I’m really loving N.T Wrights introduction section to his “big” books. He gives concise explanations of all the tools needed to read what’s coming up next. In many of these areas I’m severely lacking in familiarity. It’s worth noting simply for how straightforward the explanations and examples are.
Here, he explains how narrative epistemology does such a better job of explaining why people believe what they do than all kinds propositional frameworks:
When we examine how stories work in relation to other stories, we find that human beings tell stories because this is how we perceive, and indeed relate to, the world. What we see close up, in a multitude of little incidents whether isolated or (more likely) interrelated, we make sense of by drawing on story-forms already more or less known to us and placing the information wthin them. A astory, with its pattern of problem and conflict, of aborted attempts at resolution, and final result, whether sad or glad, is, if we may infer from the common practice of the world, universally perceived as the best way of talking about the way the world ACTUALLY is. Good stories assume that the world is a place of conflict ad resolution, whether comic or tragic. They select and arrange material accordingly. And, as we suggested before, stories can embody or reinforce, or perhaps modify, the worldviews to which they relate.
Stories are, actually, peculiarly good at modifying or subverting other stories and their worldviews. Where head-on attack would certainly fail, the parable hides the wisdom of the serpent behind the innocence of the dove, gaining entrance and favour whic can then be used to change assumptions which the hearer would otherwise keep hidden away for safety.
-N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, p.40
He goes on to use the story of Nathan confronting King David about his adultery as an example:
Nathan tells David a story about a rich man, a poor man, and a little lamb; David is enraged; and Nathan springs the trap. Tell someone to do something, and you change their life – for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life.
It reminds me of a quote about beauty also being subversive:
The church is realizing that there is an awareness of God sleeping in the basement of the postmodern imagination and they have to awaken it. The arts can do this. All beauty is subversive; it flies under the radar of people’s critical filters and points them to God. As a friend of mine says, “When the front door of the intellect is shut, the back door of the imagination is open.”
-Ian Morgan Cron, Chasing Francis
I think beauty and things like art and music are even MORE subversive than story though.
Catechism may give you all the right answers to recite, but at the end of the day the story you see played out by people you know and things you’ve heard about do much more to shape your real beliefs.