Isaak Babel mused, "it would write like Tolstoy." I say, if creation could speak, it would speak like Jesus. Christians believe that creation does speak. All the earth tells its story in the Jesus story. Every stone sings out the stories of Jesus. And so do we. The stories of Jesus, as monumental as they are, are not heroic legends or tales of the heavens. They are ordinary stories of ordinary people in ordinary places doing ordinary things like fishing, tilling fields, and setting tables, but in an extraordinary way.

The ideal place to learn the Jesus stories and the Jesus soundtrack is at the table. Throughout the ages, all over the world, people gather together at a meal in order to get to know each other. If we really want to learn someone's story, sitting down at the table, breaking bread together, is the best way to start. As we sit and eat together, we don't just pass food around; fellow diners pass bits of themselves back and forth as well, exchanging tales as well as condiments. What's the mortar to build community? The grout of grace that is ladled out at mealtime.

A creed is an ossified metaphor.

Elbert Hubbard

STARVING WITH FOOD IN SIGHT

A poor man had wanted to go on a cruise all his life. As a youth he had seen an advertisement for a luxury cruise and had dreamed ever since of spending a week on a large ocean liner, enjoying fresh sea air and relaxing in a luxurious environment. He saved money for years, carefully counting his pennies, often sacrificing personal needs so he could stretch his resources a little further.

Finally he had enough to purchase a cruise ticket. He went to a travel agent, looked over the cruise brochures, picked out one that was especially attractive, and bought a ticket. He was hardly able to believe he was about to realize his childhood dream.

Knowing he could not afford the kind of elegant food pictured in the brochure, the man planned to bring his own provisions for the week. Accustomed to moderation after years of frugal living, and with his entire savings going to pay for the cruise ticket, the man decided to bring along a week's supply of bread and peanut butter. That was all he could afford.

The first few days of the cruise were thrilling. The man ate peanut butter sandwiches alone in his room each morning and spent the rest of his time relaxing in the sunlight and fresh air, delighted to be aboard ship.

By midweek, however, the man was beginning to notice that he was the only person on board who was not eating luxurious meals. It seemed that every time he sat on the deck or rested in the lounge or stepped outside his cabin, a porter would walk by with a huge meal for someone who had ordered room service.

By the fifth day of the cruise, the man could take it no longer. The peanut butter sandwiches seemed stale and tasteless. He was desperately hungry, and even the fresh air and sunshine had lost their appeal. Finally, he stopped a porter and exclaimed, "Tell me how I might get one of those meals! I'm dying for some decent food, and I'll do anything you say to earn it!"

"Why, sir, don't you have a ticket for this cruise?" the porter asked.

"Certainly," said the man. "But I spent everything I had for that ticket. I have nothing left with which to buy food."

"But sir," said the porter, "didn't you realize? Meals are included in your passage. You may eat as much as you like!"