Storied Living

I'm reading A New Way to Be Human by Charlie Peacock and he talks a lot about how we are born into a story. Our lives are connected with the lives of our genetic, academic, and spiritual ancestors. Our lives carry on what they worked through in their lives which was passed on to them from their ancestors. None of us are isolated from the stories that we enter into.

When we become Christians we enter into a story. It is the story of Israel and of the church. Our lives reflect what has occurred before our time and we continue to work out our faith to impact those who will come. Thus the study of history is incredibly important for the disciple of Jesus. Understanding how Jesus entered into the story of the Jewish people is important because it is our story. In the same way, understanding how Jesus has changed the religion of Yahweh (spanning both Jewish heritage through today's church) is also important.

There are two reasons why I think this is important. First of all, it puts our life into proper perspective. We see Christianity not as a means of moral development but of history changing. Our lives will be the way that we can change history for the better or the worse. Our glories and failures are not independent of the Story. The story perspective is also important because it gives us the means through which we can measure ourselves. By seeing the wrongs that the Jews and the church has committed we can try to correct these from happening again. We also learn from their successes and we follow in the patterns they have set behind us.

Through all this we always realize that there is opportunity to see the Christian story in new ways. We do not simply emulate the behaviors of the past. We reinvent the present and try to to live out Christ-ways in a different manner. We never lose our creative contribution to the Story. We remain humble and in that humble faith try to redefine what it means to be human in the context of the story we find ourselves in.