I remember the first class I ever stepped into in college. Very early in the morning my Hebrew Bible (or “Old Testament”) professor startled us young evangelicals by informing us that the ancient Mesopotamian poem the Epic of Gilgamesh, which includes a section on a great flood, predates the similar flood story found in the book of Genesis. It frankly shocked—and kind of scared—me. In fact, I remember one student walked out claiming the professor was “challenging his faith.” But, looking back, all he was doing was pointing out a historic truth. He was letting us know that in a cosmopolitan ancient near eastern world, pieces of cultural and religious stories were often recycled, updated, appropriated, and, in the language of Dr. Peter Enns, were simply “in the air they breathed.”
Disparate cultures will yet have similar stories. Creation stories, flood stories, origin stories, deliverance stories, war stories—almost every culture has them. And I don’t use “stories” derogatively or as a synonym for “fiction.” I mean stories that convey meaning and truth through the unique particularity of a certain group. For ancient peoples, these stories were passed down to teach, inspire, and unify. They certainly weren’t meant to repeat “objective” history or science or absolute norms for all human existence (as many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians grow up assuming). So when we break with simplistic notions of sacred texts as “inerrant,” “infallible,” or “literal,” we can see the beauty, complexity, and humanity in these stories and the people who conceived them.
Growing up I thought my religious tradition’s stories were unique. I even assumed my tradition knew more about our adopted stories than the Jewish tradition that created and continues to keep them. How absurd! Acknowledging these texts as stories told and written by ancient peoples about how they understand and relate to the world, each other, and the divine has allowed me to relinquish ownership of them and to appreciate them on their own terms. Listening to the legitimate “owners” of these stories has given them new life. Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, and others, for example, have revealed aspects of the stories I grew up with that I never saw before. This, in turn, has allowed for a more reverent posture towards other cultural and religious stories which permits me to discover their messages of love, justice, hope, peace, unity, meaning, purpose, and what it means to be human.
In our modernist search for objectivity, it’s possible some of us in the West have largely forgotten how to tell beautiful stories of truth, depth, and meaning that speak to the human condition. Poets, artists, and novelists still have this gift—but I’d venture to say at least some of us have lost our imagination. Many of us were taught rigid and absolutist interpretations of our stories, which inhibits connection with those different from us. In fact, we don’t even like the word “stories,” since we think it implies subjectivity—a dirty word for conservative Christians. Perhaps we—at least those of us who grew up as this way—can rekindle our imagination by rethinking how we understand and relate to our own sacred stories.
In Living Resistance—which I know I’ve quoted a lot recently!—Kaitlin Curtice describes storytelling as an artform when she writes:
“Throughout history, peoples have expressed who they are through art—stories, paintings, carvings, statues and sculptures, music. Art is literally everything that we are, and when things are hard, art holds us together.” (p. 37)
Stories, including sacred ones, are mirrors of the people who tell them. They’re meant to inspire, encourage, and “hold us together.” Factual knowledge is often not the point. When I began to understand sacred stories this way, I found it easier to connect with people from other cultural and religious traditions. Because rather than understanding stories as exclusive, or “just for us,” they now have the potential to reveal universal truths. In Hope and Suffering Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes that theology (or storytelling) “can speak relevantly [or universally] only when it speaks to a particular historically and spatio-temporally conditioned … community.” (p. 75)
Stories that claim a universality from the outset—that claim to be for all peoples in all times in all places—cannot connect with real individuals and groups on the same level as stories that accept their own particularity. The stories we tell only have universal meaning if we can find particular meaning in them for “real life” people. I think this is what Dr. James Cone has in mind in God of the Oppressed when he writes: “God liberated a particular people from Egypt, came in a particular man called Jesus, and for the particular purpose of liberating the oppressed.” (p. 126) People outside the context of this original story find universal relevance in it only when they connect the story to their own need for liberation—or in my case, being in solidarity with those requiring liberation.
Rather than use our stories to exclude (i.e. "you must understand or tell the story this way or your story isn’t valid”), perhaps appreciating our stories’ similarities with others’ can create a more peaceful and cooperative world. Muslims, Jews, and Christians, for example, all have distinct beliefs and practices that make them unique. But there is also a lot of congruence in the stories they tell. This type of interfaith dialogue or cooperation shouldn’t erase religious distinctiveness, but when done properly and humbly it has the potential to create connections between people who tell different stories. And we all love stories that we can connect with. Stories with people or groups in whom we can identify or empathize. When we let go of the rigidity of our own stories and accept that they have their own subjective context, we can finally listen to others’ with open-minded attention, empathy, and humility. Their stories have a lot to teach us.
I like the idea behind this post, but I very strongly disagree with many of your particulars!