19 August 2010

Why is Story important?

I was recently challenged with writing a little bit about why story is so important. This is what I came up with.


Story is passion. Ever since man has walked the earth, we have told stories. Even God shares stories with us. We start to form stories before we learn words as children, and then later, on telling them, we sometimes realize how much influence society has had in our own creative minds. The limits put on us by society are the imaginary walls which story can climb over, break down, or even simply cease to believe and walk right through.

As a kid I remember playing army with friends or putting on all black and running around as a ninja. The stories that my friends and I told were impossible, but we had fun. We spent our days thinking of new and fantastic tales. To adults our bikes were just that, bikes. But to us, a bicycle was a fighter jet, a tank, or even a motorbike loaded with machine guns and rocket launchers. The stories of the battles we fought were… amazing!

So why is story so important? Moses told the Israelites and us stories about creation, about the great flood, even about God’s glory, but that doesn’t really tell us why story is important. It just tells us that Moses’ story (actually God’s story) is important. Story is the act of relating events, true or imagined, in written or oral communication. Only through story can we learn about our history as people, God’s message, and the fascinating workings of individual creations. I’ve read more books than I can even begin to name, and the common thread for me has always been learning. Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” taught me more about basic training and the rigors on the mind than any non-fiction book or experiences shared with me, and when I got to Ft. Benning, I learned that it was true.

“We Were Soldiers Once… and Young”, taught the reader about the hell that is war, but also about the brotherhood shared by soldiers in shared plight. The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John teach us about Jesus’ ministry on Earth. Stories teach and entertain, they make us feel emotion and they share events that may have happened, but may have also been made up. The greatest stories are retold by millions of people in a million ways. Shakespeare knew this in taking common themes to write many of his plays. From “The Taming of the Shrew” to “Romeo and Juliet”, his stories have been retold in countless ways by countless people, and in many cases his stories were simply retelling of stories he’d been told.

The importance of story is that it allows for communication of emotion and passion. It allows an intimate look into a person’s thought and creative mind. It gives man a chance to release stress or tension or create a smile on another’s face. It also allows us to teach the horrors that have been experienced as a way to help future generations avoid the same. Spinning yarns and relating events gives us connection. From one generation to the next, only through story can we connect to those who we are never able to meet.

Thanks Shakespeare, for allowing me to meet my ancestor MacDuff, through your story of MacBeth.

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