Last time, I wrote about how stories do things that prose, exposition and assertions cannot.
This might be news to some people, especially preachers (many of whom read this substack – hello! Keep going!) who use stories to illustrate statements. Many preachers find illustrations extremely difficult, as they struggle to hunt down stories that map exactly onto the expositional point they are making.
One result is that the same stories are churned out again and again, since they ‘work’ and make the point. If you’ve been a Christian for more than a few years, you’ve probably heard the same stories quite a few times – the cleaning lady with hidden share certificates in Disney, or the soldier who pulls pins out of grenades and charges at an immoveable machine gun post.
Preachers set the tone for a theological group or denomination. The culture of certain forms of Christianity is heavily informed by preaching that is heard week in and week out where stories are seen to be subservient to exposition week in and week out. Stories are only used to explain biblical exposition.
For the record, I think preaching should be mostly expositional. It’s not storytelling. It’s preaching and proclaiming, it’s exhorting and encouraging. But evangelicals love to preach on biblical passages that are already expositional, camping out for weeks and weeks in epistles in which Peter or Paul explain things, before flipping back to the gospels and Acts.
The gospels and Acts are stories, but the focus tends to be on the things Jesus and the apostles say, their statements and sermons, rather than the context in which they are saying them. Even the stories Jesus tells, the parables, are explained, rather than experienced or meditated upon, or taken as teaching in their own right.
York Notes
We see this in the wider culture. It’s the YorkNotesification of stories. We were made to read stories at schools, be it Dickens, Hardy, Austen or Shakespeare. But did we want to read the stories and experience them? No, that won’t be on the test. We just want the York Notes. Many sit exams on texts without reading the stories, but only knowing ‘about them’, if that. Is that education?
This has been happening for decades. We see YorkNotesification everywhere. Look at ‘Blinklist’, a service which will fillet non-fiction books for you and tell you the headlines or the ‘key insights’. Admittedly, the books they are summarising are probably over-written or padded out in places. And we’ve all heard the line – probably in a sermon – that someone apologised for writing a long letter because they didn’t have time to write a short one. But if someone summarises a 100-page non-fiction book, so that you don’t now have to read it, they haven’t necessarily done you a favour.
The Power of Paradox
Fiction does things that non-fiction cannot. Stories have a power and a truth of their own which should not be condensed, paraphrased or explained. Fiction, good fiction at least, presents us with a fuller, richer, more complex truth, often highlighting the truth of paradox, or situation in which we know something is both true and untrue in different ways at the same time. And it’s often summed up in a key gesture at a vital point or a short sentence in a particular moment that encapsulates something eternal.
For Example
Read The Great Divorce, and you will find a fascinating and compelling account of how those who reject God are condemned, and continue to willingly and willfully condemn themselves after death.
Read Perelandra, the second book in CS Lewis’ cosmic trilogy, and you will find a profound and sublime commentary on the temptation of Eve in Eden, represented in a story on Venus through the adventures of a character called Elwin Ransom.
It is no coincidence that the hero of my play, The God Particle, is called Gilbert Romans. His surname is an anagram of Ransom. (And his middle name is Selwyn) It’s a nod to the genius of Lewis but also Gilbert Keith Chesterton.
Why I Wrote The God Particle
I wrote The God Particle because I wanted to do something that non-fiction could not. I wanted to explore the idea of science and faith, but in a way that shows how they are inextricably bound together, for better or for worse. And so I wrote a romantic comedy. In the picture, male and female, priest and scientist, are handcuffed together.
When the play was touring, on one occasion, a vicar asked me if I wanted to say anything afterwards, to explain the play. I resisted the urge to yell ‘I wrote a play to say something that couldn’t be explained any other way!’ Instead, I murmured something about how ‘it’s all in the play, really’ and that I’d rather let it speak for itself.
You Be The Judge
Judge for yourself. Why don’t you watch the God Particle? It was brilliantly video-captured in front of an audience (in Frome) and it came out rather well. And it’s just sitting there on Vimeo not really doing anything. There are even some discussion questions to get a conversation going afterwards. Why not give it a go? It costs some money, but why not use it as a way of supporting this substack, especially if you’ve been enjoying what I’ve been writing for some time? And maybe tell a friend? Watch it together and discuss it. Makes a change from Netflix or Wimbledon.
Watch the trailer over here: