Bible "Story"

Based on a recommendation from my sister, I recently took two courses from Landmark Education, for a total of about 70 hours of interactive instruction. In it they described the concept of “story” and how our stories keep us from growing and being truly creative with our future. Other branches of psychology also make use of this term.

During the course, many people went up to the microphone and described an ongoing problem with their life. The instructor would coach them in front of ~100 people, up to 45 minutes, trying to help them “let go” of their story. Oftentimes, the entire room can see the person’s story and their sin and yet the person in the spotlight simply can’t “get it” except with repeated overtures and arguments put forth by the instructor.

To help people distinguish reality from the story, the instructor typically drew two circles on a chalkboard: “What happened” (reality) and “I said…” A classic example is miscommunication between a husband and wife. The husband might say, “The sink is dirty.” That is the reality—what he said. The wife could easily make it into a story, “He doesn’t think I keep house well!” However, there are a multitude of reasons the husband could have made that statement and the wife will never know the reason unless she asks him questions.

Once we create a story (our paradigm or world view), we tend to make all our experiences fit into this story. The Landmark Forum was all about going back as far as possible in our lives to identify the moments where we first created these stories. In the marriage example above, perhaps the wife already has a story that "my husband is always criticizing me." The statement, “The sink is dirty” easily fits into her paradigm, reinforcing what she already thinks to be true. She might choose to react strongly and the couple could easily get into a fight. The husband likely has his own story about his wife and so there they are, each with their own stories that do not match with reality.

Now let’s think about what happens when the wife tells her girlfriend about the latest episode of her husband’s criticism. The girlfriend will naturally sympathize and thereby reinforce the wife’s story. Proverbs 18:17 states, “The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him.” By repeating the matter (Prov. 17:9) the wife has chosen to drag the past into her future and create a reality for her friend who now treats the husband according to what she heard in the wife's story.

Landmark Education strongly emphasizes the power of what we say (our word) in our lives. As I reflect on the Bible and particularly Genesis 1 and John 1, I realized that we are more like God than I realized. The words that we say really do matter. They create our reality. We can change what we say at any time and our future can be entirely different. However, if we continue speaking the messages of the past, we remain entangled in sin. It is fairly easy to spot sin simply from the volume of words needed to express the events and the feelings they produced. Prov. 10:19 states, “When words are many, sin is not absent.”

We all have stories that hold us back to varying degrees. I don’t believe that story = sin necessarily. However, I do believe sin is often at the root of the significant stories of our lives. Bitterness is the fundamental sin at the source of stories that don’t die. The Bible contains only a few scriptures that directly address this sin (Heb. 12:14-17, Eph 4:31). I want to offer an example of “story” from my life and then end this piece with some scriptural examples to illustrate the concept of “story” from a Christian perspective.

In the second Landmark course, we did an exercise where we “disappeared” an area of suffering in our lives. I chose our adoption situation with Ar’Mircle. We wrote down all our experiences, thoughts, and feelings about the situation for ten minutes. Next, we sat opposite from a partner who was instructed to listen silently to our story while we read it over and over. We could stop reading it once the suffering had disappeared. I had to read mine for over a half hour. In the middle I broke down and cried. The point of the exercise was that our partner was not supposed to sympathize, empathize, or reinforce our story at all, even with nonverbal cues. Ideally, they would not even have been able to understand English. Even though I grasped this concept while they were explaining the exercise, it still took me a long time to let go of my story that I had made up about the brokenness of our social welfare system. At the end, I was able to see that while I felt pain and strong emotions due to the situation, I was no longer suffering because I was no longer resisting reality with an attitude of "things should (not) be this way or that way."

Two classic examples of story in the Bible spring immediately to mind. The first is when Elijah flees from Jezebel in 1 Kings 19 after God used him to win a great victory on Mount Carmel. In vv9-10, God asks, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah replies, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant … and put your prophets to death … I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” Hopefully you can hear the story just leaking out of Elijah’s pores. God doesn’t address his complaint directly. Instead, he tries to reach Elijah through the earthquake/wind/fire/whisper experience. Again God asks, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” and again Elijah replies with his story. The words of Elijah’s two stories are actually filled with conviction and righteous indignation. However, I believe he said the second set of words in a very different tone of voice. Apparently God thought he was ready for the next thing, for rather than addressing it as story, he told Elijah his next action plan with Hazael, Jehu, and Elisha.

The second example is from John 5:1-15 where Jesus visits the pool of Bethesda, which was thought to possess powers of healing. “Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’ ‘Sir,’ the invalid replied, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.”

You can just hear the story oozing out of this man. He can’t give Jesus a yes/no answer, which is a good signal that he has some sort of story going on. Landmark builds upon the concept of “story” to what they call a “racket,” which is basically just sin. A racket reinforces your story while providing you with an emotional benefit and justifying the status quo. In this man’s case, his racket was, “No one is helping me so I am justified in not doing something with my life because I can’t get healed.” I’m grateful I was able to let go of my story about the social welfare system, or else I would have created a huge racket about how I was right and “they” were wrong, imputing all sorts of bad motives on all the players in that situation, which would have led me to behave not at all like my master (Jesus).

I am very grateful for God’s Word for its ability to help me identify my sins, rackets and stories each time I read it. Heb 4:12 states, “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” I also count myself lucky to be surrounded by brothers who call me to the standard of the Bible and to have a spiritual wife who is not afraid to point out my sin. It seems like the older I get, the more I realize how much I need help...