KEEP IT IN THE STORY

One of the most stimulating discussions I had while at Covenant Seminary recently was with Dr. Michael Williams. Dr. Williams teaches theology at the Seminary and has written a helpful book called As Far As the Curse is Found.

In the course of our conversation Michael made the comment, “We have to keep our theology within the story.” At the time I knew vaguely what he meant – enough to agree intelligently. But it has only been since returning from St. Louis that I’ve seen the fuller significance of what he was talking about.

It’s another book that’s helped me to see things more clearly. While in St. Louis I purchased Robert Webber’s The Divine Embrace, a book that examines Christian spirituality, and especially trends in spirituality through the centuries. Dr. Webber makes the point that the early church anchored its spirituality “in the story” of God’s action in history. The first disciples came to appreciate Jesus in terms of God’s story – a story that began with creation, continued beyond the fall to the call of Abraham and covenant with Israel; that embraced the incarnation and was moving further on toward the consummation when Jesus returns. Their understanding, their way of looking at life – their worldview, you could say – was framed by a story.

The critical thing, Webber argues – and this is the point that Michael Williams was making – is to see ourselves and our relationship with God within this story. We don’t always do this well. In fact, in the course of history, Robert Webber says, God’s people have again and again lost contact with the story. And they have done so in two ways.

Firstly, they have shifted their centre of focus to themselves rather than God. This typically happens when people become more concerned about their experience of God than about God himself. This is reflected in the various forms of mysticism, pietism and experientialism that have arisen in the church over the centuries. These expressions of spirituality are rampant in the church today. The influence of psychology and the “me-centered” orientation of our society in general, have disposed us to think more about ourselves, our feelings, and our welfare than about God and what he is doing in his world.

A second tendency has been to intellectualize the faith. Theologians and others with an intellectual bent of mind love to come to the Bible to discover what it teaches on particular subjects – especially about God himself. They gather insights and information about their topic from different passages in the Bible and organize these into neatly defined themes which they reflect upon. They use words like “omniscience” and “providence” and “incarnation” to express their ideas, and in doing so, develop a jargon that leaves the uninitiated all at sea.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing this, it does have an overall effect on the way people think and live. It creates an intellectual and abstract approach to God and the Christian faith. Being a Christian means believing a set of propositions about God and salvation rather than believing in a God who has acted to save us. Being a disciple becomes a matter of conforming to an accepted code of conduct rather than following a person.

That’s a major problem among many of us who belong to the conservative tradition within the church today. We conceive of God in terms of ideas and study the Scriptures scientifically. The outcome may be precision and clarity, but it is also often cold and impersonal. We lose the awareness that God is a living, real, personal being who calls us to “walk before him and be perfect” (Genesis 17:1). And when that happens, both our expression of the faith and our experience of it become theoretical, critical and abstract.

That’s why it’s so important to keep ourselves in the story. When we read the Bible, reflect on history, and consider our own lives, we have to see everything as part of the story of God at work in his world through Christ by the Holy Spirit. That will help nourish an expression of the faith that is warm, vibrant and relational.