Or ‘what happens when we listen to people the way we read the Bible‘#4

Dramatis Personae:

Bob: Head of BobCorp, doomed to be perpetually misunderstood
Martha: Vice President of Tractors
Sonia: Deputy Assistant Tractor Upholstery Facilitator
Kelli: Sonia's mate and drinking companion
Amelia: Reporter for The Daily Weekly
Bobby: A Writer of Books
Other people who do things in offices

Scene 1: Office of Martha, the Vice President of Tractors. Monday Morning. Present: Bob. Absent: Martha.

Bob: Tum-te-tum-te-tum, fiddle-de-dee, fra-la-la-la-la-la- oooooooh -
Martha: (rushing in frantically) So sorry I'm late! Just answering a call of nature.
Bob: Quite alright, quite alright. If I had a penny for every penny I've spent, I'd, um, well, I guess I'd have, um, well, I suppose it depends how many pennies I started with, ummm...
Martha: Er, was it the Mongolian Tractor account that you wanted to discuss with me? I've got all the paperwork here.
Bob: Thank you, yes, but actually, before we get onto that, I notice that you left your workstation unlocked.
Martha: My what un-what?
Bob: Your workstation. Your PC. Your computer.
Martha: Aaaah.
Bob: Yes, you left it unlocked. You know. I could have used it while you were out.
Martha: Well, I guess that would be okay, as long as you don't read my personal emails.
Bob: No, um, you're missing the point. I could have used it. You know. For anything.
Martha: Don't you have your own? You should really talk to I.T. I mean, if you don't have a, a... workingstation... then...
Bob: No no no. The point is, anyone could have come in and used your machine.
Martha: Well, not while you were using it, surely? Who'd dare?
Bob: (sighing) Okay Martha, let me tell you a story. Before I built BobCorp, I worked for a firm of accountants. One day, one of the interns went out to lunch, leaving their computer unlocked, and one of the cleaning staff just happened to notice. They took copies of a whole load of top secret files, sold them to a rival firm, and the fallout resulted in half of the board of directors getting fired, six client companies going out of business, and a small island to the East of New Guinea vanishing into the sea.
Martha: Woah.
Bob: Yeah. The island might have been a coincidence, to be fair. But the point is this: ALWAYS LOCK YOUR COMPUTER WHEN YOU ARE GOING TO BE AWAY FROM YOUR DESK. Okay?
Martha: I have definitely understood what you are saying, and certainly won't misinterpret it in any way.
Bob: Great! And can you let your team know?
Martha: I will absolutely and faithfully pass on what you've said.
Bob: Double great! (He whistles happily to himself.) Now, about those Mongolian tractors...

Scene 2: Meeting Room #34.52A. Tuesday morning. Present: Martha, Sonia, assembled other people.

Martha: And that just about concludes our morning round-up. There's just one more thing on the agenda. Yesterday I was talking to Bob.
Sonia: Aaah, Bob's so great!
Other people: Oooh yes, such a great communicator.
Martha: Indeed. Anyway, he told me a story.
Sonia: I LOVE Bob's stories!
Other people: Oooh yes, he tells such great stories.
Martha: Right. So, anyway, Bob used to work for a firm of accountants, and half of the board got fired because a cleaner stole some information from an intern's computer that had been left unlocked.
Everyone: Gasp! Poor Bob! Oh no! etc.etc.
Martha: Exactly. So from now on - and this is super important - interns need to clean their own computers, okay? I don't want the cleaning staff going anywhere near them.
Ensemble: (variously nodding heads and making sage sounds)
Martha: Great! Now let's get those Mongolian tractors off the shelves, okay?
Ensemble: Woo! Yeah! We love Bob! Go Mongolia! etc.

Scene 3: Thursday evening, The Bat and Whiskers public house, near BobCorp headquarters. Present: Sonia, Sonia's mate Kelli.

Kelli: So, are you still enjoying working at BobCorp?
Sonia: Oh yes! Unrealistically so! Bob is just such a great CEO. He just seems really wise, you know?
Kelli: Oh?
Sonia: He tells these amazing stories.
Kelli: I've got nowhere to be for the next half an hour - tell me one of his stories.
Sonia: Okay... well, once upon a time, he worked for a company of accountants.
Kelli: Which company?
Sonia: Oh, well, he didn't say, but okay, let's call them Peach, Plum and Panda. Inc.
Kelli: Nice.
Sonia: Anyway, they had this intern. Um, called... Kevin. And Kevin was a bad egg.
Kelli: How bad?
Sonia: Right, well, he was on drugs, and had only got his internship because he was blackmailing the boss over something his daughter had done when she was at college studying botany.
Kelli: Botanists, right?
Sonia: Right! Anyway, this intern, he was drunk and stoned one day, and just left his desk with his computer switched on and a load of top secret files on the screen, and he passed out in the basement, and when he staggered back into work a few hours later, all his files had been stolen.
Kelli: Nooo!
Sonia: Yes - you see, one of the cleaners was actually a top male Russian industrial spy, masquerading as a small short-sighted Latino cleaning woman.
Kelli: Very common, that.
Sonia: And of course, all that top secret stuff got sold to a rival firm... um, Apricot, Apple and Angus Inc. And half the board of directors got sacked over it.
Kelli: How ghastly!
Sonia: I know, right? Dreadful - but it really shows, doesn't it? Nothing is ever really private, you know?
Kelli: Yeah, I mean, if the Russians want your files, there's nothing you can do to stop them.
Sonia: Nothing. True. The only safe way to live is to have no secrets.
Kelli: I'll drink to that. To having no secrets!
Sonia: To having no secrets! (Looks at empty glass.) Fancy another?
Kelli: Why not? Just don't tell my husband.

Scene 4: Amerstones Book Store, near the site where BobCorp headquarters once stood. Present: Amelia (a reporter), Bobby (a writer).

Amelia: Bobby. Tell us about your new book, "The Wisdom of Bob". Why another book about your grandfather, the legendary Bob of BobCorp? Aren't there enough already?
Bobby: Thanks Amelia. Yes, the market does seem quite saturated, doesn't it? But it seemed to me, after reading many of the other biographies and hagiographies about my grandfather, that it was time for something a little fresher.
Amelia: Hence the subtitle - "Bobbing Sideways"?
Bobby: Yes. I wanted to come at Bob's wisdom from another angle, you know? Lure people back into the stories by showing them in a new light. Take the well-known fable of the intern and the cleaner, for example.
Amelia: Where the cleaner stole top-secret files from the intern, and half the board got fired?
Bobby: Yes, exactly. Everyone knows the story - it's old hat, so I don't think it really speaks to anyone anymore. So I've retold it through the eyes of one of the minor characters - the I.T. technician who was responsible for setting up the computer in the first place.
Amelia: Oooooh.
Bobby: It just seemed fascinating to explore the impact on him - on his family, his friends, how it affected his career - you know? "Am I guilty? Should I have set things up differently?" - it eats him up. And, I think, by focusing on his plight, we unlock the riches in Bob's original tale.
Amelia: So what does the tale mean for you then?
Bobby: Remember the little guy. The I.T guy. Look after them! Because, away from the spotlight and the big events, their lives are often turned upside down in the wake, and no one stops to think about them.
Amelia: Beautiful. And is this in some sense autobiographical? After the spectacular demise of BobCorp - allegedly due to the unexplained industrial theft of BobCorp's secret files by extremist Mongolian tractor dealers - didn't your father take a job as an I.T. worker?
Bobby: Well, you write what you know, right?
Amelia: Bobby, it's been a pleasure. All the best for the book.
Bobby: Thanks.

This post is about stories. We love stories. To quote another Bob – Bob Hartman, author of The Lion Storyteller Bible:

Stories are compelling because we live our lives as stories. And we communicate with each other largely by telling stories. We identify with characters in stories—sometimes because they are like us, and sometimes because they are what we would like to be. We join them on their storytelling journey—because every a story is a journey—and often we discover what they discover. And sometimes, because stories can be incredibly powerful, we are even changed by the discoveries that change them. That power is rooted in the subversiveness of a good story.

https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/teaching-scripture-through-storytelling/

The master story teller is, of course, God. The Bible is full of stories. The Bible is a story. Jesus himself often spoke in stories. Hooray for stories!

The stories of the Bible have been told, and retold, and dramatised, and musicalised, and re-imagined, and re-interpreted, and paraphrased and quoted and co-opted and thrown around for generations. Why? A few reasons. One thriving market in re-tellings exists, obviously, for children – who tend to need something a tad less wordy than the original.

Then there is a category of retellings designed to engage an audience who are otherwise uninterested in the Bible – either because they think it’s all nonsense, or because they think they already know it all. To quote Bob Hartman again:

The first church I pastored initially had an elderly congregation who really knew their Bible. So when I would begin to tell a Bible story, I got a lot of “been there/done that” looks. I took to retelling those stories from a different point of view in the hope that I would surprise and intrigue them and then lure them into the stories that way.

https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/teaching-scripture-through-storytelling/

Or there are the retellings that exist simply because someone is in the business of telling stories, and the Bible just happens to provide excellent source material – right up to the level of Hollywood blockbusters and West End shows.

So Bible stories are out there, everywhere, in every conceivable form. It would be hard to go through life without ever encountering something from the Bible. That’s a good thing, right?

Yes… but.

Remember the premise of this blog? This blog is all about learning to listen to God – and listening to God is, in many ways, much like listening to people. And, as I hope Bob demonstrated, listening to people means more than just listening to versions of their stories.

Listening to people means more than just listening to versions of their stories.

So, if you have nothing better to do for a few minutes, join me as we think about:

Why listening to a retelling isn’t (necessarily) the same thing as listening to God.

There are many reasons. We’re just going to look at a few.

1. The danger of embellishment

If you are going to take a thirty second story and spin it into a ten minute saga to your friends in the pub, you are going to have to add something. Let’s take the story Jesus told of the “pearl of great value”:

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Matthew 13:45-46 ESV

It’s 32 words. You can read it out loud in about ten seconds. If you want to turn this into, say, a twenty page story for children, you are clearly going to have to do a little embellishing. (Unless, that is, you possess my particular skill for adding thousands of words without actually saying anything extra…)

Embellishing is necessary, but I hope the pitfalls are obvious. Can you add detail faithfully? Without changing the story, or the weight of the story, or the effect of the story? Are your embellishments going to push out what really matters? Say you are writing for children. Five, ten, twenty years from now, will your readers be able to disambiguate between God’s inventions and yours? Or will you have given them extra work to do – the work of learning how to stop listening to what you added, in order to clearly listen to God?

In visual terms, can you turn this:

into this:

whilst avoiding doing this:

For a classic example of embellishment at work, look no further than the Nativity. Mary riding a donkey, the shepherds giving Jesus a lamb, the “three kings”, even the stable – all embellishments. Also the tractors.

2. The danger of omission

The opposite problem to adding stuff in is, obviously, leaving stuff out. Things that seem irrelevant or obscure get dropped. Often, things we struggle to agree with get dropped too, since we are flawed mimics, rife with our own biases and prejudices.

Omission happens at a couple of levels: firstly, we’re extremely selective in the stories that get retold. The story where Noah builds a big floating zoo? Tick. The story where Noah gets drunk and passes out naked, then wakes up and curses his son? Nah. The Parable of the Talents? Tick. The very-similar-but-subtly-different Parable of the Minas? Minas whuh?

Secondly, we’re selective with the details of the story. Again, think of the Nativity. Outside of an expository sermon series, how often have you heard a Nativity that included things like this:

In the angel’s message to Joseph:

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Matthew 1:21

Or in Mary’s song:

And his mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.

Luke 1:50

Or Simeon’s words to Mary:

Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.

Luke 2:34

If it doesn’t fit the narrative of “Baby Jesus, meek and mild” – or, worse, if it points to our need of a saviour – it’s unlikely to make it into a secular retelling of the nativity.

Very often it’s the warnings which get cut from a retelling. Which is a shame, because cutting the warnings out from God’s words is a bit like removing all the “Danger – minefield” signs from a minefield, or the “Danger – firing range” signs from a firing range, or the “Danger – nuclear waste” signs from, um, a dangerous tub of nuclear waste. Only much, much more serious. It’s not a kind or a loving thing to do.

3. The danger of losing the context

Pretty obviously, if you are retelling a story from the Bible, you need to start and stop somewhere. But the stuff that happens before you start, and the stuff that happens after you finish, are super important. It’s where that story belongs, and taking a story out of its context – even a seemingly self-contained story – is going to change it.

The Bible has a massive story arc – the biggest, most important story arc of all. And every individual “Bible story” is deeply embedded in that story. Plucking an episode out of the story arc usually means plucking the story arc out of that episode – at least, if you are trying to make a neat, self-contained, standalone tale. At worst, this can completely change the meaning of the story – eg this:

tells a very different story to this:

At best, it’s not so much a problem of changed meaning, as of missing out. If you only know the story of Joseph from watching Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, for instance, you will have missed out on a powerful display of God’s sovereignty, his faithfulness, the unfolding of his promises to Abraham, and a whole host of other riches that only come once you plug the story back into its context.

The Nativity is an example of this too – once it’s plucked from the Bible’s overarching story, you lose the backdrop of bad news that puts the good into “good news”. “Saviour” is an empty title if we’ve edited out the danger. It’s this:

Instead of this:

4. The danger of missing the point

This is the biggy, which all the other problems feed into. Bob wasn’t telling stories just for the sake of telling stories: he had a very specific outcome in mind. But that outcome was lost in all the subsequent retellings – despite the fact that the main details of the story were copied faithfully. I hope it’s obvious that none of Bob’s spokespeople did a good job of passing on his words. To recreate the story, without recreating the intent, is to be unfaithful to the original author.

To recreate the story, without recreating the intent, is to be unfaithful to the original author.

What about the Bible? Are the stories in the Bible intentional – does God have a purpose for them?

It’s not actually a difficult question to answer. Remember this: the Bible is God speaking. When was the last time you heard someone speaking for no reason? Would you actually want to read a book written by someone who intended it to have no effect on you whatsoever?

Of course God’s word has a purpose. He doesn’t speak in vain.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
    and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
    and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:10-11 ESV

All of which means that a truly faithful retelling of a Bible story needs to have the same purpose in mind.

Sometimes the purpose is obvious. For example, look at the introduction to the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke’s gospel:

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:

Luke 18:9 ESV

A faithful retelling of this story should clearly have something unsettling to say to the complacently self-righteous and contemptuous. Or look at the reaction to the parable of the vineyard, a few chapters later:

The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people.

Luke 20:19 ESV

Jesus intended his story to have an effect. (An effect so strong, his hearers wanted to kill him afterwards.)

Now, if you are writing a nice colourful version for toddlers, there may well be limits to what you can hope to achieve. It’s not surprising that most children’s books just present the story, and make no attempt to present the message. I’m not saying we should burn all those books in disgust: I’m glad that my children have something colourful to read, I want them to love the Bible, and we can always try to fill in some of the blanks ourselves. But we need to be aware that, quite often, we are getting this:

when we’ve actually been given this:

or, perhaps, this:

We’ve been using the Nativity as a convenient case study; let’s think about this for a moment. The Nativity story itself is so enormously well-known that it seems ridiculous – or bordering on blasphemous – to ask what the point of it is.

The nativity is so well known that it seems almost blasphemous to ask what the point of it is.

But think about it – why are we given the details of Christ’s birth? This post is already seven times longer than I planned, so I’ll leave the details as an exercise to the reader. But in broad strokes, why does anyone tell you about the origins of something?

It’s an advert. It’s to help you understand that thing now. To learn about Jesus the baby, and then ignore Jesus the man – worse, to ignore Jesus the currently reigning Lord of all – is to entirely miss the point of the nativity stories.

To ignore Jesus now is to entirely miss the point of the nativity story.

Conclusion

So what am I saying? That retelling Bible stories is an abomination unto the Lord, that all Bible-based children’s books should be pulped, and that school nativity plays should be outlawed? No indeed. Can Bible stories be retold faithfully? Of course – and a decent exegetical preacher will be doing this routinely. (Christopher Ash is an expert at this – for example, listen to his talks on the book of Esther.)

I just wanted to make the point – as we said earlier – that listening to a retelling isn’t (necessarily) the same thing as listening to God. I only include the word “necessarily” here because of the Christopher Ashes in the world, who can preach narrative faithfully… and even a faithful teacher like Christopher Ash would expect you to have the Bible open in your hands while you listen to him.

So: if you’ve heard a retelling, but haven’t read the original – go and read the original. If you are a tired and busy parent who is managing to read Christian books to your children: well done – but don’t assume the books are getting it right. We’ve seen some right clangers over the years, even from trustworthy publishers. Try to make the time to read the original, so that you have some form of defence against passing errors on to the next generation. If you think you might be a tired and busy parent at some point in the future, make the most of the time now to listen to God as much as possible. It’s common sense – before you start telling other people what God said, make sure you’ve heard him correctly yourself. And finally, if you are in the business of retelling bits of the Bible: try to be faithful, try to preserve the context, try not to distract, try to make the right point, but, where possible – above all else – do this:

Because however hard you work at being faithful, however gifted a story-teller you are, however clever your angle, however fresh your perspective, however good your rhymes are… God’s version is perfect, and yours isn’t. So point your hearers to the original.

Here’s my attempt at doing it – the Book of Ruth, told beardy-country-ballad style. My hope is that it might help reach non-Christian beardy-country-ballad fans, so if you know any, please share it.