The Strategy of Story 2.1.2024

     To really understand history, you have to understand stories. The reason for remembering past events, for most of human history boiled down to some form of self-interest. Stories were told to remember ancestors, enumerate grievances, to provide a reminder of origins. Past events, communicated through stories were events that mattered. Because they mattered storytelling became a necessary art. Bother before and after the invention of writing the linguistic shaping of reality belonged to storytellers. 

    Let me remind you, that our broad topic of discussion for this year has been identifying and rectifying the Church's growing ignorance of the Bible, Theology, and History.  During February we will consider history. 

    All history, but particularly what is called Church History.⁠ (1) Is relevant to our discussion. The discipline of History (thanks to our German-speaking friends) can be divided (I’ll dispense with the technical terms (since they are in German)) into what actually happened and what was written to have happened. When people talk about the “winners” writing history they are referring to the latter phenomenon. And here is the issue which bedevils us; unless you were present at a given historical event your only access to the latter is the former. History admits to two classes of observation. Those who were there and those who were told about it. There is no other accessibility to the past. 

    What then, do history and story have in common? Everything. Whether for the sake of entertainment, educating the young, creating community consensus, preserving the names and exploits of the past, or inculcating shared values it is the storyteller who controls the dialogue. Because if no one wants to listen, the past dies the slow, despairing death of apathy.

    The Bible provides God’s revelation to His people in various story forms. Some of these forms are more historical than others. Narrative is historical whereas Psalm is liturgical, and Parable is an instructive, wisdom form. Regardless of form, each can contain historical data, and here is the rub, the one which clothes the facts in the most compelling story will be remembered regardless of the form or genre in which the story is told. 

    We spent January considering hermeneutics as it applies to the Bible. During February we examine the hermeneutics of History, for the story told by historians needs interpretation just as much as the stories read in Scripture. And the one who tells the most compelling story controls the dialogue. So, we begin considering the Strategy of Story, at least concerning historical understanding. 

    Strategic thinking concerns itself with the big picture. It envisions an enterprise as a connected, complete, whole. Logistics provides the means, and tactics establish processes and practices; all based upon the end goal, the vision, and the perceived successful outcome of strategy. 

    Discussing the strategy of story, from a historiographical perspective is then an examines the preliminary context of goals, guides, and goads. Goals determine the formal nature of the historical story. Guides determine the trusted sources of the story. Goads are the characters—protagonist, antagonist, hero, and narrator who move the story along. Historical writing has human, literary, and structural benchmarks. All of these contribute to the strategy of story each historian adheres to. In short, the historian determines where the story comes from, how it will be told, and who gets to tell it. 

    Now we confront the central issue. All historians have some kind of agenda. It is this agenda that underlies their selected strategy and all subsequent tactical decisions. And you can’t critically evaluate any of it until the story is told. Our own understanding of history reminds us that not all storytellers choose strategies for the good of the future. Hitler comes to mind as someone who followed a pretty clear strategy of story, leading the whole world to the brink. It was not until Europe was nearly in flames that people realized that what they took to be a heroic story was in fact, a tragedy. Epic it seems is a strategy that can be used to further virtually any strategy regardless of its morality. 

    One of our first goals when considering the strategy of story, perhaps even prior to weighing truth claims, should be evaluating its appeal as story. Not all good stories are true, though they may contain truths. It is by taking a step back and trying to evaluate things from the conceivable goals of a historian/storyteller that we protect culture from falling prey to compellingly told untruths. 

    When we fail to evaluate stories according to their strategic goals using only the barest conceptions of verifiability or narrative artifice, we become vulnerable to propaganda, disinformation, distraction, distortion, and delusion. Basically, everything that Neil Postman warned us about 40 years ago. 

When you watch a movie…there is a strategy to the story.

When you watch the news…there is a strategy to the story.

When you read a novel…there is a strategy to the story.

When you read a resume… there is a strategy to the story.

When you read the Bible…yep.

When you read a Biography…Oh Yeah!

When you read a history book that presumes to be “neutral” or without spin…Then, most of all.

    Either hermeneutics is a curse or a blessing. There is no human endeavor that releases us from the requirement to interpret, understand, and apply. There are two options. First are all the varieties of historical skepticism. Everyone’s lying. Everyone is scheming. No one can be trusted. The past is a far-off country we can never visit and from whose citizens we can never learn. Historical skepticism is the most parasitic of diseases. It could never have existed except for those who critically examined the past sifting the stories they read or heard for factual facts amid the tantalizing tales. Historical skepticism does not deal with the strategy of story it avoids it. By renouncing all understanding in a nihilistic frenzy of resignation it has set the stage for the overt politicization of virtually every area of knowledge. 

    The second option is to do the work. Yep. We come back to this. Read voluminously. Read slowly. Read curiously. Read naively. Read for entertainment. Read for information. Read for knowledge. The more you read, the better you get at it and soon you’ll find yourself doing the kind of critical work that allows you to determine whether a compelling storyteller is lying, confused, earnest, overwhelmed, detached, emotionally involved, duped, dutiful, worshipful, or simply wrong. Making these sorts of judgments requires broad reading in every area of the curriculum so that you can evaluate the strategic motivation of a given storyteller. Oftentimes the degree of difference between a historical novelist, for example, and an actual historian is a matter of intentional framing. The facts in each may be equally true. The reality illustrated equally lifelike. It is the intent that makes one fiction and the other history. They are both story. 

    Constantly engaging in the work of interpretation—immersing ourselves in what Mortimer Adler called the “Great Conversation” prepares us for evaluating all the stories we encounter so that we might critically sift the real, tangible, actual, and verifiable from purely intentional fiction. You are going to interpret. Why not intentionally rather than accidentally? When you approach any story (whether the medium is purely textual, visual, or aural) You will be required to compare, contrast, interrogate, and integrate your thinking. All of this, with respect to the stories that compose our shared history, so that you (and me) may make a sober determination of which storytellers are most compelling. In doing this kind of hard work we enable ourselves to solidly base our understanding of the present—the stories we are telling—on the great stories of the past, all in service to the best, truest story of all.

 

1 In the “Christian West” it seems that to talk of Christian History is bit of an oxymoron. Like most Ducks swim, most History in the West is Christian in at least a cultural sense.