“I believe cinema is now the most powerful secular religion, and people gather in cinemas to experience things collectively, as they once did in church. Cinema storytellers have become the new priests. They ’re doing a lot of the work of religious institutions, which have so concretized the metaphors in their stories, taken so much of the poetry, mystery and mysticism out of religious belief, that people look for other places to question their spirituality. I don’t think we fully understand yet the need of people to gather together to listen to a story, and the power of that act.”
-George Miller (Happy Feet, Babe, Mad Max)1
Preachers and teachers soon notice that stories draw an audience in. Compared to a list of propositional points in a lecture, stories (or good ones at least) are more concrete and emotionally accessible, almost experiential: a listener can feel like they have learned a lesson from life in the company of others. A story well told feels like a dialogue, an invitation to try it on for size and make it your own. When life feels random and unresolved, a story can help people who have “lost the plot,” giving a sense that our present experience is part of an ongoing story of cause and effect that is progressing somewhere. Bible stories in particular constantly assure us that God can play a part in the real world, and may yet be an influential character in our personal stories. For postmodern hearers who are suspicious of metanarratives, a story acts like just a humble little truth, yet can smuggle in profound meaning.2 Stories have always been superb vehicles for religious experience: Jesus said nothing without one ( Mk 4:34 ).3
STR 2:1 (Summer 2011) p. 12
Yet Old Testament narratives have often been under-utilized in Christian preaching and teaching. Biblical narrative itself has been considered light and simple, better left to children while sophisticated minds analyze epistles or prophecy. Then again, some Bible stories explicitly portray such violent or sexual themes that some have practically excluded them from the canon of preaching, finding them sub-Christian or just too hard to explain. Yet perhaps they are designed to cut through apathy and provoke passionate moral questioning at an adult level.4 Some may have considered OT stories part of the old covenant, forgetting that Jesus and the apostles used .