The Story Telling Species

The reason why Dawkins is failing is because we are not ‘just’ Homo sapiens living in a propositional world but we are story telling species who construct our own and others identity on stories. When Dawkins tells us we need to live rationally and propositionally he is preaching to a majority of story tellers and thus atheism makes up for only 3.8% of the population.

Why is it that we use the method of story telling to construct identities and to learn more about God, ourselves, the world we live in and so on? Is it because we are unable to speak the truth? Is it because we live in a dark and mysterious world and therefore story telling makes everything easier? Is it so we are able to put the divine into words that humanity can understand? Is it merely because stories are more interesting than facts?

Sally McFague argues that Jesus used parables to communicate the ordinary. Jesus’ parables shocked, upset conventions and expectations and therefore had revolutionary potential. However this provides a problem for the church as McFague argues Jesus’ parables don’t assume a belief and therefore something like the parables of the kingdom can be interpreted as secular. Furthermore, she recognises that we use metaphors to convey an experience that we are all able to recognise. Therefore if theology is metaphorical and secular, then it is appropriate for not just Christians but atheists who also feel they want to learn how to do life well.

One of Webster’s Dictionary definitions of ‘story’ is “A piece of fiction that narrates a chain of related events”. If a story is defined as fiction and yet we construct our whole identity and the identity of our world based around stories then are we all living in one big lie? In a fairy tale that we have constructed for ourselves? This is not true because the whole of humanity would be living in the same ‘fairy tale’ which is impossible and therefore the conclusion must be that story telling is an effective method of constructing the world we live in.

The question that follows is, is the method of story telling effective in telling us more about God. In the bible there are hundreds of stories told and through these stories one may argue that we learn the nature of God, the personality of God, the love of God and so on. Through Jesus’ parables we learn about the kingdom of God, justice, how to live correctly and purely. Therefore we are learning about God aren’t we? Well, it could be argued that we are learning our own construction of God. We all interpret and listen to stories differently. We all create and paint different pictures of characters in a story, whether it be their physical appearance or their personality, we all have different views of different characters. Therefore when reading stories in the bible do we actually construct the correct image of God. Are some people interpreting God as a condemning God whilst others see him as a loving God? Do some see him as friend and others as father? Is this wrong? Is it okay that we all have different views or is there one image of God that we all need to discover through the story? Ultimately, even if different constructions of God do occur, it is the process of the story which allows the construction of God to occur in the first place reiterating that stories are what help us learn about God.