We are a storytelling people. Or rather, we are a storytelling species. Every people group on earth tells stories. We tell them to children. We tell them to adults. The only time we stop telling stories is when someone is telling stories to us!
Look at the popularity of movies and television. Before TV there were radio dramas. There were silent films. There were Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls. There were plays. There were itinerant preachers and traveling storytellers, men who carried stories from village to village, entertaining people and connecting them to their roots and to each other, to God, to culture, to history. Who doesn’t love a good story?
But the content of the story matters. The “tapes” you play in your head matter. The truths your parents and teachers pour into your mind will shape your entire life.
The truths your life is based on can be as simple as your answers to six questions:
- Where do I come from?
- Where am I going?
- What am I good at and what am I worth–what is my purpose?
- What am I bad at and can I/should I improve?
- What do family members and friends think of me?
- Who is God and what does he think of me?
Stories supply us with answers to these questions, teaching us who we are. Our sense of self is largely influenced by our sense of context, i.e., who we are in comparison to other people living today and other people who lived in the past:
I am a Christian and that means this… I am an American and that makes me different in this way… I am a boy and that means… I am a girl and that means… I am an athlete and therefore… I am good at math, so I might be good at a career like this … I do not enjoy public speaking, therefore I …
God gave the children of Israel a short speech to memorize and quote back to the priest while performing a first fruits offering. Read these words and imagine how God’s words would have influenced the self-concept of those who committed these words to memory:
“My father [Jacob] was a wandering Syrian, and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, but few in number. But there he became a great, mighty and populous nation. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us and imposed hard labor on us. Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction and our toil and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with great terror and with signs and wonders. And He has brought us to this place and has given us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Now behold, I have brought the first of the produce of the ground which You, O Lord have given me” Deuteronomy 26:5-10.
Do you see the way this passage gives the Jew a powerful sense of self? A Jew is not merely a Jewish person. Being Jewish means identifying with a people group that is some 4,000 years old. Being Jewish means being a blood descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (whose name was changed to ‘Israel’). Being Jewish means knowing that you come from somewhere, that you are part of a people who were slaves in Egypt, rescued by God, wandered in the wilderness, received the law from Moses, then conquered and settled in the Promised Land of Israel. Deuteronomy 26 informs the Jew that he is good at gratitude and sacrifices, but he probably should strive to do it better. The passage reminds him that God rescued his people, and God provided the land of milk and honey. Deuteronomy 26 says, in effect: Hear oh Israel, you are God’s chosen people, but you must remain humble and grateful because everything you have comes from God.
Now THAT is a truth on which a life can be built. That is a story that teaches a young person who he is, where he is going, and the purpose of the life he has been given. That is a story that will never steer your life off course.
What stories has the world been telling you? Do you believe them all equally? Or do you accept the good and reject the bad? (And how can you know which is which?) The easiest way to recognize the good, the TRUE, is to have parents who have spent their lives memorizing Biblical wisdom.
I wish everyone could be raised by a pair of Proverbs-31 Parents who “speak with wisdom, and faithful instruction on [their] tongues” Proverbs 31:25-26.
The messages we hear the earliest and the most often are the messages that will determine the future of our lives. Yet most of us begin as early as adolescence to swallow the beliefs of others: peers, celebrities, teachers, songwriters, movie directors, favorite athletes, influencers, and more. And that is part of being a teenager. Young people try on alternative viewpoints to see how they fit. Some they will keep, others they will reject.
The problem is, young people adopt many ideas that are wrong, and it can take years to untie the knots created by wrong thinking. And it does not take a lot of bad ideas to shipwreck a life[1].
There are ideas that are correct and there are ideas that are wrong. And you will only be able to sort them out with Biblical knowledge and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That is, you must read, understand, and master the Biblical text. Learn your way around the Bible. Memorize everything that you find deeply meaningful. Become a scholar of the word of God. And pray for wisdom about every idea you encounter in the river of ideas we swim in. Be humble enough to seek the Holy Spirit’s leading on everything!
Dear Lord, bless us with Your wisdom. May we be like the “Men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” 1 Chronicles 12:32.
AΩ.
[1] For example, Americans have long believed that people are philosophically equal, based on the “all men are created equal” idea enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. But today there is a notion that not only am I the moral equal to all the experts and PhDs, but my ideas are equal to the ideas of all the experts and PhDs.
This is ridiculous. And that’s not to say experts are always right. Of course not. Most lawsuits include experts on both sides—they cannot both be right. But these are people with the training and experience to choose the appropriate methodology to evaluate evidence in a manner that tends toward an accurate outcome. In other words, they are actual experts. And the opinion of an expert, while it should be questioned, should not be dismissed without careful reflection. Expertise should mean something. But today it is fashionable to dismiss expertise, often with anger and resentment, but without performing any legitimate analysis.
American culture has a cancer and that cancer is anti-intellectualism. Where does that cancer rage the most? In evangelical churches. Our preference for the backwoods preacher and his homespun wisdom (both of which I love!) can leave us unwilling to think hard about doctrinal or cultural problems, to read anything challenging (including much of the Bible), or to do any research. And no one better mention church history, LOL…
Household Words: 