Understanding stories - understanding God

We all (well I guess, most of us) like a good story. Even better, a good story told by a good storyteller. A good storyteller will use different strategies to draw you into the story’s world. They will endeavour to communicate the story in such a way that you would somehow see it play of in your mind's eye and sometimes even feel part of it - inviting you into the world of the story. Good stories well told also involve the listeners emotion. Thus, a joke told well will make you cry with laughter. A good love story will produce all sorts of emotions - empathy, sadness, happiness, excitement etc. Storytellers and writers employ different strategies to achieve this goal in order to communicate their message more effectively.

This is no different for the stories we find in Scripture. The original storytellers of the biblical stories were masters of their trade. They also wished to involve their audiences in their stories on different levels. They also used different literary strategies to communicate the all important message of God’s journey with his people. Bible stories are not cold hard facts told in a dull fashion. They were told around the family fire in such a way that the stories would not only be remember but also in a fashion that would make the children sit up and listen, knowing that these are stories about their ancestor’s journey with God – knowing that the stories will continue in and through them.

Now, these stories became part of our canon – God’s Word to us.

If God wished to communicate his message to us by means of different genres, shouldn’t we take the way narratives function serious as well – not only as stories that played of long long ago, but to understand them for how they are told and what they want to achieve? In other words, for us to understand God’s message better, we should take the means by which this message is communicated serious. By not doing it, we might only get half the message or even the wrong message.

I think that Long (1994:43) was right when he said that

an increased appreciation of the literary mechanisms of a text—how a story is told—often becomes the avenue of greater insight into the theological, religious and even historical significance of the text—what the story means.

Knowing how stories work, what they wish to achieve and how they wish to achieve it, might bring us to a better understanding of who and how God is.

Stories - God's medium for self-revelation

Fokkelman (1999:19), a specialist in the analysis of biblical narratives, notes that, “What we have to learn is to read these stories according to their own rules and conventions, in an attitude of respect, and maintaining an open mind as long as possible". A number of issues comes to light from his observation. It is all about how we need to approach Scripture.

In the first place, we need to consider the type of literature (genre) we are reading. If we are dealing with narratives, we need to read them as narratives. We need to establish the rules they are written by. You cannot understand (analyse) Rugby if you do not understand Rugby rules or by applying Soccer rules. The text should thus determine how we read it.

Another, very important issue, has to do with the attitude we approach the text with. We are dealing, after all, with God’s Word. Even if one does not share this believe it should still be dealt with honourably. Respect is also shown when one respect the rules and convention that governs the part of the Bible we are dealing with, allowing it to communicate its message. In other words, we should be careful that we do not read our ideas into the text. By not considering the genre and its rules and conventions, this can easily happen.

Lastly, contrary to common thinking, we need to approach the Bible with an open mind. If we truly respect the Bible as God’s Word, we cannot allow our preconceived ideas (or presuppositions) to override what the text wants to communicate. Sometimes the text communicates, as I have shown earlier, a different message than what we think is true. The question then is whether we will ‘override’ the text or whether we will let the text change our ideas. We all approach the Bible with our own presuppositions (we cannot escape it), but will we allow Scripture to question those ideas and make amendments when and where necessary?

It is interesting, though, that Fokkelman qualifies or limits the idea of an open mind. Having an open mind does not mean we accept everything or just go with the flow. No, we maintain an open mind as long as possible – as far as the Bible allows us.

The question, in terms of my thesis, is therefore, whether we have an option other than to deal with the text as literature. This means that when we get to the biblical narratives that we need to also deal with God in a literary way. Coming to think of it, about two thirds of the Bible consists of stories and God plays a huge part in most, if not all, of them. It then seems stories are God’s medium of choice to reveal himself to us. Maybe we should take them more serious for what they are and how they function.