The Narrative of the Stories

The history of the world is a story. It is simply one giant narrative that humanity has been trying to tell ever since the first humans roamed the earth. Because even the most primal traces of life and culture and civilization have all used storytelling to communicate and live and navigate the mysterious world around them.

Storytelling is what has carried humans through the this place.

Contrast that with today.

Now what has happened is that we have attempted to deconstruct stories as being simple, meaningless, and for children only. Stories have somehow become this unprofessional, lower form of communication that you can use, but try to only use it at home. Which is unfortunate because this way of thinking misses a central characteristic of being human and surviving the world. It throws out something that has given life and meaning to human beings since the beginning of our existence.

Stories.

Because stories drive the world.

They are the force that continually propels our movement forward every single day.

Just look at the kinds of conversations we have. Almost every single one of them finds us relying on the same method of communication:

Storytelling.

Not lists and outlines and dry descriptions with no life. You don't get in a fight with someone and numerically lay out your thoughts like the abstract of an academic research paper. You tell stories about what happened and what it did to you and how you felt. Your language acts as a tool to show your experience and bring the other into that experience with you. Because when you mechanize language and distill it of its depth, you are taking away its life and emotion and that essence that allows you to see and feel and know exactly what the other is talking about.

It is almost as if we have this natural inclination that stories and images and pictures capture the world for us in ways that just make sense. There is something about them where they are able to bring words together to express something beyond what those words themselves are capable of.  Which is why while you forget most of the facts and dates from your high school history classes, you can still remember that story your teacher told at the beginning of your first day about the time he went to the Chinese restaurant and someone gave him their kid and left. Stories are powerful. They stick. The world makes more sense with them.

Because our brains are wired for it.

Which is why when God decided to communicate to the world, God started with,
"In the beginning..."

This is God's chosen method to speak to us.

God uses a story.

Because stories can say more than any other language device or communication form can come close to.

So if we are going to try to make sense of the world and truly understand what we are doing here...we are going to have to use stories.



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Which means we have a responsibility to know the story we are telling.

We have to be aware of this overarching narrative that we are a part of.

And that is what this section is all about. This is my attempt to give you the story of our world. Which makes this kind of life a reference. Because once you have the core story, you can take each individual writing that is posted and properly place it within this larger narrative where it belongs.

Essentially, this is giving you the context that encompasses the rest of the writings.

Because beyond all of these stories and thoughts and ideas that are written here is something larger that holds them all together and in which all else finds its common place. It is like the stem of a plant that has many diverting branches all connecting back, giving the rest of the branches life and meaning and purpose.

So these writings may all be different, they may all have different elements and give different angles or variations, but they are really all just helping to tell the same larger narrative of the world. Each one is just a different picture of the same archetype. It is all based on the same story.

And this story that they are all trying to tell happens to be the story of our world...the one that we find ourselves existing in every single day.

So we have to be sure we know this story. We have to be sure to know what stem these different branches are coming from and what they all come back to.



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If you want to actually understand a story in its entirety, you have to begin in the beginning because the beginning of any story is the most important and influential part. Without the beginning, you miss where everything comes from.

Because the way a story begins is what shapes its entire direction.

Even more so true with this story of our world. In this story, the beginning is captured in a writing called 'Genesis' which literally means "Beginnings"and, in this writing, the beginning centers around a picture of God creating the world.

So we immediately know that whatever happens here is going to have a pretty big impact on how the rest of the story unfolds. Because however the world gets created is going to set the stage for everything else that happens within that creation.

And as you begin reading the beginning of this story in Genesis you quickly realize that it isn't just a series of notes and details giving a surface level description of the entire thing. It is actually a poem. Because there is something bigger going on here than just explaining what happened. The poem is an attempt to capture that bigger thing. It is like the author is saying, "Don't get caught up in the 'how' of it all. I want to show you something else."

The author wants us to see the 'why'.

Beyond the details, the author wants us to see that those details have a purpose to shape the very existence of the world.

Because how God creates and begins the world reveals God's dream for it.

So maybe the author didn't choose a poem. Maybe the author simply acknowledged the fact that a poem was the only proper way to communicate the picture of how the story begins.

Now, in this poem, everything that is brought into existence and everything that happens takes place within a garden. And there is a significant, reappearing detail that the author seems to want us to pick up on as these things take form in the garden. Over and over again we find God calling everything "good". Light, the skies, the grass, the trees. The fish and birds and insects that crawl on the ground. Everything is good. Which is just another way of saying that everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be. It is a picture of wholeness and harmony, where everything is in its right place. Everything is right in the world. Everything is true. Every thing and person is connected fully with every single other thing and person.

It is all exactly the way it was created and intended to be.

The Hebrew people have always picked up on this. They've always known that the poem's purpose isn't to show the scientific explanation of the origins of the universe, but to show us what the central essence of God's world is. Because how something is created shows what it is supposed to be right? The Hebrews understood this; that the poem is meant to show the way God creates the world to function. And they had a word they used to portray this way God created the world.

It is the world shalom.

In English, the word shalom typically gets translated simply as peace, but it is really much deeper and more meaningful than the version of peace that is often referred to in our culture. Shalom is more than just the absence of conflict that we so often refer to it as. Rather shalom is the picture of how God originally creates the world to be. It is the goodness and the wholeness and the beauty of God that is fashioned into the fiber of every single part of the universe. Shalom is those moments where you can feel the world flourishing exactly how it ought to be.


Shalom is the experience of God's dream for the world.


And this is what the garden is all about.

[ For more on shalom read - Eating Our Way Back to the Garden ]


Eventually, as the poem continues, we find that God does something with this world of shalom that seems to stand out in the midst of all the other details.

God gives it to us.

The plants, the animals, the skies, the lands, the water, the very essence that causes the world to continue to move and sustain and produce, God puts that in our hands. Many people throughout history have taken this to mean that the world is theirs to do with whatever they want. But the words God uses to explain this role aren't words of domination and oppression and abuse. That isn't what God says. Rather, the picture God gives us uses words of care and guidance and direction. Less like a master towards their servant and more as a parent with their newborn child. As creation grows and moves we have the role and responsibility to take it in the right direction. We are supposed to be nurturing and guiding and directing the world in the way God created it to be. So wherever this thing goes, whatever direction that it moves...it is on us.

And the dream is that we would continue to take it in shalom. That through our directing and our participation, the flourishment of the garden would just keep growing and growing and growing.

And this is how the story begins.

It begins with shalom.

But unfortunately, this isn't how the story continues.

From here, we see that for the people placed within the midst of God's created world there's a choice: they can carry God's version of the world out, they can continue to partner with God in guiding this creation described as "good", aligning with God's dream for it all.

Or they can take it their own way. They can choose to get caught up in their own thing.

As the story goes we find out that they chose to take God's world and make it for them. They take the shalom and goodness and connection and they disrupt it.

So the story that begins with shalom ends up moving to a world better described as non-shalom.

This is how the story progresses.

There is creation.

But then it becomes a broken creation.

Which is what happens when we take the way the world was created to be and go outside of it. Instead of participating in the way of shalom, we begin participating in something else.

Which is what sin is. Sin is simply all the ways we fracture the world.

It is all the ways we participate in disconnecting the shalom this place was created for.

And this happens to be a lot like the world we find ourselves in today. We live in the midst of a very disconnected and fractured universe. And we can feel it. Whether it be with creation, with each other, with ourselves, or even with our Creator, we have a keen awareness that the world is disconnected. But there is also a keen awareness that this isn't the way the story started. It isn't the way things were created to be.

The story doesn't feel very "good" anymore.

Yet, this isn't how the story ends either.

Because God hasn't given up on this thing.

The story ends not with God abandoning the world, but with God reclaiming it. God doesn't see this world we've brought into being and destroy it and leave it all behind. God enters into with us in order to make all things new again. To take what was broken and restore it. Because God called it good. So no matter how fractured it becomes, it is still God's and God wants to put it back together again.

The broken creation becomes a new creation. It all gets restored.

This is how the story ends.

It begins with shalom and connection and goodness and it ends the exact same way with the same shalom and the same connection and the same goodness restored back to the garden again.

Our story is one where God is on this massive rescue mission to do that. To make all things new.




And we have been invited to participate in it.




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This story is essentially the story of the Bible and Israel. It is a story of God moving to bring his world back, actively in pursuit to make whole what has been broken. Every single book and chapter and letter and story and verse are all a part of telling this story.

Which is the very story that Jesus enters into.

Jesus enters into this world with all of these different kingdoms and dominions and realms that we have created throughout our existence and invites us to leave them behind for what God is up to in the universe, for God's Kingdom instead of ours.

It makes sense that the first Christians decided to call it good news.

Because Jesus is bringing God's way to earth. Jesus is invading the disconnection and brokenness and all the ways we've misdirected the world into what its not supposed to be. Jesus invades that in order to transform and re-shape it back into God's world again.

It is this movement to re-expose us to the world of God and what it looks like and how it works and especially how it doesn't work. It is a movement to liberate the world from this mess we've made and reconnect what has been broken since the creation poem back in the garden.

This is why Jesus calls himself "The Way". Because his teachings, his way of life that he invites us to follow, his movement in the world...it is the way back to how God created and intended the world to be.

It is the way back to the the garden of shalom that God is renewing in the world.

Meaning that in Jesus we see that God hasn't given up on the world. All the ways we've disrupted shalom. All the ways we've fractured our relationships with God and the world and with ourselves. All the ways we've taken this thing in the wrong direction. God is doing something about it.

So Jesus comes and puts it on display.

Which is what Jesus' death and resurrection is all about. It is the ultimate picture of what God is doing. It is the ultimate picture of God's world. The death and resurrection is simply what restoration and healing and overcoming death and disconnection looks like. It is the way God uses to turn the world right side up again.

Jesus' death and resurrection is God's way of restoring the world.

And it is something Jesus has invited us to participate in. Which is why he keeps saying, "Follow me."

Because following Jesus is simply accepting the invitation of getting caught up with what God is doing in the world.

Following Jesus is being a force of shalom bringing God's world here and now through this 'way'.

Following Jesus is refusing to participate in more and more disconnection and to be people who are actively partnering with God's dream for the world through death and through resurrection.

A Christian is just someone who is constantly aligning themselves with that.

The Church is simply a community putting that on display.

This is the story of the world. This is what all the other stories come back to and where all the other stories find their place. Each writing is simply a way to articulate this narrative of the world as an attempt to bring us into this story and orient our lives around it so that we can begin carrying it out.



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Which is why I've called this the Restoration Project.

If we are trying to discover what it means to follow Jesus, then we are naturally discovering what it looks like to make this world good again. And you can call it all sorts of different things; being a disciple or a believer or bringing God's kingdom or being a Christian, but they are all simply ways to attempt to describe this movement of reconnecting what's been disconnected, bringing shalom to a world of non-shalom, and reflecting God's dream for the world through the way of Jesus.

Because God is up to something in the universe. God is on a restoration project and we've been invited to participate.

Following Jesus is choosing to participate.

And these writings are all my attempt to get caught up in it.