The Scarcity of Story
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” (Matthew 13:45)
My wife and I just finished eleven days watching over our three oldest grandkids, two of whom have entered that stage called “teenagerism” and the other nine. Today, we’re feeling our age and the fact that a couple of generations removed from them has produced a vast canyon of differences.
In our younger days, my brother, sister, and I would sit around watching the stories of Lassie, Leave It To Beaver, Batman, and Johnny Quest. Each episode was self-contained unless it was a two-parter. We’d see the situation or problem, the tensions and drama that resulted from the problem, and the solution or climax. In our eleven days with the grandkids, they rarely watched a TV show like that. They feasted their eyes on YouTube videos that featured squealy-sounding young people and lame dialogue. But most of all, there was an absence of plot.
Anyone these days with a camera, even just a cell phone, can put a video together and post it on YouTube, Facebook, or one of the social media outlets. Thus, there is a plethora of short videos that have the same ability as Miller Moths to make their way inside a family room of a home. Almost all of them, however, had an absence of plot or, as I’d like to define it, “story.”
Like the glue we used to put our airplane models together in the past, “story” is the bonding substance that holds past, present, and future life together. It helps us make sense of why, when, where, and how. It gives us the context, the history, the reasons for our pain and our joy. If there isn’t a story, life can be trivialized into meaningless fluff.
Jesus used “story” to teach about spiritual truth and the mysteries of God’s ways. We remember the concepts of the stories of “the pearl of great price,” “the prodigal son,” and “the widow’s mite” teach us. His stories focus on themes such as God’s grace, His love, caring for our neighbor and who that might be, and sacrificial giving.
When a culture loses its sense of story, it becomes adrift, anchorless, and simply exists. It can be fooled into believing that the world’s nonsense is the essence of life. This leads to nowhere but a desert of wandering through life.
I recognize that I am a relic from a different time, prone to enjoying stories from Mayberry, the mysteries of Agatha Christie, and C. J. Box’s adventures of Joe Pickett. I need stories. They are the lens through which I view life.
Going back to those old model airplanes, my older brother had several of them on his bedroom dresser. One day, I decided to see if they could fly. I’d launch them into the air and discovered that none of them could stay in the air before they came crashing back to the floor. When each of the planes crashed, they shattered. The impact negated the adhesive glue, and nothing was left to hold them together.
I find it interesting that I can remember that story from sixty-plus years ago to illustrate the damage that can result from the loss of story.
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