“We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn't mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.”
I’ve been intrigued with this quote from the first time I ran into it. I don’t remember where or when, just that it has intrigued me ever since. The author is Donald Miller and it comes from his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life.
Miller is an author, obviously – writing in two different areas. He is CEO of a marketing company and has written several books on that topic, but he is also well known in spirituality circles for his highly personal stories of spiritual experience while not particularly a church-goer.
He is probably best known for his book Blue Like Jazz which has as its sub-title, Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. Full disclosure here – I have not yet read either of these books. I’ve attempted Blue Like Jazz twice but ended up putting it down both times. It just didn’t work for me at the moment. I do, however, know people who love this book. I’ll try again one of these days.
But it is this one quote that intrigues me -- it has attached itself to my mind like a stickle-burr and refuses to let go. “We live in a world where bad stories are told that life doesn't mean anything and humanity has no great purpose.” I doubt that any one of us could dispute this statement. Turn on the TV, scan the internet, read a newspaper – the news that surrounds us is horrible. A mutating pandemic, wildfires, floods, wars, mindless shootings, family members and random strangers addicted to political lies. I could, unfortunately, go on and on.
If we listen to nothing but this constant negative babble, we too easily come to believe that it’s all true and that there is little hope. The reason all this negativity affects us so is that the bulk of it is delivered in the form of stories – someone’s story about what is happening, stories about someone’s suffering, someone’s anger – and stories affect us much more deeply than straight facts.
Give us a recitation of facts and we might listen to them or not. Tell us a story and we can all be moved to another place, another time, another way of seeing things. There is a reason that Scripture shows us so many examples of Jesus teaching with parables.
But a parable is a special kind of story. A parable starts out like an old familiar tale – one we’ve heard a dozen times – but before we know it, we find ourselves, mouth agape, facing a conclusion we absolutely did not expect. When we, today, for instance, hear the story of the Good Samaritan, we aren’t surprised by the ending because the biblical version is the only one we’ve ever known – and we probably have never even seen a Samaritan -- but Jesus’ original hearers would have been deeply shocked by its ending because one of the deep-set tenets of their lives was that Samaritans were horrible, blasphemous people without an ounce of good to be found in them. How could a Samaritan possibly be the good guy of this story?
Jesus told a story about a badly injured man who needed help and was given that help by another man who looked past societal and religious expectations and helped him – (and if Jews hated Samaritans then it is equally true that Samaritans hated the Jews – this story goes both directions.) And this is the story we still tell 2000 years later – one that tells us we don’t have to remain stuck in the hatreds others try to force on us. Jesus gave us a better story than the expected one.
I read a brief story just this morning online about someone who had done some small thing, not expecting any praise for it, but who later received a note from a complete stranger thanking her because “you made a difference in my life” with the simple “unimportant” thing she did. This person made a difference by telling a different story – a better story. And this story made a light in my day, as well.
Every one of us has the choice to repeat the bad stories told us or to speak a better story, as Miller puts it. Or as St. Paul put it in his Letter to the Philippians: Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—keep your mind on these things.
Scripture is made up of stories. It doesn’t say a whole lot about stories, it just is stories. There are bad scripture stories – stories of violence and selfishness that then use God as their justification for the terrible things done that go without punishment. Those are bad stories – I don’t care that they are in the Bible.
But there are so many good stories, stories of love and promise and hope. These are the stories we remember most – the ones we were taught in Sunday School that seem to stick with us our whole lives. The stories of Jesus are still what bring us here today to be seeking to learn more. These are the good stories, the better stories, the ones that shine light into the darkness.
We can tell good stories, too. Sure, we can repeat the latest scandal or the latest lie, or we can listen for the goodness that is all around us – it really is – and we can repeat the story of that goodness, that kindness. We all long for that kind of story – ones that lift us up rather than dragging us down. It could be something on a world scale or simply some small kindness. It could be a Jesus parable or something you overheard at the grocery store. The world is full of good stories.
Possibly one of the most quoted lines from J.R.R. Tolkien’s great Lord of the Rings saga (certainly one of the greater stories told in our time) is this, from The Two Towers, I believe – Sam encouraging a discouraged Frodo: “It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you.”
The stories that stay with us are the ones that tell us there is hope, and that kindness can indeed be found in this world. If it seems hard to find then we ourselves can be that kindness, that hope.
"We live in a world where bad stories are told...It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story.”
Tell your own stories of goodness – even the ones as simple as holding the door and exchanging an honest smile with a stranger. Tell them in your words, your actions, your thoughts. The world will be better for it – and so will you.
I’ve been intrigued with this quote from the first time I ran into it. I don’t remember where or when, just that it has intrigued me ever since. The author is Donald Miller and it comes from his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life.
Miller is an author, obviously – writing in two different areas. He is CEO of a marketing company and has written several books on that topic, but he is also well known in spirituality circles for his highly personal stories of spiritual experience while not particularly a church-goer.
He is probably best known for his book Blue Like Jazz which has as its sub-title, Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. Full disclosure here – I have not yet read either of these books. I’ve attempted Blue Like Jazz twice but ended up putting it down both times. It just didn’t work for me at the moment. I do, however, know people who love this book. I’ll try again one of these days.
But it is this one quote that intrigues me -- it has attached itself to my mind like a stickle-burr and refuses to let go. “We live in a world where bad stories are told that life doesn't mean anything and humanity has no great purpose.” I doubt that any one of us could dispute this statement. Turn on the TV, scan the internet, read a newspaper – the news that surrounds us is horrible. A mutating pandemic, wildfires, floods, wars, mindless shootings, family members and random strangers addicted to political lies. I could, unfortunately, go on and on.
If we listen to nothing but this constant negative babble, we too easily come to believe that it’s all true and that there is little hope. The reason all this negativity affects us so is that the bulk of it is delivered in the form of stories – someone’s story about what is happening, stories about someone’s suffering, someone’s anger – and stories affect us much more deeply than straight facts.
Give us a recitation of facts and we might listen to them or not. Tell us a story and we can all be moved to another place, another time, another way of seeing things. There is a reason that Scripture shows us so many examples of Jesus teaching with parables.
But a parable is a special kind of story. A parable starts out like an old familiar tale – one we’ve heard a dozen times – but before we know it, we find ourselves, mouth agape, facing a conclusion we absolutely did not expect. When we, today, for instance, hear the story of the Good Samaritan, we aren’t surprised by the ending because the biblical version is the only one we’ve ever known – and we probably have never even seen a Samaritan -- but Jesus’ original hearers would have been deeply shocked by its ending because one of the deep-set tenets of their lives was that Samaritans were horrible, blasphemous people without an ounce of good to be found in them. How could a Samaritan possibly be the good guy of this story?
Jesus told a story about a badly injured man who needed help and was given that help by another man who looked past societal and religious expectations and helped him – (and if Jews hated Samaritans then it is equally true that Samaritans hated the Jews – this story goes both directions.) And this is the story we still tell 2000 years later – one that tells us we don’t have to remain stuck in the hatreds others try to force on us. Jesus gave us a better story than the expected one.
I read a brief story just this morning online about someone who had done some small thing, not expecting any praise for it, but who later received a note from a complete stranger thanking her because “you made a difference in my life” with the simple “unimportant” thing she did. This person made a difference by telling a different story – a better story. And this story made a light in my day, as well.
Every one of us has the choice to repeat the bad stories told us or to speak a better story, as Miller puts it. Or as St. Paul put it in his Letter to the Philippians: Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—keep your mind on these things.
Scripture is made up of stories. It doesn’t say a whole lot about stories, it just is stories. There are bad scripture stories – stories of violence and selfishness that then use God as their justification for the terrible things done that go without punishment. Those are bad stories – I don’t care that they are in the Bible.
But there are so many good stories, stories of love and promise and hope. These are the stories we remember most – the ones we were taught in Sunday School that seem to stick with us our whole lives. The stories of Jesus are still what bring us here today to be seeking to learn more. These are the good stories, the better stories, the ones that shine light into the darkness.
We can tell good stories, too. Sure, we can repeat the latest scandal or the latest lie, or we can listen for the goodness that is all around us – it really is – and we can repeat the story of that goodness, that kindness. We all long for that kind of story – ones that lift us up rather than dragging us down. It could be something on a world scale or simply some small kindness. It could be a Jesus parable or something you overheard at the grocery store. The world is full of good stories.
Possibly one of the most quoted lines from J.R.R. Tolkien’s great Lord of the Rings saga (certainly one of the greater stories told in our time) is this, from The Two Towers, I believe – Sam encouraging a discouraged Frodo: “It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you.”
The stories that stay with us are the ones that tell us there is hope, and that kindness can indeed be found in this world. If it seems hard to find then we ourselves can be that kindness, that hope.
"We live in a world where bad stories are told...It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story.”
Tell your own stories of goodness – even the ones as simple as holding the door and exchanging an honest smile with a stranger. Tell them in your words, your actions, your thoughts. The world will be better for it – and so will you.
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