What Story are You Living?
Issue 005
MARCH 14, 2018
WRITTEN BY CHAD TURNBULL
The narrative we believe about our lives ultimately shapes the course of our lives; it frames our goals, our values, and our choices. Story is the bedrock for how we make meaning. It shapes what we believe about ourselves, what we believe about our relationships, and what we believe about our purpose. The volume of movies, and books, and videos show we are a story-making people. But more importantly, we are a story-made people.
Which leads to a question: do the ancient pages of the Bible really have a story for us today? It’s easy to wrap our minds around the epic of Star Wars, but can we find a narrative in our scriptures wide enough to give shape to the whole of our lives?
Often the answer to that question is harder to see.
The central Biblical narrative has been covered over and cut apart with categories and systems of thought born of a different era. The systematics and doctrines of another time have blurred our ability to see the deeper story, and the old categories have fallen short when faced with the challenges of life today. But what if there was a different way to read the Bible?
There is. And it isn’t new. It’s actually really old.
The Bible comes alive, and our purpose within the larger story of God comes alive, when we begin to grasp the central story of what is happening in the Bible. Our scriptures aren’t just 2000 year old documents for the seminary-trained elite to dissect and study in a lab; they contain a core narrative that equips us with identity, purpose, and a community rich in meaning for life today.
And that is important because we have a mission to accomplish.
“Our scriptures aren’t just 2000-year-old documents for the seminary-trained elite to dissect and study in a lab; they contain a core narrative that equips us with identity, purpose, and a community rich in meaning for life today.”
There is a clear expectation throughout the scriptures that everyday people would be the ones to carry Christ’s work forward. The church we read about in the Bible was not a movement of an elite class of highly educated people - the church of the Bible was a movement of regular people transformed by the presence of Jesus. In fact, in an exchange between the elite religious class and the disciples, the religious elite comment on the contrast between the disciples’ works and their ordinariness.
“When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4:13)
It is Christ’s church, fueled by the Holy Spirit, and He has chosen to bestow upon us all the “priesthood of all believers” as declared by Peter:
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9)
We each have a role to play. So we need to know the story of what we’re doing.
That’s why I love the work of the folks at The Bible Project. Their videos recapture the big story of the Bible for all of us. And it comes alive. The story gives definition to our understanding of who God is, and it helps us reform how we organize our lives and relationships as the church.
Check out their work, and let this ancient story shape your life in a new way.